Prasad Rajen: Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill — In Committee Procedure Third Reading 
Prasad Rajen: Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill — In Committee Procedure Third Reading 
[Volume:667;Page:14667] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I stand to speak to the preamble of the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill. Unfortunately I do not have stories to tell not being from Christchurch nor indeed being educated in New Zealand in my schooldays. However I can claim to be a Marist boy and I have not heard anybody talk about being a Marist boy yet. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: I think it is Marist fathers. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: Proper Marists. At school I was taught by Marist Brothers in Fiji who were all New Zealand Marist Brothers and taught us well. There were no discussions in those days about huge bequeaths or trusts that kept the school going. There might have been some old ones but the school that I went to and enjoyed my education in was funded entirely by contributions from former students. 
It is quite amazing to think that Christ’s College goes back to 1855 and over that period of time a huge number of trusts were set up as was the tradition in those days to assist schools in all kinds of ways. It is quite amazing to realise that in this particular case there are 148 trusts that are administered by the board of Christ’s College but 28 of them are unable to be administered because there are major problems with that in the contemporary environment. The bill attempts to address how the trust board may begin to modernise if you like the purpose of those trusts. It is important that we go through this process because when people make huge contributions to trusts of this nature for a particular purpose they need to be guaranteed that the purpose will be satisfied. Our own Charitable Trusts Act provides the framework within which that need operates. When there is a need to revisit matters we go through this process to ensure there is a smooth transition to a new purpose for the trusts to enable the resources of the trusts to be utilised. So that is what this bill is trying to do. It is important also to have the opportunity to have the full debate here so that— 
Paul Quinn 
: Come on Rajen you’re really struggling to drag this out. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: I am still on the preamble. The member might take a call to enlighten me on some of this but there are quite a large number of matters to be addressed. Even in the first reading of this bill some of those concerns were raised and it is good to see that the select committee has worked its way through most of those. When the time comes to debate the other aspects of this bill we will talk about those specific things as well. 
As far as the preamble is concerned clause 4 raises some concerns for me in that the governing body itself is seeking to have the authority to determine the new purposes. That translates a little later on in the bill into not utilising the provision that some other trusts of this nature have where the Attorney-General still has a role. In this particular bill that is obviated; it is not included. We will debate that when the time comes to have a look at that particular section. But apart from that I am done speaking on the preamble. Thank you. 
Preamble agreed to.