Logie Jan: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9322. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a call on this the second reading of the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill. With no disrespect to the previous speaker Alfred Ngaro; Maya Angelou; or Christian Churches New Zealand my contribution is not going to be a long one. The outline of this bill has already been established as has the purpose of it. For some bills that come to this House it is appropriate for them to come to this House and there are some bills as this is that are appropriate to be considered by the House that are not controversial and that are not dealing with any particularly deep issues. I would submit that this is one of those times so my contribution will be kept relatively short.This bill is a private bill that was introduced last year by the Hon Dr Nick Smith. It enables the repeal of the Associated Churches of Christ Church Property Act 1929 to dissolve the Associated Churches of Christ Church Extension and Property Trust Board and to transfer all property powers and legal obligations from the Associated Churches of Christ Church Extension and Property Trust Board to a new charitable trust which is now called the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board. This bill gives the trust the legal power to do that.Christian Churches New Zealand asked Parliament from a decision at its conference in 2013 to do this to enable it to be able to be more flexible on the use of its property or the proceeds from the sale of that property because the existing Act on our statute book from 1929 gives an impression that the trust is restricted to use the money or the proceeds from the sale of property only towards other property and the Churches want to be able to use it for other charitable Christian purposes. So it is actually incredibly simple.The one matter of possible discussion or dissent that was considered at the Government Administration Committee was whether there should be a sunset clause to this bill so that there would no longer be an Act—there would no longer be any standing in terms of a statutory Act. There was a decision made consciously by the Government Administration Committee to reject the idea of the sunset clause even though it is a good idea to have as few pieces of legislation on the table as possible because if somebody left money in their will to this organisation as it was written in previous legislation and then we repealed the legislation that money would go to the Public Trust when the intent of the person bequeathing it was for it to go to the Christian Churches. So the only way at the moment to be sure that that money would get to them in the future would be to keep the legislation on the books. It seems pretty simple to me. So we are very happy to support it.The explanatory note of the bill has some really fascinating history in it. I just note that for people who are interested in the contribution to New Zealand of the Christian Churches and the reason that they were set up which was I guess as an act of rebellion in some ways against the divisions in the churches. They were hoping to bring together a lot of different Churches under the one banner with the reference to the Bible rather than the differences of the Churches. I did notice though when I was looking up a bit more detail on that on Wikipedia that actually there was still another split after that point between the Churches that used musical instruments and those that chose to sing a cappella which seemed an interesting note to me in the history.But this is an organisation a Church that has been in New Zealand as part of our landscape and our social fabric for a very long time. The first was established in Nelson in 1844. So it is not such a bad thing I guess that the legislation is still on the book at least for the reference to that continued thread of history. We support it.