Young Jonathan: Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Young Jonathan: Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 April 2012. Volume:679;Page:1674. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. I am very pleased to stand in support of the Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill.  
New Zealanders like to be generous without a doubt and it is very important that we place reasonable protections around that generosity if we want to see it continue. We have a giving spirit in many regards. Seventy-seven percent of New Zealanders are planning to make a donation to charity in the next year a recent survey has found. Many of our community organisations as the previous speaker Denise Roche has mentioned rely upon the generous donations of New Zealanders. What we find time and again are stories that come through the media of people who have been scammed or ripped off in the name of some good charity or good event. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Are you talking about ACC? 
JONATHAN YOUNG 
: That is coming up. So it is very important that we do have in place the measures to protect New Zealanders.  
We are in fact the second most charitable nation in the Asia-Pacific region. According to MasterCard’s survey of about 6000 people across 14 countries the only nation that was more charitable than us was Indonesia. We came second and we even beat the Australians. We do have 25500 organisations registered with the Charities Commission and that organisation exists obviously to bring credibility accountability and transparency to our charitable sector. This is exactly what this bill is seeking to do.  
It must be said that the Commerce Committee which viewed this bill did receive varied comments from different submitters and some did say that they felt they would be adversely caught. So that was a reason why there was a move to put regulation-making powers in this bill—to create regulations that will work for all charities rather than put it into primary legislation.  
As stated before some reputable charities in our communities—people who do great work for our communities whether they be rescue helicopter trusts or the like—do rely upon full-time professional fund-raising organisations. Some of those organisations rely upon them only because the work they do on many counts by volunteers is totally immersed in doing the work of the charity so they do not have the capacity to be fund-raising as well. It is important that the public have faith that their donations to charities are going to the charities. I do not think anybody here would be happy or comfortable to know that 100 percent of what they have donated is not going to the charity they thought it was going to.  
That aside we realise some of the complexities and some of the pragmatic aspects around fund-raising but I think that when a fund-raising organisation is faced with the necessity to disclose what portion of the donation it receives is for its own administrative or salary costs then it is actually going to be a challenge that will cause the reputability and the quality of the charity to once again stand up in its own right. So people will think that although 20 percent might be going towards the administration the cause it is raising funds for is worth that whether it be a rescue helicopter trust or the like. I think New Zealanders see the real relevance and necessity for those sorts of organisations and realise that there has to be that fund-raising capacity behind them in order to maintain their costs and keep flying.  
This bill is going to be I think a bit of a sorting ground. I think that through this legislation there will be some fund-raising organisations that may not survive but we are also aware that there are many organisations out there that ought not to be there in terms of the amount that they do take from the charities that they seek to raise funds for.  
I think once again that New Zealanders are very generous and we must protect that generosity. We do not want to see a cynicism rise in the community but we do want to see New Zealanders continue to contribute and continue to see the vast majority of what they donate get to the charities that they give to. Thank you very much. 
Bill read a second time.