Street Maryan: Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Bill — Second Reading 
Street Maryan: Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6894] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to take a call on the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Bill. My colleague Pete Hodgson has put to the House quite eloquently some of the difficulties in the process around this bill and I want to allude to some of those myself. The bill as it arrived at the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee had a number of very substantial problems with it not least the definition of “politically exposed person” in the legislation. But with a decent amount of goodwill in the select committee we were able to work to make improvements. John Hayes as chair of the select committee was keen to do what the Minister of Justice required and took with some equanimity our grumbles at the kind of pace that we had to move it at and I compliment him on that. It is a shame that that had to be the case.  
There has been some opinion expressed that this bill should have been in place some time ago under the Labour Government’s watch. This was a work in progress. When the bill first emerged in its draft concept it was taken up by my colleague the then Minister Clayton Cosgrove because he had particular responsibility for small business. His special concern was that the compliance costs for small businesses would be so great that the bill would be onerous and extremely difficult for small businesses to comply with it. As Associate Minister of Justice he also took up the role in much the same way as the current Minister of Justice Simon Power is now doing. But he required that a regulatory impact statement be made and that was the point at which some of the work then had to slow down because the regulatory impact statement was insufficient. The bill that appeared before the select committee was also insufficient.  
I also believe that the Government has been panicked into addressing this issue in a way that did not give the select committee the dignity of an appropriate amount of time to consider the legislation given the huge defects in it. However the select committee did take that time by working out of hours and working extremely hard to meet a timetable that the Minister of Justice was not required to impose on the select committee. The fact that the Financial Action Task Force was due to do a report on New Zealand’s compliance with anti - money-laundering requirements was certainly a prompt and I acknowledge that. But the bill did not have to be rushed in that way resulting in an inadequate piece of legislation that required a major overhaul. There would not be one person on the select committee who does not agree that what the select committee did was a major overhaul of significant provisions of this legislation. That overhaul would not have been necessary if we had not been under considerable pressure from the Minister who himself clearly was panicked by the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force.  
One of the things we did quite successfully was to take one of the completely unworkable bits out of the legislation which I think John Hayes referred to earlier in his speech this afternoon and it was about the definition of “politically exposed person”. In the original legislation there were domestic politically exposed persons as well as foreign politically exposed persons. The truth of the matter is that there are already in existence databases that retain information about people who have caused financial institutions or casinos for example anxiety about exactly where their money has come from. That anxiety is alleviated by those huge databases that in fact the financial institutions and banks in particular compete for. To have domestic politically exposed persons added a layer of complexity that was completely unnecessary given some of the data that already exists and is already available to financial institutions. The problem that existed in the legislation as it came to the select committee—that a bank would not know from the moment that a person walked through the door that that person whose name was different from the Prime Minister’s was related to him—was taken away. That is an improvement that has been made. I think also that that will be something we will return to when it comes to the Committee of the whole House stage of this bill. In the meantime this bill could have been introduced at the beginning of this year.  
A question remains that the Minister of Justice needs to answer and it is why there was this slip and why the eye was taken off the ball with this bill as I think one of my colleagues characterised it earlier. The legislation had real problems. I think everybody on the select committee would acknowledge the work that my colleague Pete Hodgson did. I also pay tribute to the officials and the way they worked with the Bankers’ Association advisers. I think that that was not a marriage made in heaven but it was one that worked under the circumstances. I think all parties are to be congratulated on the fact that they saw the problems with the legislation as it had been presented and they set about trying to fix them in a way that meant that this legislation could be implemented and then in time—because it will take time—the Financial Action Task Force will be able to examine whether it is doing the job that it is meant to do. That will be the subject of a report from the Financial Action Task Force in due course.  
In the end I think between us my colleagues and I have made the point about the inadequacy of the legislation in the first instance; however it has been vastly improved. Although we have been critical of process and at times a little resentful of the pressure in the select committee we have stumped up rolled up our sleeves and done the work in the time that the Minister required and I hope he acknowledges that in due course also. Thank you.