Webb DuncanDr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): It's with the utmost disappointment that I listened to the twaddle from the member from Epsom because—Hon Ruth Dyson: Is that to do with twerking—twaddle"?Dr DUNCAN WEBB: That's an actual word. But it's very rich coming from a member whose party pleads regulatory reform and a streamlined bureaucratic framework to say "Let's have a two-track"—twaddle track—"for these friendly societies and credits unions." What absolute rubbish. And as for his costs argument it's palpably false. He's quite right. I did go to my good friends in my former firm of Lane Neave and I said "How much would this really cost? He's saying it's going to cost 20 grand." Wrong—quite wrong. Let's be clear. As we would well know Lane Neave is an extremely high-quality expensive law firm. Gerard Dale partner—who is an expert in the area of credit unions I would add—said "Perhaps between six and at the very top 12." In the letter which I have tabled you will see it outlines a list of tasks: updating the credit union's rules registering incorporation updating the trust deed attending the members so on and so forth—all of the legal work needed to be done could be done at a very very modest cost. Here we have a member who finally deigns to turn up here at committee stage with not it must be said a huge amount of input on the bill. He's off doing what he does best—and that's saying something—and he turns up with this last-minute Supplementary Order Paper which we haven't seen hide nor hair of till the very day of committee stage. Well you know not only is it a bad idea; that's just bad process as well. It's entirely unacceptable and what we would have is another 40 sections of the Act. Sure we need to reform this Act and the reason we need to reform it is because it's outdated. So what Mr Seymour is saying is "Let's have two tracks: one shiny and new and one broken rusty outdated and not working." Well you know what? I don't want to leave credit unions in New Zealand in that situation and Mr Stuart Smith doesn't want to do that either. I congratulate him on taking the step to pull these credit unions into the 21st century because incorporation is important. It's important for a whole lot of reasons not only to give a credit union corporate personality so that it can act swiftly and decisively but also to protect those members. I think that's one thing which Mr Seymour is doing a disservice to whoever he's actually acting for there because the trustees and members of these credit unions are at risk. They take on liabilities and the liabilities of a trustee are personal. Once we have an incorporated framework we have a limited liability entity. That limited liability entity acts as a shield for the good-faith conduct of the officers of that credit union—David Seymour: Well then they can choose to incorporate. Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —and that's important. You know that's important and if you'd taken a moment to think about it Mr Seymour you wouldn't be doing what you're doing now and having this half-baked idea in the House. You could've made your arguments in this kind of detail in another forum. The CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Order! Don't bring me into this debate thank you. Dr DUNCAN WEBB: I apologise Madam Chair. Mr Seymour could have brought this to select committee in the kind of detail he has now had a robust argument and lost it there instead of troubling this committee with it. So this Supplementary Order Paper 40 is deeply flawed. It's ill-conceived it's delivered late and it's entirely poorly founded. The bill itself is of great merit and I commend it to this committee."