Radhakrishnan Priyanca; Rurawhe AdrianPRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. I rise with great delight as an Auckland MP to take a call on the Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Amendment Bill which is quite a mouthful but is actually as members previously have said a technical bill that makes a tweak. Now many of us come to this House to pass or to see the passing of sort of bold ambitious progressive legislation—sometimes quite controversial. But also equally the other role that this House plays is to make sure that legislation as and when is required is tidied up so that legislation is accessible to members of the public and also so that legislation actually makes life a little bit easier for people and doesn't complicate things for them. And this bill falls into that latter category but that doesn't make it any less important to the people whose lives it does affect.So what this piece of legislation once passed would actually do is remove the requirement that specified amenities prepare financial statements in accordance with what's actually two different sets of rules as it were—so not in accordance with the New Zealand International Financial Reporting Standards—and to allow specified amenities to prepare just a single set of financial statements that comply with generally accepted accounting practice.Now at this point I just want to go into a little bit of detail because it hasn't been traversed tonight previously. Often when we launch into our viewpoints on a piece of legislation we do get questions from those who do watch us speak to these bills asking us questions about some of the more detailed aspects of it. For example in this bill not a lot of people realise what specified amenities are. So now what this bill does is amend the Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Act 2008. Under that piece of legislation there was basically a particular board that was established as a result of that principal Act and that was the Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Board which incidentally was also a submitter to this bill which makes sense because they're significantly affected by this. Anyway that board—in accordance with the Act Auckland Council pays a levy that the board then disburses to nine specified amenities and those are essentially the organisations that are at the heart of what we're discussing here today.They are the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra New Zealand Opera Auckland Theatre Co. Auckland Arts Festival and as my colleague Michael Wood mentioned previously Stardome Observatory and Planetarium that I like to think lies between his electorate of Mt Roskill and the Maungakiekie electorate that I'm based in and is a beautiful place as he mentioned as well—and of course Coast Guard Northern Region Surf Lifesaving Northern Region Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust and WaterSafe Auckland. So if you were to look at this this is basically a range of organisations that deliver some really important services to what is essentially the largest city in New Zealand and an incredibly diverse one. These are organisations that deliver arts culture recreational heritage rescue and other safety-focused facilities and services to the entire Auckland region.Now I looked at some of the submissions that came through on the bill—and actually before I go there I might just traverse some of the recommendations of the proposed amendments that came through the select committee. This of course is a second reading. And so also at this point I just want to acknowledge all those who submitted on this bill took the trouble to do so—some of them were very substantive submissions as well and made some really interesting points. Two proposed amendments substantive amendments—one of course was around the clarity of the commencement date and that came through from one of the submitters as well. Basically there was a call to make some of the transitional provisions in this bill clearer because the bill as introduced doesn't actually state when the proposed changes would come into effect. And that would be important to the organisations that are affected by this because they would want to know if there are transitional provisions how those come into effect. And so the recommendation by the select committee that considered this bill was to set out transitional provisions in Schedule 1AA. Now the second point is one that I will come back to in a little bit more detail but basically this is a retrospective bill. It fixes an anomaly that came into effect in 2015 because really the Government of the day didn't have the foresight then to see that what they were doing then was going to cause this problem for a number of organisations—and I will come back to that because it's actually laid out very well by one of the submitters as well. So the External Reporting Board's submission was one that I found really interesting. It was quite substantive and it lays out very clearly what the crux of the problem is. They have said We understand that the specified amenities in the Auckland region within the scope of the Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Board are all registered charities and therefore already subject to the financial reporting requirements in section 42A of the Charities Act 2005. The Charities Act establishes requirements for charities to report in accordance with [generally accepted accounting practice] (GAAP)" which is a different financial standard as I understand and one that is actually being used a lot more than the older standard that previously these organisations were required to report to." Going back to the quote "or in the case of smaller charities to report in accordance with a non GAAP standard issued by" from this particular board that was submitting. And they go on to then basically say that a registered charity that determines it's a tier 1 a tier 2 public benefit entity. That's actually the crux of the matter here because the two different reporting standards one was actually more for profitable entities and these organisations—the nine that I outlined previously—aren't. They're not-for-profit entities and therefore shouldn't be subject to that same reporting standard as well. So anyway I thought that particular submission laid out the issues really well.Now going on to the submission and to the points that I wanted to go into in a little bit more detail. That was the board the Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Board which of course is the one that disperses the levy from the council. Now they said "Amendments made to the Charities Act that came into force in 2015 resulted in the specified amenities having to produce financial statements according to both the New Zealand International Financial Reporting Standards and GAAP." So that was a little bit unfair because these organisations—already not-for-profit generally already struggling with compliance—had to then comply with these two completely different and often conflicting standards as well. And this as they've said places unnecessary burden and cost on those specified amenities.I spent a number of years working in the community and voluntary sector running an organisation that wasn't quite within I guess the ambit of what these nine organisations provide but similar in the sense that you know you're struggling you've got to—one not you—one has to apply for funding one has to comply with often a number of different reporting requirements auditing requirements. And any requirement or any burden that we can lessen for these organisations is a really good thing. It then also takes away the burden from the people who work for these organisations as well. And essentially that's what this bill does.But the final point that I wanted to make is that at the end of the day this is a bill that fixes a mess that the previous National Government created. And that seems to be a little bit of a trend because that's what this Government is doing as well. We've inherited a mess across a number of sectors and that's what for example our infrastructure funding spending is aiming to fix. So a little bit of a change here—a bit of a mess not a lot of foresight and now we're going to go about having to fix that. And in the interim it was unfortunately those non-profit organisations that had to bear the brunt of what was a lack of thought a lack of foresight by the previous National Government. But this bill all said and done fixes an anomaly. It's a good thing for a number of organisations and a number of people and I'd like to commend it to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Chris Penk—five minutes."