Curran Clare: Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Curran Clare: Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 21 March 2012. Volume:678;Page:1221. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 I would like to make a few points about this bill the Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill as one of the members of the Commerce Committee who heard the submissions. As you have heard tonight Labour supports this bill. It is a good bill and I would like to commend the work of the member who originally brought this bill to the House Amy Adams and join with other colleagues across the House in commending the work that was put into it. 
It is a solid bill. It deals with some important issues. It attempts to address some real issues of concern to the public. The issue is that if you make a donation to charity it should be just that a donation to charity not to a telemarketer necessarily and that people who are donating to charity should have confidence that they are donating to that charity. 
I note the contribution from the previous member Todd McClay around the SPCA. Having just signed up two junior members to the SPCA from my own family and it being the first organisation that I ever joined at the age of about 10 I know the importance for charitable organisations to try to have people who are committed to them especially from an early age and for there to be confidence in those organisations. So it should be that any member of the public should be confident that when they actually donate to a charity they can be confident that the vast majority of that money is going to charity. That is what this bill is trying to address. 
I would like to I guess reiterate what my colleague Lianne Dalziel just said to the House earlier around the importance of that and also commend the work that she did as chair of the Commerce Committee. She is obviously very sorely missed on that committee— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: I don’t think so. 
CLARE CURRAN 
: —certainly by members on this side of the House. Actually I would say that the previous Commerce Committee was a very good committee and it dealt with some important issues. This bill that is now before the House is one of the significant members’ bills that actually came before that committee. 
I do want to reiterate what my colleagues said around the intention of the bill being good but that the mechanism did create a lot of discussion and a few headaches for the committee in terms of how to address it. We certainly acknowledged that the issue that it was meant to address was causing public concern but that the current Fair Trading Act’s provisions regarding unfair practices provided for the prohibitions on conduct but they did not include positive provisions such as the disclosure requirement that this bill proposes. That is why we had to go down the pathway of recommending that a power for the Governor-General to make regulations through an Order in Council was the mechanism that needed to be used rather than what the original bill brought before the House. 
I do just briefly want to make mention of some of the submissions because we received submissions from some very large and reputable charities on this bill and very passionate submissions—some very passionate submissions. They were passionate on both sides. Some really wanted regulations and for this issue to be addressed through a legislative mechanism and some really passionately argued for self-regulation. 
Just briefly I want to mention that the Fundraising Institute of New Zealand certainly argued in favour of the self-regulation mechanisms supported by Barnardos which is a very reputable charity. It was mentioned before by a previous speaker on the other side of the House that Arthritis New Zealand argued strongly that it was not confident that self-regulation would be successful based on its past experiences and that there was a lot of confusion around coordinating awareness days and the organisation felt that it was very difficult for self-regulation to be effective. Again on the other side of the argument there was Greenpeace New Zealand. It brought a very passionate submission to the committee which argued that although there was very good intent in this bill organisations like themselves would be disadvantaged through such legislation. So there was a lot of juggling and argument and interesting discussion amongst the committee on this issue. 
I think that what we have come up with is addressing the issue. It is acknowledging the issue. To reiterate what Lianne Dalziel said this did demonstrate the importance of the member’s bill process but there were issues with the way that the bill was drafted. I think that how the committee has addressed it did come down on balance on making this bill effective and workable and it demonstrated how a committee like the Commerce Committee can work very effectively on a good piece of legislation that is brought before it. We commend the bill to the House.