Williams Andrew: Financial Reporting Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Financial Reporting Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 28 November 2012. Volume:686;Page:6909. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Financial Reporting Bill. Can I just say that we also commend the Minister of Commerce the Hon Craig Foss for bringing this to Parliament. He is the member for Tukituki. And can I just say that I was also there with Lawrence Yule his successor as the next member for Tukituki at the local government function this evening. It was very nice to see the current Mayor of Hastings who will be the next member for Tukituki after Craig Foss. We will get on to the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill later but the resounding comment from those in attendance was how gutted they were by the bill. 
Anyway we are back on to the Financial Reporting Bill. In this respect can I just say that New Zealand First has said—and this was prior to the election and we have always said—that we will support good policy and we will oppose bad policy. In this case we believe that this is good policy. It is good policy because it has some very beneficial effects for New Zealand commerce. It will assist with the financial reporting by our companies in terms of ensuring that there is more efficient reporting by the companies—that is a good thing—and it will also cut compliance costs. We are all I think in this Chamber in agreement that if compliance costs can be reduced and cut it does help our commercial sector and it does help our corporates get on with their business. 
Important also is that this bill ensures that smaller companies will not have to provide the same level of complexity of reporting as large companies. That again is only fair because how often do we hear all around New Zealand—and the Hon John Banks there as the Minister for Small Business— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Getting smaller every day. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: They used to be large businesses but he became Minister and they became small businesses as a result. It is interesting that small businesses—often owner-operators husbands and wives small businesses with limited management—often comment that they spend so much time on compliance costs that they actually cannot get on with doing their business because they are having to fill out so many forms and do so much to meet the bureaucratic requirements. So again this is a good thing— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: “Banksie” will fix that though. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: What is that? 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: “Banksie” will fix that. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: Yes “Banksie” will fix that. I am sure he will. It is a good thing that this bill does help reduce the complexity of reporting for smaller companies. 
Another important part of this bill is that it simplifies the obligations for the likes of charities. We have many very worthy and very good charities in New Zealand which again have incredibly complex requirements in terms of their reporting and this bill does help simplify their obligations. However what it also does this bill is it ensures that there is comparability between charities. Again that is a good move. We all get phoned at 6 o’clock 6.30 or 7 o’clock at night and asked to donate to this that and every other charity and often you are not too sure exactly what the charity is— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Did you say “donations”? 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: Donations—no no no not Dotcom donations not Skycity donations; these are normal above board donations. These are donations over the telephone not in a brown envelope. These are the normal kind. Anyway this bill will help ensure that New Zealanders can also see the printed reports of charities and can compare those charities in terms of what they are doing and see how they compare charity with charity. So that is a good thing as well. 
However there are a few pitfalls. New Zealand First will support this through to the select committee stage. We will ensure that this gets the colour of day and that it is fully explored and fleshed out. But at the same time these things are tinkering around the edges by the Government. What we want to see is not the Government trying to hide behind smokescreens and mirrors and thinking that it is addressing things just by this tinkering with compliance costs and things like that but this Government doing a lot more in terms of actually generating the economy actually generating exports and actually getting our manufacturing sector moving again. We are hearing stories time and time again. Only yesterday we heard that at Carter Holt Harvey—what is it—50 or 80 jobs are to be laid off in Rotorua. A panel plant making wood panels in Rotorua—the heart of woodland New Zealand Rotorua—is laying off workers because there is not enough domestic demand for its products the panels in New Zealand. There is not enough demand for its products and that is a great shame. It is a great shame that in a place like Rotorua we are laying off good workers at a wood panel plant because this economy is not growing. 
It would be growing if we were building more houses—if we were building more houses—if the housing sector was growing and if we were stimulating the economy with more jobs more employment and more opportunities. But it is not happening so as a result this is what we are seeing. Sure we are seeing in this bill on the one hand the Government trying to reduce compliance costs to companies trying to tinker around the edges and sort of soften them up—which is good; that is fine—and trying to help them but what it is trying to help is basically an economy at the moment that is very very very flat. We in this House get tired of hearing the Government always saying “Oh well it could be worse. It could be worse. We could be Greece. We could be Greece or we could be Spain or we could be somewhere else.” It is poor that we always have to be compared with extremely poor-performing economies of southern Europe when what we should be aspiring to is comparing ourselves with Singapore Norway Taiwan or Korea—economies that are actually doing well. But what this Government tends to do is compare ourselves and think that we are doing well because we just happen to be a couple of notches above Greece Italy or Spain. Well that is not good enough and tinkering around the edges and just trying to save a few compliance costs is not enough. 
New Zealand First hopes that this bill will go through to the select committee and that it will get fully explored. But in so doing we hope that the submissions that come in from the commerce sector in New Zealand focus not only on the reduction in compliance costs and some of the reduction in financial reporting requirements but also on how that can reflect on growing the commercial sector in New Zealand. For instance the Hon John Banks has always asked—he has been in business for many many years—how we can get a lot more companies in New Zealand going. How can we create as a result of the Financial Reporting Bill—because this should be an easy country to get businesses started; it should be an easy country to get them going—and how can we encourage a lot more companies to get going and get behind them? 
This again reflects on the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill which we are going to be speaking on very shortly. The Hon John Banks who was the Mayor of Auckland knows and I know as the former Mayor of North Shore how important it is also for the second tier of government in New Zealand to ensure that local companies local businesses local manufacturers local employers of staff and local people who are providing work paying their rates and paying their taxes are helping grow this economy. We have a collective responsibility in this Parliament all 121 of us including the Hon John Banks as the former Mayor of Auckland— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Hang on! Didn’t he treble the debt in 3 years of Auckland City? 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: He did. He did. He did but do not hold it all against him. John Key was asking him to do it at the time. John Key as the Leader of the Opposition asked him in July 2008 to leverage his balance sheet and increase it so he did that. He did that. He responded to that. Just in closing what we need to remember is that we have a collective responsibility in this Parliament to grow the commerce and the pie in New Zealand. If the economic pie in New Zealand does not grow collectively and if we do not create a bigger economic environment in this country which in turn will pay more taxes then all this tinkering around the compliance costs and reduction in reporting is basically just moving the deckchairs on the  
Titanic 
.