Bayly Andrew; Salesa JennyANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to be talking on the Companies (Levies) Amendment Bill first reading. Well here's a Minister who tonight has had a very busy role actually. We've had three bills—one we agree with. The last one the Financial Markets (Conduct of Institutions) Amendment Bill was an absolute waste of time and I've got to say this is a waste of time as well because this bill should not be coming before Parliament. This bill goes contrary to all the good principles of Government. This bill goes against the principles that were set out in the original legislation that created all these registers.This bill is simply wrong and I'll tell you why. We did correct the mistake that the Companies Office had inadvertently done and we did it with the blessing of the Minister and with the blessing of the House. That was the Companies Office Registers Funding Validation Act 2022. We did that because there was a wrong. We did that because the funding that had built up and had been inappropriately applied by the Companies Office was wrong. We did it because the legislation that set up the 16 registers required that funding levies should be done on a cost basis. That's why we agreed to amend and support the bill that was put through under urgency on Budget night. But it is absolutely wrong to perpetuate a wrong and this is what this bill does. It says Look we corrected what was going on incorrectly for the last few years." but then to put up another bill to say "We'll just keep doing the same thing." is absolutely wrong and I don't know why a Minister is actually in the chair trying to promote this as a good reason. I haven't heard in the speech that he gave before what is absolutely driving this bill that cuts across the core of how Government departments should charge—namely on a cost recovery basis.I used to sit on the Regulations Review Committee for three years. A number of members in this House sit on the Regulations Review Committee. It is going to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and I would be absolutely surprised if the Regulations Review Committee don't write a nasty letter to the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and say "This is wrong." So why is the Minister so hell-bent on bringing legislation to this House and wasting the House's time trying to perpetuate these types of bills? It is wrong Minister. You have a better responsibility than to do this. I'll suggest to you why this is wrong: the first thing is that levies are specific in that they are to achieve a revenue to recover the cost—the cost and no more. When I sat on the Regulations Review Committee there were a number of Government departments we took before us and made sure that their charging was appropriate. In some cases it wasn't and it had to be changed. The second thing is it's contrary to the original legislation. That is a fundamental change and why should a new Minister set about amending what was in the original legislation?The second thing is it's actually unfair. It is unfair because if it was to be fair and if it was to be equitable you would have to have the same users of all 16 registers experiencing the same outcome. That is not the case. Because the registers administered by the Companies Office are so varied there will be inherent inequities in the arrangements. I'll just note that we talked about the Companies Office but it includes the incorporated societies registers and we talked about the financial services provider register limited partnership disclosure register auditors register retirement villages register friendly societies credit unions building societies register. Now none of those has overlapping requirements or fees that should be charged as part of the 16 registers approved or overseen by the Companies Office. This is fundamentally inequitable. There will be some users of some of the registers who will be seriously disadvantaged and we know that under the previous bill that we passed under urgency over $3.7 million was actually misallocated by the Companies Office. So there is no way this bill could ever result in a fair and equitable outcome for the users of those registers.The other thing about this is that it is a bad precedent to be setting in this House. There is no way that we should be moving to a system where we allow Government departments by regulation to set fees and levies without being explicit what the basis is and making sure costs lie where they ought to. It is wrong and the National Party will not be party to any bill that changes that precedent and that principle that has underwritten a lot of legislation to date.The whole issue about the regulations in the regulation power set out in the bill is it is absolutely wide-ranging and so even if you accepted the principle what's set out under clause 4(5) is tantamount to allowing a free carte blanche to officials who will lobby their Minister to get an outcome that may be appropriate and easy to achieve but is actually wrong and maybe in many cases I suspect will always be unfair for many users of those registers. I just reiterate that we do not support this and in fact it's interesting some of the commentary that has been already written about this pretty uninspiring bill that was passed under urgency. Already people have written—particularly for instance Ian Llewellyn from BusinessDesk: "While the original validation law was passed officials said it was 'unusual' for the Government to be retrospectively correcting a historic mistake but the harm done was minimal and the Companies Office has been acting in good faith to keep overall costs down."That is correct and that's why we all supported that bill back in the Budget. It is fundamentally wrong to be supporting this bill tonight and we will oppose it throughout all stages of its progress but unfortunately we know we've got a Government that will be blind to representations from people who no doubt will make submissions to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and they will be blind ultimately to the people who will say "These levies are unfair for us. You should not be doing that. You're cutting across the principles that were enshrined in the original legislation." So that's why we will end up with a fee structure that is inappropriate and I'd have to say that I think this is a lazy piece of legislation. The Minister should not be supporting it. He should have beaten this back and said to the officials "There's no way I'm going to stand up in the House and promote this type of retrospective and prospective legislation that will create further harm to many ordinary New Zealanders in New Zealand at a time when we've got a cost of living crisis." This is a particularly bad bill. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the motion be agreed to."