Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): I apologise to Mr Nash. That is twice I have pipped him at the post. Sorry about that.Again I thought I would take just a brief call to address some of what has come up in the spirit of a constructive and open debate and also to speak briefly to the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that I have tabled to get on the record what that covers. It is interesting that the last few calls in the debate since I took my last call have talked to some of the very complexities that I talked about in my first call. So while the first few calls sort of said Why didn't this happen sooner?" we have then had some very thoughtful calls from Mr Nash Mr Parker and Mr Tirikatene actually talking about some of those very complex issues that are really difficult and that have to be worked through in some detail.I was really grateful that the Law and Order Committee did spend a bit of time on the issue of privileged communication and legal professional privilege because it is one that the officials and I debated at some length over a long period of time. Obviously I have a legal background myself. I am very aware of the importance of the extent and the criticality of legal professional privilege but at the same time this is a system that relies on suspicious activity being flagged and reported through and getting that balance right between saying "If you see something that's clearly untoward we need you to say something for the good of the country." versus "We can't destroy the system of privilege that is critical to the operation of the legal system." is a hard one. I do not pretend that it is an easy resolution.This is one of those—I do not like to say "rare" but potentially rare situations where Ministers really do hope the select committee will add a lot of value in teasing and testing that out with submitters in a way that I think adds real value to the bill. I think as I said in my opening remarks the position that the select committee has left it in is as good a position as we can hope to get it in and I say that in a slightly caged way because of course in time we might find that there are situations where we have to be tougher—speaking to Mr Tirikatene's point. It is not always going to be easy to identify exactly what it is and draw a fixed line in the sand. But our job as legislators is to try to anticipate and design a framework that is as good a balance between critically important and very complex objectives as we can get it.I want to just respond to Mr Parker's point around new section 43(1)(e) in clause 18 and the width of the Crimes Act within that. Of course we have to bear in context what that clause requires to be done which is—well actually it does not require it but it says that the auditor may report indications of criminal behaviour. Of course any of us at any point in time about any legislation have the ability to report it to the police if we think there has been criminal behaviour. Often there are debates making it very clear that we think that that should be the case and that is certainly the case here.In the context of this the reason it is important in the anti - money-laundering context is the necessity of identifying the predicate offence and the predicate offence is more often than not a critical part of proving and identifying that whole money-laundering framework. It does not in and of itself go beyond what an auditor could do in many situations in any event but what it does make very clear is that if there is identifying predicate offence behaviour that they are concerned about then there is a very clear pathway to report it through to the Commissioner of Police. Again I know that that is something that the select committee will have looked at very carefully in that context of privileged communications and of identifying where we set that framework so that we do enable genuine good-faith indications of behaviour that is of concern while protecting the privileged communications that many business activities rely on.The final point that I wanted to make in this contribution is just as I said in reference to SOP 352 which I have tabled and I have circulated to all parties and I hope they have had an opportunity to look at it. Parties will be aware that most of the changes in that SOP are very technical drafting cross-referencing checks that the Parliamentary Counsel Office picked up after the revision-tracked version came back. I do not think there should be any concern; I have not heard of any.The one change that I have made that is of some substance to the select committee position—which I flagged in my second reading speech yesterday—is simply the change to make it clear that for a law firm or an accountancy firm that operates in a partnership there is not an expectation or a requirement that every single partner should have to report as an individual entity. For tax purposes accounting and law partnerships operate as a collective and are recognised as such and deal in that way. I think there is some real benefit in that because it means each partner remains liable for the behaviours of others and that oversight of other partners—because they know they are liable for what you do—believe me is a very real safeguard on proper behaviour. From a compliance perspective—again to Mr Tirikatene's point—we want to make sure that these things do work as smoothly as possible and in my view it does not make sense to say that every single partner needs to report in their own regard or needs to be an individual reporting entity.So I am recommending in the SOP that we reinstate that provision of the bill as drafted which makes it clear that when a professional partnership is formed and is operating as a single entity although not a legal person in the strict legal definition—as the lawyers in the room will know—it does make sense for this purpose to recognise it as a single reporting entity. With those few comments I hope the Committee will move to support the bill."