Genter Julie Anne: Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9831. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I rise to take a short call on the third reading of the Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill. The Green Party will be supporting this bill. Under current law as we have heard a retiring trustee may make an application to the courts under section 46 of the Trustee Act to have the Public Trust undertake the trust in their place. This very old law was originally designed to protect the interests of beneficiaries and the continuity of their family trusts. This legislation is before us today because of other cases in front of the courts in which the trustee of a failed finance company Perpetual Trust has declared that he has a conflict of interest and has applied to the court to have the Public Trust appointed as the trust of last resort. This would incur some financial liabilities for the Public Trust for a problem that was not its problem in the first place.The legislation is very short and simple. It adds a few new tests to help ensure that the Public Trust does not bear any financial burden of acting as a trustee for a failing investment for a failed finance company of which we know there are very very many. There are already 60 so we could see more litigation of this type incurring financial liabilities for the Public Trust. The changes in this bill say that the court may only appoint the Public Trust as a replacement trustee if the resigning trustee has made reasonable endeavours to appoint a replacement trustee and the resigning trustee indemnifies the Public Trust for reasonable fees and expenses and provides security forthat indemnity. The Green Party looked at the proposed legislation and thought that although we have concerns about the process because we saw this draft legislation only on Tuesday evening and I saw the regulatory impact statement only today actually this is quite a reasonable test that should be considered by the courts. This stopgap measure could prevent potentially the floodgates opening up for other failed finance companies to apply to the court to have the Public Trust take on their trusteeships.The Green Party is very happy to see the Government acting in the interests of the Public Trust and taxpayers to protect them from financial liabilities caused by failed finance companies. We think that is actually quite a different move a different direction for this Government which up until now has not really proposed legislation that would protect the taxpayer. In effect it seems to systematically prefer to protect the interests of monopoly private interests. For example earlier today we had the Committee stage of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill where we have seen changes to the regulations for public transport that will actually entrench the dominance of existing bus operators and the Government has declined to alter the transitional measures in that particular legislation in a way that would actually save taxpayers’ money save regional councils ratepayers’ money and result in lower bus operating costs. Presumably it has done this because it is really on the side of the shareholders of the private bus companies not on the side of the ratepayers and the taxpayers who deserve to get good value for money.Similarly there are changes in that legislation that will open up the possibility of going to the private sector to finance some very dodgy motorway projects like Transmission Gully which essentially means that we get the same projects but we pay an extra $2 billion. So instead of paying $1 billion for a project that is worth about $500 million in benefits we will get to pay $3.4 billion—that is future New Zealand taxpayers will pay $3.4 billion for a project that is worth $500 million so that the private overseas banks financing the company have a nice solid and safe investment over a 25-year period and they can earn 10 to 12 percent returns.It is an unusual step for this Government and I commend the Minister of Justice for looking after the Public Trust and trying to put in place a stopgap measure even though it will not affect the case that is currently before the court if the court does decide to appoint the Public Trust as the replacement trustee of last resort for Capital + Merchant Finance. There will be costs incurred and this legislation will do nothing to protect the Public Trust from this particular case but we do hope it will protect the Public Trust in future cases. Thank you very much.Bill read a third time.