Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Well it's wonderful to take to my feet to actually speak on the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2) which is perhaps something Kris Faafoi the previous speaker didn't spend a lot of time on. But given that he introduced a subject that isn't completely germane to the bill I will just respond. He said that there would be no contention on this bill. Well Mr Faafoi doesn't get to decide what we do and don't debate in this House. I can tell you there is certainly some contention with his idea that the previous Government was somehow lacking in concern for vulnerable borrowers in the community. The Government of the day understood that there is a legitimate need for people to borrow in circumstances of their choosing and that their ability to get full disclosure of the nature of those loans was most important to ensuring that they could have the information they needed to know whether or not to enter into them. But it would be wonderful to be able to endorse and support the moves that the Minister brings to the House. When he brings them to the House it will be very interesting to scrutinise those to make sure that they don't seek to introduce things that have unintended consequences like setting interest rate caps in a manner that will force people into black market - type loan arrangements that will make people more vulnerable than they already are. Quite frankly on this side of the House we've seen nothing from the Government that gives us any confidence in the work they're doing. But to the point of this bill—Hon Kris Faafoi: Ambitious for loan sharks. BRETT HUDSON: —the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2) which in itself—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! We've heard that a number of times. Now can we come to the bill. You've had—BRETT HUDSON: To the bill. In the provisions—DEPUTY SPEAKER: You're one-all. Let's get on to the bill. BRETT HUDSON: Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's supposed to be one that we all agree with; non-confrontational—OK? BRETT HUDSON: We can agree that the provisions of the bill we can support. It's the fundamental nature of a statutes amendment bill that the changes are of a technical nature and non-controversial even though the people debating them might behave somewhat differently. In truth in the Governance and Administration Committee there was scrutiny of the bill that did not raise any great concerns. There were a couple of amendments that officials brought to the committee that the committee members were all able to agree with and to report back to their parties and to maintain consensus across the House that these were the right things to do. For instance one of those was around the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 where in an odd situation in a partnership without employees there could be an issue having a compliance officer nominated because the Act requires the compliance officer to be an employee of the firm and of course under a partnership with no employees a partner is not considered an employee. So that was a very sound and well-thought-out amendment brought during the committee stage which it's very easy for members across the House to continue an agreement on. My colleague Mr Mitchell raised the Animal Welfare Act 1999. I think it was actually quite illustrative that while laws are made for the day and in good conscience and with the best of foresight that members can apply at the time things do change over time. And so for instance as the Act has stood there are some challenges about whether or not live-capture animal traps could be remotely monitored and meet the conditions under the Act as it stands. And these changes through the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 2) will explicitly permit that. But importantly in doing so the committee through officials was able to capture no pun intended that actually that also required a change to the legislation to remove the requirement to replace the words details of any animals captured" with "the fact that an animal has been captured". While with technology today we can remotely monitor that an animal may have been caught in a trap it is perhaps somewhat more challenging for the technology today—at least certainly cost effectively if at all—to be able to provide the exact details of the animal which has been captured. But of course the fundamental and most important element of the remote monitoring is to know whether or not an officer should be sent out then to check that trap or whether indeed there is no point today because no animal has been captured—so another example of a sound change that allows Parliament to come together on a consensus to address small matters across our legislative book to make changes that make sure that our legislation remains relevant for today and into the foreseeable part of the future. We along with the other parties in this House commend this bill to the House."