Genter Julie Anne: Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 03 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19248. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green):I rise to speak on the second reading of the Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill. When this bill was introduced in the House the Green Party did not vote to support it. We had significant concerns and we said that we would be watching carefully during the select committee process. Even though there were things that we initially thought were good—for example we thought requiring large charities to comply with standard audits was quite good to bring those in line with other organisations—generally our concern was that this bill was part of an overall movement towards less regulation in a sector where it is absolutely critical that we do have good standards and careful regulation. Particularly in the wake of the global financial crisis I think it is absolutely critical that citizens of New Zealand and investors can feel confident that the people conducting audits and financial reporting are complying to an absolute maximal standard. We have to have confidence in the reporting that is being done.Ultimately the changes that the bill makes are minor enough that we will be supporting them. Unlike other jurisdictions in the world New Zealand is very light on regulation on the spectrum of regulation in this sector. We rely on self-regulation and this bill does nothing to take us towards a more standard and centralised type of regulation that might be beneficial. The Green Party would like to investigate the merits of that particularly in the wake of the global financial crisis. I think it would be worth looking at but ultimately that was beyond the scope of this bill. The minor changes that are made within it I think make minor improvements so we have to support them.The changes ultimately around the definitions of “qualified auditor” and “qualified statutory accountant” make sense. It does continue this type of regulation which is ultimately self-regulation and there are going to be accredited bodies that are able to register people as qualified auditors and qualified statutory accountants. Obviously there is a merger of the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants with its Australian counterpart the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. We never really saw any major problems with that. All of the members of both organisations did support it so I think it does make sense to allow for that to happen. The changes in terms of approval of overseas auditors again make sense. We hope that the Registrar of Companies will be carefully scrutinising when they approve overseas individuals to act as qualified auditors in New Zealand and approve associations of accountants. I think that is something that I guess we will just have to keep our eye on to see how it is working once the legislation comes into force. Of course it is entirely possible that there will need to be some changes in the future.As I said initially we always did support the fact that there were provisions regarding the Charities Act and we think that there are some benefits to doing that. Ultimately what the Green Party wants to see is a progressive economy that is going to look after people in New Zealand in the short term and in the long term. We cannot have an ideological approach that all regulation is bad. There is an important role for the State to play in rectifying market distortions in upholding standards and in ensuring that consumers are protected because we do not live in a world of pure and perfect information on markets. There is an important role for the State to play in regulating that. Particularly I think we need to be looking towards making changes in these sectors that are going to allow us to meet some of the greatest challenges that we are going to be facing over the next few decades.Even though this is the Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill I think that it is absolutely essential in all areas of financial reporting that we start moving towards having a more holistic type of reporting that actually looks at the impact on people and the environment because ultimately that is what the economy is here to serve. The economy is here to serve people and we cannot have an economy if we do not have a healthy environment. If all we look at is the dollars and cents we are quite possibly going to miss out on changes that would actually leave us all better off in the long run. So it is a core component of Green Party economic and finance policy that we be very careful about what we measure and what we count and that we do start to move our economy on to a more sustainable path to meet the challenge of climate change which is incredibly urgent and is going to require action from all of us—all companies all citizens. It is the Government’s role to show leadership on this and the Green Party would like to see more leadership from this Government. Thank you.