Prebble Richard: Charities Bill — First Reading 
Prebble Richard: Charities Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12115] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the ACT party to speak on the first reading of the Charities Bill. The principal purpose of the Charities Bill is to set up a new Government organisation called the Charities Commission which will register all charities and donees. [ 
Interruption 
] Having given one speech why does the Green Party member want to give another? The Charities Commission will register 37000 charities in New Zealand and it will then require all those charities to present annual returns. It will then educate those charities then provide advice to the Government. 
As has been observed in Parliament charities are an important part of our community. Charitable law goes back a very long way. The definition of a charity was established some 400 years ago and when I hear Green members saying that they have a new idea of what a charity is I am somewhat sceptical. I say to them and to the National Party that charity as understood by the community is looking after the sick looking after the poor looking after education and the promotion of religion. That is the core understanding of a charity. 
 I do not accept that the community should be financing advocacy. I am in favour of advocacy but when it is said to be charitable they are asking those who do not agree with those views to subsidise it. 
But let me turn to the essential reason that I think the Government is putting this forward. Clearly there needs to be some public confidence in charities. Public confidence in charities in New Zealand has been shaken. We have had some spectacular cases of people setting up charities and engaging in fraud. We know that. There have been cases mentioned in the newspapers. But that is not a new factor. There have been frauds for 400 years. How has this Parliament dealt with frauds in charities in the past? We have very strong law and it is very old law on how to deal with it. The Attorney-General has statutory duties to pursue corrupt charities. They are set out in section 58 of the Charitable Trusts Act. 
The Attorney-General has the power to pursue people who have taken money wrongly from charities and get it back from them. I draw it to the attention of the House that in the 4 years Margaret Wilson has been the Attorney-General she has not pursued one of those cases that members would have read about in the newspapers. Even those cases where people have been prosecuted where people have taken money and gone on overseas trips bought cars and other things for their friends relatives and girlfriends—[ 
Interruption 
] The member is referring to that particular member whose case is before the courts. The Government has not pursued that member either. I say that the idea that the Government should set up a new bill because it has not carried out its present law is wrong. 
Let me make this clear to the House. This commission is going to be a huge quango. It will have seven commissioners and they will all get paid. But if the British experience is anything to go by they will have an army of bureaucrats. There are 37000 charities. Who is going to pay? In the first instance it will be the charities themselves. If members pick up the bill they will see that there is a requirement for the commission to be sustainable. What is meant by that is that all the expenses have to be got by registration fees. At the moment 37000 charities do not have to pay a registration fee but when this bill goes through they will have to pay. This is an extra cost. Who is actually going to pay that? It will come in two ways. It will come from the public who thought they were donating money to a charity but will find that Margaret Wilson and the Labour Government have taken the money for bureaucrats and for their girls and boys they appoint to this commission. That is who will have to pay. Who will be the real losers? It will be the poor. It will be those who are not educated. It will be the sick. They will not actually receive the money because Margaret Wilson and the Labour Government think the money should be spent on bureaucrats. 
I also object to this. Margaret Wilson said to the House that this was a partnership between the Government and the community sector. The Government is the unwanted partner of the community sector. The Government takes all the credit and none of the risk. The Government imposes all the rules and pays none of the costs. It is the unwanted partner. I have not had a single charity write to me and say: “Mr Prebble I want the Labour Government to be the partner of my charity and to start imposing bureaucratic rules upon me reporting requirements that I have not been asked to pay and have not been asked for by those who donated to my charity. And I want to give the Government money for an army of bureaucrats to supervise me.” I have not received one such letter. If Margaret Wilson has received one from any charity I challenge her to table it. 
But it is a more serious problem that underlines this Government’s whole principle of Government. When we have a case of a few rogues this Government regards that as an excuse to apply penalties to the law abiding instead of holding those who break the law accountable. If Margaret Wilson had actively in a high-profile way pursued those rogues who took money from the public and then spent it on colour TVs overseas trips and the like and if she had extracted the money and bankrupted the trustees that would have done more for public confidence in charities than any other measure. The reality we all know is that of the 37000 charities in New Zealand almost the entire number of them are doing good work with no assistance from the Government. They have not asked the Government to assist them and this Government because it will not enforce old laws that previous Attorney-Generals have had no difficulty in enforcing has instead decided to impose its socialist views on charities. 
I say to the Green Party that it is not so much my concern that the Government will start to take action against advocacy groups. I am not sure whether advocacy groups are entitled to be charities. However I worry about the Government setting up a quango of this sort giving it the powers to advise the Government and then starting to mould the charitable groups to their making. I agree that it is quite extraordinary that every charity will now have to have a registration number—a sort of tattoo that will be placed on every charity and must be on every single publication they put out. We then read that if they do not do that this commission can fine the charities $2000. That is an abuse of power. 
This bill has not been asked for. It is not needed. All that is required is an Attorney-General who is prepared to carry out her real role instead of thinking that her job is to advocate for the socialist republic of Aotearoa. This is another step on her socialist agenda. The ACT party—which believes in charity believes in the concepts of charity and thinks that charities in New Zealand are doing a good job—is opposed to this bill and we will vote against it at every stage.