Hipkins Chris: Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9830. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I am happy to take a brief call in this debate under urgency on the Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill in what has been a relatively civilised and dignified debate so far. This being urgency I object to that so I thought I would make a brief contribution to this particular debate.I want to pick up on a comment that the Minister of Justice made in her speech when she talked about finance company directors jumping ship and not being held accountable when the companies collapse. That is certainly the public perception and in many cases people have lost significant amounts of their money—[Interruption] It might have been someone else in the debate so I might be attributing that comment to the wrong person. OK it was Andrew Little. I accept that.Andrew Little: Andrew Little Judith Collins—it’s an easy mistake to make.CHRIS HIPKINS: That is right. But actually it does stick in the public’s throat. When people invest their money with finance companies the directors are quite happy to accept that money while the going is good and then when the proverbial hits the fan those people take the money and run. They disappear. The people who have lost their savings are left with nothing while there seem to be very few consequences for the people who have ultimately presided over that failure. That does really stick in the throats of the people at home who are investing in those companies.It is not just the finance companies that frustrate people in that area either; it is regular companies that frustrate people. For example when a construction company collapses and the directors jump ship immediately before it collapses and the subbies lose access to their tools and lose all of the payments that they are due—the directors have jumped ship and abandoned them right before that company collapses—that really sticks in people’s throats as well. What is the National Government’s approach to that? Well it has done absolutely nothing about that. It does not really seem to care about that—Andrew Little: Half of the directors are members.CHRIS HIPKINS: —because half of the directors are National members. In fact the National Party’s approach to that is to appoint those directors to State-owned enterprise boards in preparation for the privatisation of those State-owned enterprises. One of the worst examples of course is the former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley who when Mainzeal Property and Construction collapsed literally hours before it went under jumped ship. She was quite happy to take the directors’ fee when the going was good quite happy to have the status of being a director of a big construction company but the minute the proverbial hit the fan or actually before the proverbial hit the fan—right before—she jumped ship. She did not want to know about it. She took the money and ran. That is the sort of thing that really really annoys the New Zealand public.Actually it is more serious than that. When people take on these responsibilities that is exactly what they are doing—they are taking on responsibilities. Finance companies regular companies—it does not matter which they are; if people take on a responsibility and they are willing to accept the directors’ fees then they should accept the accountability that goes with that. They should not be jumping ship when the going gets tough because that is just fundamentally wrong. Too often that has happened recently. Finance companies have been the worst example. Mainzeal is another example that has been a shocker. It is happening across the board. The people at the top of the pile the people who are getting those directors’ fees should be held accountable and they should accept some responsibility for that.The Labour Party is supporting this bill through all stages today with some reluctance because although we understand the problem and we see the need to plug the gap and we do not want to see exploited this particular loophole that has been established we are very uncomfortable about the notion that a bill will be put through all stages in Parliament under urgency. I do not think that in the time I have been in Parliament 4½ years now I have attended a select committee for any bills—I have sat through some pretty turgid bills including some Statutes Amendment bills and the like which are very technical bills and generally pretty dry—where there has not been something useful that has come out of that process whether it is a very minor technical amendment or some other clarification. There can in fact always be improvements made to a bill through the select committee process.I guess the clincher for me though in agreeing that the Labour Party should support this bill through all stages is that it is very much a short-term measure and it is going to be replaced by another bill that will go through the proper process in a very short order of time—although having said that Gerry Brownlee is still in charge of the House so we do not quite know. There are no guarantees that anything will progress particularly fast while Gerry Brownlee is in charge but we live in hope. We live in hope that through the gerrymandering process something useful might finally come out at the other end. The Labour Party is supporting this legislation with some reluctance but we do agree that the loophole should be plugged.