Parker David: Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Parker David: Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 09 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2131. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I was on the Commerce Committee which considered this bill the Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill—towards the end of its consideration not during the earlier parts. I think it is fair to say that the greatest act of charity in this is actually the parties agreeing that this bill proceed because although it does not do any harm it actually does not do anything. It does not. 
Louise Upston 
: Where’s your sense of charity David? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Where is my sense of charity? Well my sense of charity was just about overcome when I agreed that this bill should proceed at the select committee. 
Phil Twyford 
: He’s exhausted it. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I have exhausted it. This bill does no harm but I would ask the member in the chair or Amy Adams to take a call and tell us whether there have been any draft regulations made. Has there been any preparation made of any regulations that would give effect to this piece of legislation?  
This piece of legislation now says one thing and that is that it creates a regulation-making power to do something in the future. It does not do anything more than that. It does not say anything other than what it does in clause 4 which inserts a new clause 28A into the Fair Trading Act to make it explicit that third parties can be required to disclose the amount of the donation that is going to them. 
 The Fair Trading Act already makes it clear—and this is in the select committee report—that regulation-making powers exist under the Fair Trading Act. So that would have allowed regulations to be required to be made about the percentage of the funds that was donated to charities that was going to somewhere other than the charity. What the Fair Trading Act does not allow is a requirement that the disclosure be made by the third party who is collecting the donation. So it is a pretty narrow point that is being covered by the regulations here.  
The legislation as it came to the select committee tried to do this by way of provisions in the operative part of the legislation rather than in subsidiary regulations. There was a requirement according to the version that came to the select committee that if the proportion being retained was less than 50 percent then the collector had to disclose that there was a portion of the donation being hived off but was not required to disclose what the proportion was. But if it was more than 50 percent then they had to show how much of it was being hived off.  
It became apparent—as the Greens have already indicated—that that did not work in respect of some of the donations where the first donation might be one of a regular weekly donation every week essentially for ever. They did not know how that would work in practice and therefore they opposed it. So the select committee agreed that although these complexities had to be worked out in the future the committee was not in a position to work out those complexities. The promoter of the bill—with respect Amy Adams—had not worked out how those were going to be worked in practice and so no one has done the drafting to work out how that will be attacked in practice.  
Although this legislation does no harm it barely passes muster as to what should be passed in the House. Were we being less than charitable at the select committee I think that Opposition members at least would have said that this was fatuous and did not actually rate passing into law as a statute. But given that we were charitable at the time and given that we wanted to help Amy Adams on her aspirations into Cabinet—and we were successful in that regard—we decided that we would be charitable as well.  
So I would ask the member in the chair Michael Woodhouse to advise whether any drafting has been made of the regulations so as to overcome the complexities that could not be cured in the bill and that led to the bill abandoning the attempt to do it by way of primary legislation and leaving it to the secondary legislation—the regulation-making power—to sort these issues out. If there has been any work done I would like to know. I certainly have not seen any drafts. That would be influential for me as to whether I should grant my vote for this next reading of the bill. At least there would be an intention to actually put this into practice.  
It seems to me to be a worthless waste of money causing the cost of new statutes to be printed throughout the land only for it to lie dormant on the statute book. So would the member in the chair please advise whether there is any intention on the part of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs to promulgate regulations.