Dowie Sarah: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDowie Sarah: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 12 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5725. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you very much for this opportunity to rise in support of the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill and what an empowering piece of legislation it is. I would like to start in the same vein as the Hon Nick Smith and acknowledge the work that the associated churches do. Whether you are Christian or not their work in the ministry and bringing people together and engaging in their community is admirable and it deserves commendation.As we have heard this bill is a tidy-up bill. The existing legislation is terribly old and is not a vehicle that is fit for purpose for the associated churches. It is out of date it has old language and basically the churches cannot manage their resources appropriately in this modern-day world. They are more than just a venue—churches—albeit that churches still have a place in our communities as a venue but they need to be able to deal with their resources appropriately in order to deal with the programmes that they have with regard to helping youth to engage in communities and to engage with people to make them feel hopefully more loved and more integral in a community that can sometimes be quite a lonely place when you live in an age of TVs the internet and things like that and you just crave some human contact. This bill will dissolve the old board and transfer the property to the new board. As part of that the bill gives the board the power to use its resources appropriately and enrich communities.There is an associated church in Invercargill which is the Freedom Community Centre in the Glengarry area. The building is well known and plays an integral part in the Glengarry-Richmond community. I too praise the work of the trustees at that church in building a community and enriching the lives of children mothers and fathers and the elderly. It is integral in that community and has done some extremely good work.As for matters that will not be affected—although the bill provides for the dissolution of the old board and transfer of its property the obligations to the new board are not to be treated as placing a person in breach of or default under any contract or in breach of any trust and are not to be treated as entitling a person to terminate cancel or modify any contract. So these are administrative things that will not occur. The transfer will not entitle a person to enforce or accelerate the performance of any obligation of an existing contract require the performance of an obligation not otherwise arising for performance—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Can I remind the member that just reading the bill out is not actually debating it—OK? Thank you.SARAH DOWIE: Back to the purpose of the bill anyway—it is to enrich the lives of people through the vehicle of the new bill to allow the trustees to deal with their property more appropriately and to invest in activities that are not just at the venue of the church.So with regard to that I think this is going to be an excellent bill given that the previous Act is old. They need this vehicle to make the change to move on into the 21st century in dealing with their property. We support this bill. With regard to the Freedom Community Centre in Invercargill I know it will be very pleased to have this in place. I commend this bill to the House.