Hague Kevin: Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill — First Reading 
Hague Kevin: Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:654;Page:2978] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I begin by congratulating Brendon Burns on introducing the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill and also by expressing my support for the remarks just made by Chris Tremain in respect of the Kimberley Centre. What a fantastic development that has been! The Green Party intends to support this bill at least as far as the select committee but it does so with a sense of significant reluctance. Our reluctance stems not from any hesitation about the need for the Methodist Church to be able to modernise its purposes and other terms of its trusts but rather because the mechanism being used bringing legislation before Parliament exemplifies using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. 
The church has played a very significant role in New Zealand. I particularly want to make positive comments about its progressive and courageous approach to many social issues and the great contribution it has made through social services including many of those provided by the trusts that we are considering today. Some of the biggest contributions made by non-governmental organisations and particularly charitable trusts in New Zealand have been made from longstanding organisations that have built up their public profile reputation and the ability to implement long-term interventions. But the very age of these organisations is likely to mean that their founding documents such as trust deeds are likely to reflect the different needs and anachronistic world view of an earlier time. It is essential that such organisations should be able to vary these deeds so that the momentum of their positive work can be carried forward into our own time. It is also essential that there is some kind of objective scrutiny of any such change to ensure that the underlying integrity of the relationship between trusts and the public is not compromised. 
What is at issue is the process for doing this. In the Green Party’s view it is appalling that the process provided for in the Charitable Trusts Act 1957 is so expensive and unwieldy that the Methodist Church needed to resort to these lengths to be able to make sensible and obviously required alterations. The Presbyterian Anglican and Catholic Churches have already gone down this route of course and it would now be churlish and unreasonable to require a different standard for the Methodist Church. That is why we support the bill. 
We are also conscious that there are a great many other longstanding charitable trusts and non-governmental organisations that may well be faced with similar problems but for whom this process—taking a bill to Parliament—would be beyond their means. It is not practical to continue to deal with the problem in this way. I urge the Government to add to its legislative agenda the modernisation and streamlining of the 1957 Act. This Act does require streamlining as opposed to others that do not. 
I finish by commenting that when I was investigating this bill I had cause to reflect on the changing nature of the relationship between the State and the community sector. Many community organisations had their origins in charities established to ease the lot of the “deserving poor” in an age when the Government played no such role. Nowadays non-governmental organisations are more often agents for the delivery of services for which the Government accepts responsibility or are themselves expressions of community organisation. My concern is that as the Government moves to retrench the role of the State and implements policies that increase the wealth disparities between rich and poor New Zealanders we will see reduced funding and support for the vital role played by non-governmental organisations. We will see a wind-back of progress towards full funding of many of the non-governmental organisations working on children’s health and welfare for example. In general I predict that we will see in the words of the McGillicuddy Serious Party “a great leap backwards”. It seems to me that Government policy is aimed at producing a New Zealand similar to Dickensian England; a poorhouse would go nicely alongside that boot camp—perhaps with a chain gang alongside it. Maybe the Methodist Church should think twice before doing away with the aims and objectives that were appropriate for the 19th century.