Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you to the last member Julie Anne Genter for giving me an earlier start than planned. Thank you for that. Look I would like to respond to a few things that have been said during this debate. This bill actually started life as a member's bill. It ended up in the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill later on and if members had taken the time to do the research they might have realised that but anyway.Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga was the member who put this bill up first. It was decided then to put it in this regulatory systems amendment bill. For the benefit of members who do not seem to be aware of this there is a convention in the House among other things that that type of bill is to be non-controversial. But it turned out there were two credit unions at least—it may well have been three at that time—that had objections to provisions in the bill. Some of them still do. I like the member do look forward to that being aired in front of the select committee. We will get the bottom of all of those issues at that time. I have spoken to those credit unions and I understand their issues with the bill. I do not agree with them but I do understand them and I welcome the opportunity—in fact I took the bill out of the ballot until I had more information and then I put it back in so that I ensured I knew what I was talking about at the time. I respect their opinion; I just do not happen to agree with it. When it was taken out of that bill I willingly picked it up.It is something I really believe in. I think this bill is actually about the little guys. This is about people who are members of credit unions and the provision to allow small and medium enterprises to borrow money from credit unions and allow credit unions to lend directly to them is actually really important. You can imagine someone who has a lawnmowing business for instance who is a member of a credit union and who is used to dealing with the credit union on a day-to-day basis. They will now be able to carry out their business banking with the credit unions.There are lots of good reasons why you would want to do that but one of them—which I am sure very few of us in the House realise at all—is that very shortly Co-op Money will have its Oracle Flexcube installed and up and running. It will be the only financial institution in the country that will have a tier one state-of-the-art banking platform to operate from—the only one in the country. All of the trading banks will not have that but it does so it is leading the banking sector.I also go along with a lot of the sentiment of other speakers in the House around the fact that this is a smaller part of the banking sector and is less complicated. There are no financial engineered instruments that the credit unions use unlike other banks so it is a much simpler process. It is essentially money in and money out. You know what you are getting and I think that is fantastic. In fact if there was a bit more of that in New Zealand I do not think that would be a bad thing at all.It brings much-needed competition into the banking sector in New Zealand and I would be hopeful that more New Zealanders would consider using the credit union sector as a very serious part of their banking operation. I think it is something like $800 million that the credit unions are lending out. It is not small beer at all but it is something really well worth considering I believe. I think the ability to take the trustees out of the system to make it a much less complex and less costly operation for credit unions to organise their internal structures is a really good thing and it is much needed for the credit union sector.I would like to finish by going back to the beginning. It seemed like a number of the speakers in the beginning were really barely veiling their envy at a complex bill that is actually making a real difference. It started life as a member's bill it is going through the House as a member's bill and I understand that when you have a one-page bill that you could drive a bus through for us to have something that has got 35 pages of complex legislation it is something those members grapple with. You know one day in perhaps 20 years if they ever have the opportunity of being in Government they will realise that what is actually needed is well-drafted legislation. Thank you. Bill read a first time. Bill referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee.