Dowie Sarah: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDowie Sarah: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9821. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): As I said before this is a swansong for me. Let us go over that one more time and pay homage to the Government Administration Committee which I am leaving. Last night I referred to the Government Administration Committee which heard this bill as the heavy lifters of this Parliament. I think that that is still true and certainly members on this side of the Chamber are putting in some effort in respect of the debate on this bill—and very admirably I might say.Grant Robertson: I’m losing the will to live.SARAH DOWIE: It is very pleasing to move on to Part 2 of the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill. I know that Mr Grant Robertson is very sad that we have had to move on at this stage as are the other members but alas we do and we will continue to debate this.This part is the meat and bones of the bill.Mark Mitchell: Totally.SARAH DOWIE: It is totally the meat of the bill.Brett Hudson: It’s an important bill.SARAH DOWIE: It is a very important bill because as we alluded to prior the trust board does a lot of very good work in the community and the congregation of 30 churches that unite different religions range from the top of the North Island in Whangarei right through to Invercargill in the deep south which is my electorate.You know it is important that we hear the Christian Churches when they say that the old Act did not empower them to deal with their property appropriately and that we need to repeal that Act allow them to re-establish under existing charitable trust law and give them wide-ranging powers—and obligations—to deal with their property appropriately so that not only can they hold real property but sell that property take the proceeds and put those into different ministry projects which are so valuable to the community. So Part 2 is entitled “Transfer of property rights and obligations from old board to new board” and that is quite clear setting out exactly what clauses 5 6 7 8 and 9 do.I think it is important to note what my colleague Mr Brett Hudson raised which is that the committee did consider a sunset clause. We asked officials for advice on having a sunset clause. It was raised in one of the submissions that we should be considering a sunset clause to get the Act once the transfer of property had occurred off our books. But the advice came back that this was a risk to the savings provisions because although we are giving the new board the powers to deal with property and invest in their ministry it does have obligations and it will have contracts that it has entered into and it needs to be able to continue with those contracts. Third parties other parties to those contracts need to feel secure in the fact that because the new trust board is coming into play those contracts will see the test of time and will see the test of the obligations and service to whatever is set out in that agreement.So as I said before we did consider having a savings provision. It was thought inappropriate to use it. The other side of that too—not just in respect of obligations—is that obviously the Christian Churches do receive bequests and wills and it was thought that that could be somewhat of a risk. If somebody had died and left a bequest in their will to the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board that bequest could in fact fail if the sunset clause was in the Act and reference from the old board to the new board was not in place. So although we considered having a sunset clause it was felt inappropriate to put that in the new bill and therefore the bill from the first reading has been reported back to the House unchanged.It was a pleasure to hear from the two submitters on this bill. Even though it is a small bill it is a very—[Bell rung]Alfred Ngaro: Mr Chair.