Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I want to start my contribution by adding my voice to those across the Chamber to say that I have been just so impressed by how Kiwis have reached out to their fellow man over the course of the last few days. Our emergency services have done an extraordinary job. It has been very distressing and I want to send particular aroha out to the families and children who will be wondering just what is in store for them. I am just sending my thoughts to everyone who has been impacted by the events of the last couple of days. This Charities Amendment Bill came from a carve-out from a statutes amendment bill. I want to commend the work of the charitable sector and a couple of groups in particular—Hui E! Community Aotearoa and Sue Barker from Charities Law—who actually saw within the Statutes Amendment Bill the four clauses that made up Part 3 I believe that have now been carved out to become the Charities Amendment Bill. The reason that they saw this as being very important is that they wanted an opportunity for the community and voluntary sector to have a chance to submit on what they felt were some of the implications of Part 3 of the Statutes Amendment Bill. It is important to raise this because there were some real concerns raised by some of the submitters who did eventually submit to the Government Administration Committee ably chaired by my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson—a very good committee—and it was very interesting to be part of that particular process. Members of the community sector were concerned about a couple of particular issues. I am going to deal with one of them now and it is about what they saw as a threat to their ability to raise appeals. Their right to appeal was they thought under some threat. There is a very valid reason why they felt that this was so; part of that was because over the course of the last few years the charitable sector has felt itself under some pressure—you know with the requirement to be registered by the Charities Registration Board there are a series of criteria that need to be examined by the Charities Registration Board and there is also the threat of deregistration if some of those elements are not met. One of the key issues is about the definition of charitable purpose" as it sits within the legislation. Supporters of the charitable sector know that there have been promises of reviews of charities legislation by this Government and those reviews have not occurred. One of the significant parts of those reviews would have been the ability to review the definition of charitable purpose within that because the current definition comes from a very old statute—the Statute of Elizabeth which is 400 years old—and it is right and proper that in this modern day and age we should start thinking about what a charitable purpose is and how we should define charities their purpose their ability to attract favourable tax status and the like. It is overdue that we examine that but for the purposes of this legislation and for the examination of the clauses that came through the Statutes Amendment Bill the charities were very concerned about their ability to appeal. This is because there have been cases taken to the court where charities have been deregistered because their definition of "charitable purpose" did not meet what the Charities Registration Board had set out. But they have had to actually go to court to defend their constitutions—the constitution of charities—and in some cases they have actually won those cases. I want to point to the National Council of Women which fought in the High Court to ensure that it could retain its charitable status. One of the submitters to the select committee Sue Barker was instrumental in supporting the National Council of Women in this particular case. It was not an easy case to defend and it did come at some cost to the National Council of Women. At the heart of it was the definition of what a charity like the National Council of Women could use as a charitable purpose. I would have thought that gender equity could be considered as a charitable purpose. The Charities Registration Board of course did not and as a consequence of that—[Bell rung] Mr Chair?The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): I am quite happy to—please take your seat—give the member another call but the purpose of the Committee stage is to examine the bill and what it does not what it does not and it is also to relate to the House sitting in Committee those submissions that were made in the course of it. So if the subject of what she is saying which does not appear to be part of the bill that is in front of us at the moment was raised by submitters then she really needs to reference that and—I do not know whether she is doing this—not just make points that may well be close to her heart and may involve charities but do not form part of the bill. So if it was the subject of specific submissions that were made before the select committee the member is free to be able to refer to those as an aside but they are not substantial parts of the bill and that is what the Committee stage is about. She may well want to make those points in the third reading but not during the Committee stage.POTO WILLIAMS: What I do want to do Mr Chair is actually take us back to—thank you very much for your guidance—one of the submitters who was Sue Barker. And I reference her because in the official report back a lot of the comments were made about her particular submission and her view about the ability to appeal is central to the particular argument I want to make. They reference Sue Barker and charities law in particular. Sue Barker had been instrumental in ensuring the National Council of Women in particular did actually have a successful appeal.So my point about that is this: at the heart of my particular discussion in this call is that she felt in her submission—and it was backed up by submissions made by other organisations including Hui E! Community Aotearoa—that the right to appeal would be under threat if we allowed clause 13 amending section 61 of the Charities Act 2005 particularly to proceed. That is for anyone who is involved in the charitable sector and is something that we have ensured we do not lose the ability to do. It is at the heart of all of our law actually—the ability to appeal—and groups like charitable organisations feel a sense of being under some restraint when it comes to their ability to take cases to the High Court.I thank you Mr Chairman for your guidance. That was the substantial part of the call that I wanted to make. We want to ensure that charities have the appropriate opportunity to appeal any decisions that may affect their ability to operate in the charitable sector. Thank you."