Webb DuncanDr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): This is a much-needed bill and for a number of reasons. First of all there is the danger of captive liquidators who essentially do the bidding of the former owners and directors of firms. What this bill does is twofold. Not only does it have a licensing regime which means that liquidators will now have to pass a fit and proper person test and have the appropriate qualifications for the task but it also requires as a matter of law for liquidators and insolvency practitioners to report director wrongdoing. So in those kinds of situations where the liquidator sees something going wrong—looks back and sees that perhaps a director has failed to account for company funds or has operated in a position where the company was clearly insolvent or any of the other things set out in clause 71 of the bill here—then there will be an obligation to report that and what will then happen is action will be able to be taken. This is really important because this is not about protecting the insolvent company or its owners; it's actually about protecting creditors and those creditors are ordinary folks plasterers painters building contractors and anyone else who the company has run up a debt with. So what we have here is an integrity requirement that a liquidator brings to any liquidation a proper and reasonable and fair approach so that where there are claims that can be made because it has to be said that some liquidators are a little too focused at times on their liquidator's fees and seeing that they get the best return on the hours they put in whereas in many cases there is hard work to be done—hard investigative work and sometimes hard litigation management work. But that's work that really should be done because the creditors do not each and of themselves have the resources to do that. Certainly in my own practice I've come across situations where liquidators have been appointed by a company director who's put his or her own company into liquidation and they're more or less mates. The liquidator is in the pocket of the shareholder and in that kind of situation it is a wrong in and of itself but it's a wrong that's very hard to chase down. So one of the things with professional bodies and accredited bodies being able to accredit liquidators is it'll make sure that people who are either poorly qualified but also not sufficiently independent who don't have an appropriate professional background and who don't understand the very significant task before them won't be appointed as liquidators. The other thing that this bill also does—which is very important—is it brings liquidators very clearly within the purview of the courts. Now whilst an application can be made in courts under the existing framework this makes the manner in which that can be done a lot clearer it makes the powers of the courts a lot clearer and it makes the obligations of liquidators and other insolvency practitioners a lot clearer as well. That is a very important step because with anything that's done outside judicial scrutiny things can go wrong. Of course the other thing that must go on here is that there must be an appropriate report given by the liquidator at the end of any liquidation. So for that reason I commend this bill to the House.