Edmonds BarbaraBARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call as the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee to report back to the House on the Companies (Levies) Amendment Bill. What's probably really important is the first sentence in that particular commentary of the bill: The Finance and Expenditure Committee has examined Companies (Levies) Amendment Bill and recommends by majority that it be passed. We recommend all amendments unanimously."As the Minister has already canvassed what this bill will do I will go straight to the changes that the select committee made and cover them again. The select committee received three written submissions on the bill and I'd like to thank the submitters for their time. Of the three submissions two said we shouldn't invoke levies; the third one said we should make sure there is public consultation and then we shouldn't invoke levies. I'd also like to take this time to thank Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment officials; the Office of the Clerk who do a stellar job of supporting the committee every time we meet; and to Parliamentary Counsel Office for the quality legal drafting.Again like the member across the House and the Minister I'd like to acknowledge the Regulations Review Committee for their review of the bill. The Regulations Review Committee recommended that we consider strengthening the procedural safeguards in the bill's regulation-making powers process by expressly allowing for parliamentary scrutiny of the regulations. One of the changes that was made was to reclassify the regulations in clause 4 of the bill as confirmable instruments.The select committee also suggested three other changes. One clarified that fees be combined into one payment. The Companies Office though would still have to be transparent and need to tell users what portion was for the purpose of the levy. So it wasn't just a split $20 that's how much the fee was; they'd have to actually split out of that $20 what part goes to what service and to what levy.We also recommended we strengthen the consultation provisions again as a result of one of the submissions by removing the validating provisions—and also by the Regulations Review Committee—and requiring that proposals for regulations being made publicly available on a relevant Government website.The last one I will touch upon is a result of a committee request and that is a post-implementation statutory review of the levy system be conducted within five years of the date that the first regulations were made and for the report to be made publicly available. This was as a direct result of the committee's concerns around the bringing together of the different levies and also the sharing of them across the different shared services. So we asked officials how difficult would it be to do a post-implementation review given that it is a new regime in some respects and they confirmed that it would be a change that would be easily made.This is a good tidy bill that brings the legislation up to speed and was within the operations of the Companies Office who operate a number of shared services. My concern is that if you don't pass this particular bill those levies or fees will possibly have to go up. They will have to maintain 16 different types of fees and levies and therefore ultimately the cost might go back on to those people that need to register with those 16 registers. So therefore I commend this bill to the House."