Tremain Chris: Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tremain Chris: Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 23 September 2008. Volume:650;Page:19043. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) 
: 
 Before I speak to the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Bill I acknowledge the valedictory speeches of Mark Blumsky Katherine Rich and Clem Simich who all set a very good tone in terms of their speeches and who were not afraid to acknowledge their political opponents. They were excellent contributions to the House. 
For the first part of my speech I will focus on clause 3 and then I will turn to clauses 5 and 6. Clause 3 “Overview” provides the reasons why we are enacting this legislation. Members of the community who are listening to this speech will remember that three bills form part of a portfolio of legislation that has been put in place to provide greater protection for consumers. The Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Bill is the third of those bills. Clause 3 provides us with an overview and states: “This Act requires financial service providers to be registered.” So the bill forces all financial service providers to be registered and it makes sure that they are all members of a disputes resolution service. 
The key area where the Maori Party got a little bit confused between this bill and the Financial Advisers Bill was in the fact that this bill has a wider scope and nowhere is that more confirmed than in clause 5 which defines the meaning of a financial service. It widens the scope of who will need to be part of the register and who will need to register with a dispute resolutions service. Clause 5 states that a financial service includes any service that has a financial adviser service that acts as a deposit taker that is a registered bank that keeps invests administers or manages money that operates a money or value transfer service and that issues and manages a means of payment—for example credit and debit cards. Thus one starts to get a feel for the fact that the scope of this Act is a lot wider than the scope of the Financial Advisers Bill. 
Although the scope of this legislation will include a number of financial organisations a number of them already have dispute resolution services that are set up and operating effectively. The officials thought that a couple of dispute resolution services were not operating effectively but this legislation forces organisations to be registered and to be involved with a dispute resolutions service. If these organisations do not have one set up within their industry grouping they will be forced under the legislation to join a reserve scheme. That is an important part of the bill. 
I also want to focus on clause 6 “Application of Act”. What we tried to do here was to replicate the clauses that were in the Financial Advisers Bill so that those organisations that were exempted from that bill would also be exempted from this bill. Clause 6(2)(a) provides that lawyers and chartered accountants who were always exempted from the Financial Advisers Bill pretty much from the word go will remain exempted in this legislation and will remain covered by their own legislation and their own disputes resolution services within their own professional bodies. In respect of clause 6(2)(ba) one group that lobbied quite hard to be excluded from the legislation was tax agents. They felt that they provided a similar service to that of chartered accountants who had their own body and code of conduct and who had their own disputes resolution service. Tax agents really felt they were being treated unfairly and separately from chartered accountants. I think that all of us on the Finance and Expenditure Committee—and certainly the Minister—thought it was wise to keep tax agents separate from the bill. 
Interestingly I have to declare a conflict of interest in respect of clause 6(2)(bb) as I have businesses in the real estate industry. Real estate agents have been exempted from this legislation largely because the advice they tend to give is secondary to the actual act of buying and selling a property and also because they are covered by their own legislation. Now that there is a separate Real Estate Agents Authority there is a disputes resolution service for members of the public in those instances.