Young Jonathan: Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeYoung Jonathan: Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 03 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19246. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth):It is a pleasure to stand and speak at the second reading of the Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill. Just following on from the previous speaker David Clark I am glad that he has finally got what this is all about. He was quite a feisty contributor in the Commerce Committee before he was demoted and went to the Finance and Expenditure Committee.Yes this bill achieves many things. One of the things that it does is create I guess an ability for New Zealand and Australian institutes to work together in a common organisation Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand. In fact I went just the other night to its brand launch and no doubt it will be thrilled to see that the second reading is happening this week. On its website just to give a little bit of a look at where this is all heading it says: “In the same way there are many different types of doctors and lawyers the same is true of accountants.” They are not just people who count things; they are people who can investigate analyse and recommend. They become the sort of people who help our companies and our investors to make some pretty solid decisions. Some people think that accountancy is boring but in fact it is not. It is very dynamic and it enables people to make some great—Hon Maurice Williamson: Ha ha!JONATHAN YOUNG: I see one of my colleagues here is probably not in full agreement with that but it is very much part and parcel of a very strong economy going forward.One of the things the previous speaker mentioned was the cost of compliance. If he was on the Commerce Committee at that point in time he will remember in respect of the Financial Reporting Act that particularly around charities we determined that there were different levels of reporting needed because if a charity had an income of less than $140000 a full-blown audit was too high a percentage of its cost. So instead of having an accrual-based accounting system we are looking at it as a cash-flow - based system. Likewise in this bill when charities are brought into the audit realm for a charity that has expenditure under $500000 it would have a review as opposed to an audit. Then it would have to have expenditure of $500000 for 2 years in a row to qualify to go up. When I say the member understands it he understands that what we are trying to do is require a higher level of compliance where there are higher levels of risk to contributors to investors to donors etc. so that is what is happening.It has been an interesting process as we have gone through the select committee consideration. As the Minister of Commerce mentioned there were a few additions and amendments to what we did but by and large they were quite small. I think this is quite an exciting—if I can say that about accountancy—step forward for our accountancy firms and our financial advisers out there and they are all very keen for this process to go through in a very timely way.As I wrap up in the next minute the main purpose of this bill is to allow the accounting and audit industry to be more efficient and effective. That seems to be a call right across every sector of our economy—that people are more efficient and more effective. We know that that drives down costs to consumers. We know that that is a great thing to happen. The principal amendments proposed in this bill would amend the rules as to who may perform statutory audits to replace references in legislation to “chartered accountant” with “qualified statutory accountant” or “qualified auditor” allow audit firms to incorporate introduce a requirement for the independent assurance of the financial statements of large and medium sized charities and allow the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants to enter into an arrangement with its Australian counterpart the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia to form in effect a trans-Tasman institute of as they say around 100000 members. I am very pleased to commend this bill to the House.