Coates BarryBARRY COATES (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to talk about the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions (Regulatory Improvements) Amendment Bill. It is being introduced by Stuart Smith with great enthusiasm. I am also enthusiastic about this bill. The Green Party will support it. We think it is a good bill. We see it as providing a really necessary basis to help the credit unions and friendly societies get on to a level playing field. At the moment under current legislation—the 1982 legislation—they are effectively discriminated against and made to jump through hoops that are unfair and make life difficult for them.One big advantage is that this bill will reduce unnecessary operations and compliance costs. Secondly it will enable the credit unions and the umbrella body Co-op Money NZ to operate with greater efficiency to embody more innovation and to have a greater degree of accountability. Thirdly we see that essentially it aligns the credit union movement with other financial service providers. It really does make the rules common across the different providers. Finally and I think quite importantly—and where the original controversy I think arose—is that it does maintain mutuality and the bonds between the mutual societies.So we see these benefits as being important. Why is this important? Well actually this is a relatively large component of our financial sector. There are 194000 members. They have got $1.7 billion of assets in 16 credit unions and mutual building societies and they operate through 76 branches throughout New Zealand from Whangarei to Invercargill. So we think they are an important part of the financial services landscape.They are also part of a wider group of member-owned cooperatives. As well as the 16 credit unions there are also three larger cooperative banks and the customer-owned banking sector has 350000 members which is 8 percent of Kiwis. So this is not a small organisation. The leadership provided by the umbrella organisation Co-op Money actually puts it as New Zealand's sixth-largest financial transactor in providing services to those members. They operate according to principles that I think we could recognise as being important: they have a democratic structure they provide services and benefits to their members they play a role in education in spreading the messages about thrift and savings they encourage cooperation between their members they build financial stability and they promote a sense of social responsibility. So we think these are qualities that should be strongly encouraged.The Green Party policy supports a more diverse financial sector including New Zealand - owned banks—so far we have got only one—credit unions building societies and other local financial institutions. This bill and the credit union movement itself will create an enabling environment for social responsibility that we think is an important part of a broader ethical money ethical banking and socially responsible investment movement.If I might just say one final word about this bill we support it also because this is a very different slice of our financial sector and we have seen too much dirty money coming into New Zealand. We have seen money-laundering that is taking place here on a massive scale we have seen tax havens promoted by this Government and we have seen the kind of speculation particularly in houses that is not what we want to encourage. Instead we applaud this bill and this sector. Thank you.