Lu NancyNANCY LU (National): I stand before you tonight to oppose the Companies (Address Information) Amendment Bill at its first reading. The reasons are very simple. But before that I wanted to congratulate the Hon Dr Deborah Russell because we sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee together and I'm learning from her and I'm learning from the fact that to have an idea to put in front of the House is sometimes not easy because when an idea is not good enough it does not get support.There are a couple of reasons why I don't support this bill in the House tonight and one of them is particularly around the fact that it is not addressing the solutions that it is proposing to the House is not addressing the intention or the improvements that it wants to make with the amendment.First of all the bill's main provision is to allow directors to in a way basically substitute their residential address with a different address in the public record. However I want people to understand and I want members as well as our voters and constituents and also directors of companies in New Zealand to understand that will hinder the transparency that we uphold so highly in New Zealand. If I can refer to the latest transparency.org.nz recent review on New Zealand's latest corruption performance index CPI ranked in 2023 about conducting businesses in New Zealand we are ranked top three in the world. We New Zealanders uphold high regard to how we conduct businesses in New Zealand and one of the ways we do that is by being honest about who we are and what we do. So I don't agree to the proposal in the House tonight by simply trying to hide or trying to substitute the address on the Companies Office website.Secondly I also do not support this bill to the House because we as New Zealand—and this is according to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment official information that in New Zealand small and micro-business including the self-employed make up 97 percent of all companies registered in New Zealand. Ninety-seven percent are small and self-employed businesses. That means that on company office websites when you go into registered companies it's 97 percent of the case where the shareholder information will be exactly the same as the director information. So I don't understand how substituting the address for a director address on the company's website will be helpful when you can literally go to the next page look at the shareholder and identify the same person with her or his address.I honestly think in light of the considerations of the members what they put forward and as well their personal stories or their constituents' stories that they have brought to the House today to try to address a legitimate concern of personal safety and privacy—however they're not talking about how do we address the problem of undermining transparency and accountability of business directors in New Zealand. To me it's just not good enough. In principle I do acknowledge there is a need to protect the privacy and safety of our own people but I do not support this bill because it's just simply not good enough. The amendment is only addressing one thing without considering the full picture. The amendments that I see—that I'm reading and seeing and listening to tonight—are not improving towards the full intention of protecting people because they have neglected the fact that small enterprises like the sole traders and the sole proprietors would still have their information displayed on companies' office websites.For me I think it is critical for our country's reputation in terms of transparency and also the fact that we should be addressing the full problem instead of addressing part of the problem—I do not think the legislation put forward to the House today is really doing it justice. So therefore I do not support this bill to the House.