Clendon David: Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 27 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3439. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I am very happy to continue the agreeable nature of this debate which Mr Cunliffe has just referred to. This is a useful piece of legislation. It does some good and will do no harm unlike some of the bills we see emanating from this Government. 
Clearly the genesis of this Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill was a perceived need to protect charities that were employing third-party collectors basically from being ripped off—to protect them against some of the more unscrupulous operators recognising that some charities are run by some relatively unsophisticated people in a commercial or a business sense. It was important too—it was seen to be at the time and still is—that we retain the very high level of public confidence that when people make a donation to charity a substantial amount of that money will actually land in the coffers of that charity. We saw too many examples some years ago—and I note in fact that the first reading of this bill was in December 2009—when there did seem to be a spate of and some visibility and some publicity about some out and out rip-offs of charities by people who ought to have been working for them. 
We note that there are something over 23000 charities in New Zealand registered charities and somehow I suspect many of them at some stage have had a turn on Lambton Quay on a Friday morning. As a non-Wellingtonian I have noticed with interest that whenever I am in Wellington on Friday I take care to have a few coins—inevitably there will be somebody gathering along the quay and that is a good thing. They are all good worthy causes and it is indicative of people’s willingness both to contribute money and to collect—the people doing the collecting very often are volunteers people who are working in a voluntary capacity. 
I think we have to acknowledge that the voluntary and charitable sector does an incredible amount of unpaid of work in this economy in this society of ours and without it we would be the poorer in many ways. Any of us holding portfolios as spokespeople—or indeed as Ministers—would be hard-pressed to find a portfolio area that at some point at some level in some context did not rely on the goodwill and the contributed time labour energy and skills of volunteers and people working not for personal gain but simply because it is the right thing to do. 
In my own area of corrections there are some extremely effective organisations voluntary community-based organisations none of which have deep pockets or significant wealth coming to them that do a remarkable amount of very good work and indeed pick up the slack that sometimes Governments and the private sector leave behind. In the business area we see Business Mentors an organisation that actively works to support new businesses and new start-ups not for gain but simply because that is the right thing to do. People have been through hard times themselves and remembering that they want to assist others. 
So it is important we have a high level of protection for the charities which are absolutely dependent in many cases and increasingly dependent on charitable donations given that unfortunately money from government both central and local government has tended to dry up in recent years. There are fewer grants available; the bar has been raised. It has become much more difficult for charities of all sorts to rely on funding from government. And that is a two-edged sword. It is disappointing to see that worthy charities are underfunded but equally it does encourage them to go out and generate their own incomes so there is a degree of merit in that. 
We are very happy to continue supporting this bill as we have since it was first presented by Amy Adams. We should acknowledge it was her private member’s bill that she brought to the House though several years ago. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Member’s bill. “Private member’s” went out in 1996. 
DAVID CLENDON 
: Excuse me. I am corrected by one of the members with one of the longer memories in this House. 
It is a good piece of legislation. We have supported it. We had some minor reservations initially and they have been recognised. There were issues about the apparent simplicity of the rule-making to say we will cut in at certain levels certain thresholds. Clearly once we delved into the complexity of the sector it became apparent that a more subtle approach needed to be taken. The regulatory approach involving ministerial discretion if you like certainly seems to be the best available outcome to us. So yes acknowledging then that this is a good piece of legislation we will support it. We will also continue to support other legislation that seeks to improve fair trading and consumer rights in New Zealand. We do have reasonably robust protection for consumers. All of our fair trade legislation is reasonably robust by international standards but some of it is also dated and some of it has not kept up with modern forms of exchange of sale and purchase—be it in the voluntary sector or just in the straight commercial sector. 
We are very happy to continue to support legislation that genuinely gives consumers a better break that protects people in the commercial sector and that most certainly protects those working in the voluntary and charitable sector. We are very happy to give our support to this bill. Thank you.