Jones Shane: Financial Reporting Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeJones Shane: Financial Reporting Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 19 November 2013. Volume:695;Page:14987. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon SHANE JONES (Labour): Tēnā koe. Because members on this side of the House are absolutely convinced of the merit of reducing compliance costs and our rhetoric unlike that of the other side of the House is not inversely related to reality it is a pleasure to stand and support the Financial Reporting Bill. Why should we support it? Because it is premised on the notion that there should be discretion.Those entities that have shareholders seeking to opt out of unnecessarily onerous compliance arrangements should be able to make that choice. However for those that are of a size where systemic damage might flow or where significant impacts would negatively fall on the country’s reputation or indeed on the reputation of our commercial sector there is a range of arrangements and compliance obligations that should be adhered to.I was wondering though whether we can use this bill in relation to as my colleague said earlier the defective Chorus deal. I think you can illuminate dry legal text by looking at a real case example. We have a case with this particular company where disclosure of an adequate nature probably was not made when the company entered into the defective deal conjured up by the Associate Minister of Finance Steven Joyce. It actually took Sue Chetwin and a host of activists in the information and communications technology sector to actually point out that a company known as Chorus failed to fully disclose that the equation it was using to cover the costs of the broadband infrastructure roll-out was deeply flawed.As a consequence the Minister who negotiated that flawed defective deal with Chorus—and it was worsened by the Prime Minister saying that it was technically insolvent or words to that effect. An outrageous statement. I wonder whether those members will themselves show any responsibility in terms of a financial reporting stance which they might reject given that 40 percent—a catastrophic failure—of the equity value of that entity has gone down the proverbial.So there is an example where those people who sit on the various risk and audit committees and lord it over the rest of New Zealand have failed actually to meet the existing set of regulations. So I shudder to think how on earth they are going to copewith this enhanced set of regulations because we have all learnt that when you have poor transparency and poor compliance with reporting provisions—as we saw with South Canterbury Finance and a host of other financial companies that soon became political calamities—people lose dough.So I think an area where the Financial Reporting Bill perhaps could have gone a bit further was its treatment of overseas-owned entities in New Zealand. I look forward to hearing the speech from my colleague fromŌtepoti—Dunedin—where I was yesterday spreading pixie dust on behalf of my great party with the chief executive officers of the various ports of New Zealand convincing them that—well that is another matter which is really electoral victory. I will just pass by that for the moment so I can return to the bill. But I look forward to my colleague talking about how this bill could perhaps enhance and improve the accountabilities that should be sheeted home to the banks currently owned by foreigners and a host of others—largely the insurance companies—but taihoa help is on the way in that regard. And the power companies as we speak disappear further down into the deep foreign pockets of the owners that are buying as we ensure the wheels of democracy grind on adequately tonight.I think that the public needs to realise that when we are dealing with this bill we are not talking only about requirements to account to the existing shareholders but we are also talking about the entities operating in our country and not necessarily owned by our countrymen and countrywomen. If there is an area where there is a glaring omission it lies in the space of whether or not those foreign-owned entities are paying their way. Are they paying their way or are they fleecing our system our taxpayers and indeed in some cases New Zealand employees? And are they running a double set of accounts—a set of economic accounts that sits on their bench table overseas?