McClay ToddHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Mr Speaker thank you very much. National will be supporting this bill to select committee where we look forward to digging in a bit deeper to some of the provisions the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs has spoken of. You can always tell a Minister is on top of his brief when to get through his 10 minutes he's got to get his office to create a list of every single society in the area he's from and to read them out. But that's not because this isn't important work—it is. There are 24000 incorporated societies in New Zealand and they are of greatly differing sizes from the Rugby Union with more than $100 million worth of revenue to some that will have a few thousand. So the most important thing that I think the committee will need to look at is to make sure that incorporated societies are not being burdened unnecessarily—because when there is more red tape and more bureaucracy there is a cost to that—and that the changes that are being proposed by the Government actually are there to fix actual problems and to assist and not merely to do some work because the Government didn't have very much else to do at the time. I've got to say that it has taken a long time for this legislation to come before the House. In 2010 the Government asked the Law Society to start doing some work and it did so. It delivered that to us. Paul Goldsmith as the then Minister had a bill drafted and put it out to public consultation towards the end of 2015. It is important to consult on legislation particularly when so many organisations can be affected. That work was done fairly quickly and so it's taken 3½ to four years of the Labour Government to get this here. I think the committee should get on with it quite quickly because who knows how long it will take when we finish our work and we send it back to the House? A couple of the parts of the proposal that have come through initially from the draft that we put together I think remain important. Yes it does place duties upon officers of societies. I think it's important to clarify this but we should be careful not to be heavy-handed in doing so. The Minister recognised that for some of the smaller societies not all of the provisions of the changes in the bill will apply to them but we need to make sure that actually particularly for those smaller and medium sized societies that are there for public good more than anything else—the Minister mentioned rugby clubs or small rugby clubs or the organisations that help organise sport for our young people in our communities—they're not being asked to do things that they were never intended to just because the original Act that they act under or that controls them is so very old. Procedures for dealing with conflict of interest are important but I'll be looking forward in the committee to find out just how often this happens because if you take that example over the Rugby Union with over $160 million worth of income or turnover every year they already will have procedures for dealing with conflicts of interest or dispute settlement as opposed to some of the smaller societies that may never have to do so. But I do think it is a good provision that for the societies where there is a conflict of interest board members of committees actually can declare that and then have an ability to still take part rather than have to exempt themselves—particularly for some of those smaller ones—under certain circumstances. When it comes to new societies there was a suggestion earlier on of having a draft statute for them to govern them. Through the consultation procedure I think it was clear that a number of organisations and advisers thought that that would be too prescriptive or restrictive and now it is possible for new societies to draft up their own constitutions within the bounds of the Act to be specifically tailored to them. I think this is a good change or advance in the legislation. The final note I'd like to make—because after the Minister's speech I don't want to take too much of the House's time. I'm eager for this to get to committee so we can get the changes in place as quickly as we can. But ultimately when it comes to financial statements and the proposed processes of the External Reporting Board to bring those into line within the legislation—now largely this will be similar to the charities that exist in New Zealand and companies and other organisations but again I want to stress that actually it is important that we make sure that the smaller societies are not overburdened with this. For some of them the cost to do so and meet these standards may be greater actually than what they have left over in a year to use for a charitable or good purpose and so the bill retains provisions where there are carve-outs for smaller societies. But we will want to make sure that this is done properly and that it actually is fit for purpose and so we'll look forward to submissions on that. The final part I would note is there are a number of organisations that submitted during the consultation procedure so the directors generally supported it with some suggested changes. They came through. There are others that came and spoke. Creative New Zealand said they supported the intended purpose of the legislation broadly but they wanted to make sure there were some changes. There will be organisations that will be concerned that it has a direct impact upon them more than others and I see that the Minister already has made one change for one group of organisations. He must be open to a change for other organisations who find that actually the original Act is working for them and there could be extra requirements or restriction placed upon them without a gain for them or the public. I hope the Minister will be open to that because I do note that when the Council of Trade Unions submitted they said that they were concerned that in the definition of officer" they would be captured by this and they wouldn't be able to do their work properly and it would create problems for them. The Minister conceded to their views and has a huge carve-out for trade unions. We'll want to look into it in the committee stage to see whether this is appropriate and why he did this for the unions and perhaps for the unions only because others made suggestions that weren't picked up. But there will be other organisations that aren't unions and aren't closely affiliated with a political party who will have issues perhaps with the new legislation. The committee must be open to hearing those and looking for solutions to them. Some of them will be purposefully built just for one society perhaps but at the same time the Minister too should be open to those changes. As I said National will be supporting this to committee and we look forward to digging in deeper to make sure there is not just burden being placed upon these societies particularly small ones. We want a good regime that they can work in but actually we should only pass laws because they're going to help them not just pass law for the sake of it. Thank you."