Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Labour): Madam Speaker thank you for the opportunity to take my first call of the year in the House and follow the member from Northcote Dan Bidois with his rather colourful language but I certainly appreciate the contribution. Thank you sir.We've heard from various speakers around the importance of sound and efficient financial systems. Generally speaking we do have sound and efficient financial systems but we have heard for a number of years from agencies like the International Monetary Fund and particularly work done by the Reserve Bank that we do need a bit more regulation. Hence this bill has come to the House. I acknowledge the Minister Grant Robertson for bringing it to the House and I acknowledge the previous Government for the work they did on this bill as well. It's good to see that there is cross-party support.We heard from Dr Deborah Russell around the aspect of EFTPOS transactions just using one example of what this bill might cover. Now if we look at society and we go back many years—I'm not sure anyone in this House remembers—there was a period of bartering as a society when we didn't have any cash.Then we moved to cash and for many years people used cash to fulfil transactions. However we're quite quickly moving to a cashless society. In fact for me personally I very rarely carry cash which gets rather embarrassing when raffles are put in front of my face. I'm sure many members of this House and many people at home do not carry cash. So we're particularly reliant on financial systems financial transactions and we've heard that there is $35 billion a day worth of transactions going through. Now it's absolutely vital that this system is robust that it is sound and that it is efficient. So as a Government and in fact as a Parliament we're doing the right thing by putting some regulation in place.I mentioned before that the Reserve Bank has done a little bit of work in this area. The Reserve Bank oversees New Zealand's financial market infrastructures—the FMIs—such as payment and settlement systems for the purpose of promoting the maintenance of a sound and efficient financial system. FMIs are a critical element of the financial system and are highly relevant for the Reserve Bank's core responsibilities that stem from its financial stability objective. The Reserve Bank in March 2015 following consultation published a policy statement on its oversight of FMIs to reflect the recently updated Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures issued by the Committee on Payment and Market Infrastructures and the Technical Committee of the International Organization of Securities Commissions. So the Reserve Bank has effectively been leading a piece of work which has now come to Parliament and is about to be I expect passed into law.There's a second point that I'd like to highlight and that is the fact that this bill provides a framework that would bring the regulation of FMIs in New Zealand broadly into line with international standards. We heard from the speaker Judith Collins around the IMF and other international agencies who have been talking with New Zealand about needing a bit more regulation. So in a way we have been a little bit of an outlier compared to many other OECD countries. So it's good to see that we are coming into line with international standards in a sensible and proportionate manner that avoids unnecessary costs. And we heard from the speaker before that we do have to be careful around regulation and I absolutely agree with that. But carefully placed sound regulation certainly will help to ensure the robustness of our financial systems which is absolutely important. We all rely on these financial systems.The new regime is tailored to the needs and systemic importance of individual FMIs. This approach focuses regulation on the most important FMIs while minimising barriers to entry and compliance costs which might otherwise hinder new entrants and the development of new products.We've heard I think a range of views and a range of information. I've just added in a little bit there just to highlight a few extra points. Without further ado I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.