Curran Clare: Insolvency Practitioners Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionCurran Clare: Insolvency Practitioners Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 07 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14524. Text is subject to correction.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): There is no doubt that everyone in this House would agree that it is important to have people providing corporate insolvency services who can be trusted. We have provisions and legislation to ensure that the appointment of people who are providing other important services—such as legal services accountancy services and certain financial services—has a body of legislation underpinning it. So it is with those people who provide insolvency services. We need to ensure that we have measures in place and not act as the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff trying to patch up a situation that has gone bad. We need to actually have some preventative measures in place to ensure that the people providing these services are of good character and of the appropriate skills and that there are regulations and rules in place to ensure that this happens.That is what the Insolvency Practitioners Bill is about and it is critical legislation. One of the reasons it is critical legislation is that there are so many insolvencieshappening in this country. I think that is another point that is worth noting as context to this piece of legislation because the supposedly wonderful economic environment in which we are operating is actually exposed as somewhat of a fallacy when you look at the number of insolvencies in New Zealand since 2008. They have actually increased dramatically under this Government. Therefore having a piece of legislation in place to ensure that we have got an appropriate insolvency regime is even more critical.Before I get into the substance of this bill and actually what changed in the Commerce Committee it is important to note how long it has taken for this piece of legislation to get to this point in the House. It is another example of important legislation particularly in the commerce area that has been languishing on our books for far too long.This bill was first introduced on 27 April 2010. Its first reading was on 24 August 2010. The select committee reported back after doing very good work on 9 May 2011. But the bill’s second reading was first started on 26 September 2013. Today it is—what is it? The seventh?Dr Rajen Prasad: 7 November.CLARE CURRAN: It is 7 November and we are back into the second reading. That is 3 years. That is an extraordinary amount of time for a piece of legislation like this—particularly as I said in that environment where there have been so many insolvencies—to come back to the House.Our view is that this is just one of many bills that have not made it through all of their readings in the House in this commerce area particularly bills around consumer legislation of which this is one. This fits in with the stable of consumer protection laws that are just not being taken seriously enough by this Government. I do want to make that point in a very serious manner. I do hope that those on the other side of the House are paying attention to that.The other point that needs to be made is that the bill that has come back to this House is quite different from the bill that was actually originally introduced. There are some very good reasons for that. It is important to just outline what the reasons were. The bill when it was originally introduced proposed a negative licensing regime for insolvency practitioners—essentially a blacklist. So if you were a dodgy insolvency practitioner—never you Mr Deputy Speaker. That was a much wider sort of concept of the—Carol Beaumont: More like Jonathan Young was perhaps.CLARE CURRAN: No no no—I would not like to cast aspersions on anyone in this House and certainly not you Mr Deputy Speaker being a person of high integrity and all that. But hypothetically speaking if there did happen to be a dodgy practitioner in the area of insolvency then this bill would have created what is called a negative licensing regime for liquidators receivers and voluntary administrators who did not meet the required standard of competence. They then would have been banned or placed under supervision. That sounds like a sensible set of measures. That would have empowered the Registrar of Companies to maintain a publicly accessible electronic register of people who have been banned or placed under supervision.On the face of it that seemed like the sensible approach to take but as soon as this Insolvency Practitioners Bill got before the Commerce Committee there was a range of submissions and in-depth discussion which both sides of that committee took part in. There was robust discussion and it was constructive discussion. Ultimately that report has come back and this is where the legislation is at. It has been found that it would be much more preferable to prevent practitioners. So “prevent” is the important word here Mr Deputy Speaker just in case you are interested. It would prevent those practitioners who would be restricted or prohibited from providing a corporate solvency service before they undertake those insolvency duties. So they actually have to be certified asbeing of good character as having the required skills and as being appropriate to act and to provide insolvency services before they actually offer those services instead of waiting for the damage to be done.So it is a proactive set of measures as opposed to a reactive set of measures. That makes a lot more sense and I think everybody pretty much agreed with that. That is why Labour is supporting this bill. But I want to make the point that that work—and it is important to make this point because a lot of the good work of this Parliament does go on in select committees. There are times when much better laws get made because there is robust and constructive discussion amongst all parties. It would be great if those sorts of processes were on display more to the public. I note that there is a trial being undertaken at the moment in our Parliament in two of our select committees where the workings of those select committees are being webcast to the public.I fully support that as one of the members who has advocated for that along with actually my Green counterpart Gareth Hughes and National counterpart Nikki Kaye. We advocated for there to be more public viewing of select committee processes. This is one that may not seem to be a sexy piece of legislation that is being negotiated but this is one example where the public would have been able to see how some of that good work is being done in the select committee.We certainly support this legislation. We note that it has been rewritten pretty much at the select committee. We also note and criticise quite strongly the length of time that it has taken to come back to this House and hope that it will proceed with some rapidity through its final stages. We certainly think that the legislation has merit that it needs to get passed into law and that it needs to be put into practice.