Williams Andrew: Financial Markets Conduct Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Financial Markets Conduct Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 14 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7885. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the second reading of the Financial Markets Conduct Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill as we noted at the first reading. Certainly we are in full support of this extensive bill—some 561 pages a huge amount of legislation here—which has been put together in order to get New Zealand back on the right track in terms of our financial markets and oversight of our financial institutions. 
It is somewhat disappointing that it has taken so many years for this bill to be brought through to Parliament. What a shame that this sort of legislation was not in place perhaps a decade or more ago and then we would not— 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: Whose fault is that? 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: —well National was in power in the 1990s and did not do anything about it. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: You said “A decade ago.” 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: “A decade or so ago.” I said. What a shame that through the 1990s and through the 2000s this legislation was not in place because many very very good hard-working New Zealanders thousands and thousands of hard-working New Zealanders perhaps would not be in the situation they are in today having lost their life-savings or large amounts of their life-savings because of the shysters and the shenanigans that have gone on in our financial markets in recent years. What a shame it is that many of those affected by those shenanigans that have gone on are the very ones who need the support of their finances now having retired having been in a situation where they were looking forward to a safe and secure retirement with their life-savings only to find that some real shysters in the industry have diddled them out of their life-savings. That is a great shame. It is a sad day. It is a sad period in New Zealand’s history that this did occur. It is very disappointing that many of those involved were able to get away with it and to this day have not been held to account for their actions. 
The fact that 61 companies went bust in our financial markets was a very very poor reflection on the New Zealand cowboy financial market that was operating. The fact that 61 finance companies could take so much money out of this economy so much investment out of this economy perhaps is a reflection of why there is so much distrust today in investment in parts of the New Zealand economy. This bill does serve to return a level of security to the New Zealand financial economy so that people can once again feel that their life-savings can be put somewhere that perhaps can be trusted and know that when they do require them in the future in their retirement they will have been safeguarded. 
 Therefore it is good to see that the penalties have been greatly increased for individuals—between $500000 and $2.5 million in terms of the penalties for individuals—and also for corporates and that there are jail terms of up to 5 years for individuals for misleading the public providing misleading statements or providing misleading financial information. That is good but it is something that New Zealand First has always been on about. As I said it was back in the 1990s when the Rt Hon Winston Peters exposed the wine-box saga. He exposed much of what was going on at the time and how in that period of the 1990s we saw the start of this sort of activity going on. The Rt Hon Winston Peters and New Zealand First exposed the wine-box saga back in the 1990s. It is just a pity that more of this could not have been exposed during the last decade. 
In terms of this bill New Zealand First is supporting it through its next stages. We hope it will not take too much longer for this bill to be enacted through this Parliament. It was first brought to Parliament in October 2011. We are now in February 2013. Like everything it does take some time through this Parliament but the longer it takes to actually be enacted and be put into place the longer New Zealanders—good hard-working Kiwis—are put at risk. So we urge all members of this House to support the bill. We are disappointed to hear that the Green Party is not supporting it but we know that it does have the numbers to be put through this House. We would urge that it move with haste and that the Finance and Expenditure Committee move at pace with this. We would welcome this bill coming back to the top of the parliamentary agenda as soon as possible so that we can move on this and safeguard the interests of New Zealanders and their financial investments. New Zealand First is supporting this bill.