Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am delighted to speak at this stage of the Charities Amendment Bill and can I say to the member who has just resumed his seat Paul Foster-Bell that I cannot imagine a bill or a Labour speaker less likely to deserve such a nasty little quip from that member. Sometimes you need to rise above that sort of behaviour. Poto Williams does not know how to be offensive to people. She never is. This bill was the subject of I think a robust consideration by all members of the Government Administration Committee. For it to come back to this House and get a nasty little jibe like that is I think unwarranted. I think the member might want to reprioritise his unpleasant quips for something that is more deserved. There was only one part in this bill that caused contention and that was amending section 61 of the Charities Act 2005 and as both members who have just resumed their seats mentioned this bill was originally part of a statutes amendment bill and was taken out at the select committee because of the objections of the Labour members and the Green members to it being included. Statutes amendment bills are meant to have just a small number of alterations to any Act. Those alterations are meant to be non-controversial. There should not be anybody getting upset about them. There should be no controversy at all about them. They should not make any policy changes. That way they are entitled to be in a statutes amendment bill. But if one single member of this House disagrees with the inclusion of a provision in a statutes amendment bill then it does not proceed and that was the situation with this.However we agreed that—and I think it was a mark of goodwill towards Minister Goodhew actually who had signed this off to go in a statutes amendment bill—instead of just throwing it out we would progress it as a separate piece of legislation and enable it to proceed. What we did not suspect though was that the Minister would use that as an opportunity to reinsert section 61 back into this bill. It is the very section that caused the controversy which caused the submitters to come to our committee and say that it was not the policy intention originally and it will take away their right to appeal a decision that they believed they had. So that is why we decided we would remove it from the bill—because that was not meant to be the intention of it. I think from Paul Foster-Bell's contribution just now that the intention of Minister Jo Goodhew is to put section 61 back into this bill during the Committee stage. I think that would be a really serious breach of the faith that we had in the process and the goodwill that we showed towards the Minister by not just chucking out all this stuff in the first place which we could have done given as I outlined before the provisions of a statutes amendment bill. We decided not to use our ability to trip the Minister up—tempting though it may be—because that is not the way that parliamentarians should behave. To go back to the intent of the rest of the bill—because as I say that was one section only that caused the controversy—the rest was completely in order and we support it. So a person cannot be an officer of a charitable entity if they have been convicted of tax evasion or a similar offence under the Tax Administration Act 1994. To apply for an application for registration as a charitable entity—that can be treated as withdrawn if the applicant refuses or does not respond to a request for information or another notice from the chief executive. The third point was to correct a 2012 drafting error. So those four clauses of the Charities Amendment Bill originally formed Part 3 of the Statutes Amendment Bill. Can I just comment on the tone of the submitters we had—all of who were focused around section 61 and in opposition to it. Instead of having the organisations led by Huia E! Community Aotearoa and its lawyer Sue Barker coming along to the committee participating in constructive engagement which is what you normally get with a select committee it was very clear that those organisations were feeling quite abused and quite battered by their disengagement from the Government. They were not feeling at all as if they had the ear of the Minister or support from the backbenches or any engagement at all—Hon Jo Goodhew: It was not what they told me yesterday. It was a different story when they talked to me yesterday. Hon RUTH DYSON: Oh the Minister has woken up at last. Well I know what the select committee was told Minister. You can ask your colleagues and we will see whether they want to be upfront—Hon Jo Goodhew: I'm just talking about what they told me yesterday.Hon RUTH DYSON: Well they might be scared that they will lose yet another contract.Hon Jo Goodhew: I'm very scary aren't I?Hon RUTH DYSON: Well let us not go down that path. Let us not go down that path; that would be very tempting. Your colleagues are all tempted to make a contribution here. I think that if they are looking for that spot in Cabinet that is coming available early next year they would be wise not to comment and not to respond to that question from Minister Jo Goodhew. The submitters all said that they felt disengaged that they were not given any respect from the Government and that they were treated as if they were a contractual arrangement if they were providing services rather than a genuine partner in trying to progress the issues they care about. The other charities in addition to Huia E! Community Aotearoa and Sue Barker who made presentations were really appalled that they had been given no notification at all by either the department or the Minister about the proposed change. It was only through the eagle eye of Huia E! Community Aotearoa during the Statutes Amendment Bill that this was drawn to its attention. It felt cheated. It felt as if further costs were being imposed on it—that its rights as it interprets the law were being taken away from it and it was pretty scathing of the whole process actually. I think that all of the members of the committee felt pretty disappointed that those in the charitable and voluntary sector who made those submissions were in that state. We have always regarded ourselves—as New Zealanders—as respecting of volunteers as respecting of charitable organisations and as those who ensure that as you look across the spectrum of people who do stuff in our community you recognise the paid workers and you recognise the unpaid workers and the organisations they are part of with the same level of respect. That is certainly no longer the case under this Government. The other thing that is obvious is that the National members are becoming more and more sensitive to criticism and more and more likely to push back against organisations that raise questions or challenges. I do not think that is a healthy way for a genuine partnership to be maintained. There is a lot of power in a ministerial role and if that power is not used responsibly then we will have organisations that are scared to speak up scared to criticise and scared to raise concerns because they know that their contracts will be vulnerable. They know that they will be targeted in future through a quiet word from the Minister to the department and suddenly they will be out of work. Suddenly they will lose their contract. This should not be the situation. In our country we should not have any organisation that is scared of a Minister and scared to speak up and raise concerns. What sort of democracy is that when we have a situation where people are cowered because of anxiety about ramifications of raising issues? It felt a bit like a war. It felt a bit like the sector was saying these increased costs—the Policing (Cost Recovery) Amendment Bill was one such issue that was raised with us—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of the bill.Hon RUTH DYSON: —as part of the sector feeling overburdened by the current regime. With this bill even though the sector supported the other parts the resentment towards having what they saw as their legal right—and we agreed with them—taken away without any discussion with them and without any notification caused offence. I will be very disappointed if the National Government does decide to reinsert section 61. The department told us that there was a serious disagreement about the interpretation. That does not justify a change going into the Statutes Amendment Bill and the Minister has been around this place long enough to know that. This is not an opportunity to put things on a train that is passing by just because it is convenient. We should be very protective of the ability we have to change things in a statutes amendment bill as long as it complies with the law. We support the rest of this bill. I hope we are still able to support it through the next stages of the House—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry. The member's time has expired.