Chauvel Charles: Financial Advisers Amendment Bill (No 2) Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Financial Advisers Amendment Bill (No 2) Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 22 June 2010. Volume:664;Page:11984. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I welcome the third readings of the Financial Advisers Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill. I echo the comments that my colleagues have made to thank officials and stakeholders for the work that they have put into making the legislation hopefully a success. 
It is true that the members of the Commerce Committee worked hard under the whip of their very diligent chairperson the Hon Lianne Dalziel. The work put in in terms of the number of hours spent sitting beyond normal sitting times reflects the desire to get the legislation as right as is humanly possible so that investors are never again disadvantaged in our financial services market as they have been over the last few years. It is terrible that people have lost their savings as a result of the lack of proper regulation in those markets. Parliament should have regulated the sector earlier. It is good that we are finally doing so and it is to be hoped that the legislation will serve its purpose. 
I pick up on a comment that Lianne Dalziel made about the attempts the committee made to ensure that its process was inclusive. We had a suggested series of amendments from the Government which came to us quite late in the piece. We wanted to make sure that people knew about those suggested amendments so as Lianne Dalziel has indicated we agreed as a committee to try to open up the process more than the Standing Orders would normally allow. We got the House to authorise a process whereby folk who were interested could essentially stay in the loop with regard to the work of the committee and the advice that we were receiving from officials. That is a good process. Sometimes I think we pat ourselves on the back as a Parliament a little too much about being open to public submissions because sure we are open in that way on a comparative basis but we could always be looking to improve those processes. This process certainly provided for a greater public input and a greater interested-person input than would otherwise have been the case if the Standing Orders had been applied strictly. 
I want to say something about the Supplementary Order Papers that were tabled at a very late stage in the piece. We always knew that technical amendments would be coming from the Minister of Commerce to the Committee of the whole House. But I have had texts and emails today saying that there is a problem with the parliamentary website on the Internet. People have not been able to access the texts of the Supplementary Order Papers. They have not been able to make their views known at this late stage as they tend to do via email to members directly when a late Government Supplementary Order Paper comes forward. That also obviously has ramifications for MPs themselves who are relying on remote access and want to see a proposed amendment at a late stage. If we want to be an open legislature we need to use new technologies to make sure that we are accessible to the public. We need to make sure that the technologies are actually working. I see that the Clerk at the Table is making a phone call now and hopefully that will do something to remedy the situation. But unfortunately given that we are now in the third reading debate it is too late. 
I also point to the indisputable fact that there is no justification for legislating under urgency in respect of this bill. The example that I have just used is probably a very good illustration of why we should not be doing this under the extraordinary procedures that the Standing Orders allow to the Government if it has a majority on an urgency motion. If we had had a bit more time so that those Supplementary Order Papers could have been properly considered could have been read by the public and could have had some time for input then we might have been able to make sure and to satisfy ourselves that we were not legislating inadvertently. I do not think any members could put their hand on their heart and say that they have read thoroughly the Supplementary Order Papers that have come in at the last moment. I certainly have not had a chance to. There might be one member who is sitting next to me who claims she can and I would not doubt her word. But generally speaking the Supplementary Order Papers are not accessible in the way they should have been and they certainly have not been accessible to the public. Urgency for this legislation makes it worse. 
I will say a word in defence of lawyers because they have been sorely defamed by my colleague in this process. Of course what participants in the financial services industry have had to do when faced with significant new pieces of legislation from Parliament such as the Financial Advisers Act the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Act and now the pre-implementation legislation is go to their lawyers and ask what the ramifications are for this new set of rules that Parliament is visiting on them. It has to be said that we have a very sophisticated profession in this country particularly when it comes to financial services. We are lucky still to have that level of sophistication. It is something that will hopefully stand us in good stead going forward if the Government’s stated aims to have a financial services hub or industry in this country ever come to anything. I do not see a lot of activity or action in moving that aspiration forward. It would no doubt be a good thing but if we are to have it it will be in part because we have those sophisticated transactional lawyers available to advise such parts of the financial services industry that are still based in New Zealand. 
In that regard I will say a word about the approach that has been adopted by the House in this particular legislation. It was an approach that was taken by the previous Labour Government; this is a conversation I had with the previous Minister of Commerce when I was chairing the Commerce Committee in the last Parliament that heard submissions on the providers and advisers bills. Many of the financial institutions that operate in New Zealand also operate in Australia. Many of them are branch offices of larger entities that have headquarters across the ditch. Why do we not simply adopt a similar or virtually the same regulatory regime that the Australians operate in this area? Why do we not negotiate to have a joint regulatory approach with joint regulators? I understand that there is some proposal that we might take this approach in competition regulation with the chairman of our Commerce Commission being dual-warranted in respect of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. That is a very good approach; it is very sensible. It will keep costs down for these businesses because they will have to have just one compliance approach trans-Tasman rather than have one set of rules that they comply with in Australia and another set of rules they have to comply with in New Zealand. 
If we take the single economic market seriously and if we want to give meaning to the idea of Prime Minister Rudd’s visit next week then this is the sort of approach we should be trying to negotiate with the Australians across the board. This should be instead of having things like separate competition authorities separate financial regulators and now for goodness’ sake a separate productivity commission which is a bureaucracy to be created we are told by this Government to perform exactly the same role as its counterpart across the Tasman. Instead we should be cooperating much more and seeking negotiated solutions that do not expose businesses to double sets of compliance across the two jurisdictions. 
That is the not the path that has been chosen by Parliament. The path is the one that we are debating today. I wish the regime well and I hope it makes a difference to vulnerable financial services provider consumers. I hope we will see an end to the ripping off of mum and dad investors. Let us hope it is a step on the way. Let us hope that in a couple of weeks’ time on the next members’ day we will also see the Government taking a consistent approach to financial services regulation and agreeing to support my colleague Carol Beaumont’s bill to regulate the loan shark sector because that is another sector where people are vulnerable and require protection. There is no reason why we should not provide it in one part of the industry as we are today. To deny it to the most vulnerable as it appears the Government intends to in a couple of weeks would be a real shame. It would be a failure on the part of this Parliament to provide the protection that New Zealand consumers deserve. I hope that the National and ACT Party members will rethink their stated approach on that issue.