Faafoi Kris: Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:315. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):Can I just take this opportunity to congratulate you Mr Chair on your appointment as Deputy Speaker. This is my first substantial contribution to this debate tonight. I also congratulate Lindsay Tisch Trevor Mallard and the Speaker himself.I would like to go straight to subpart 2 of Part 1 of the bill which goes some way to amending the Charities Act 2005. Before I start that I do want to acknowledge the officials who are in the Chamber tonight because there is one clause of subpart 3 particularly clause 31 which I think adds new section 36M to the principal Act which contains an exemption from membership requirements for certain members of religious societies or orders in having to register under this legislation. This actually did trigger quite a serious debate at the Commerce Committee because the religious group that was looking for an exemption is known to politics in that they were members of the Exclusive Brethren. I thought as a member of the Commerce Committee in the previous Parliament that they gave quite an interesting submission to look for exemption from this legislation.Members of that religious group wanted to not be registered as members of the particular accounting society or organisation that is being given the rights and the responsibilities to police certain parts of this bill that we are debating today. It was for religious reasons that they did not want to be included or registered but they were quite willing to be I guess judged upon their actions as accountants and upon their behaviour under the legislation. So that gave us a bit of a dilemma as to whether or not they could act or transact business as accountants but not do that as registered members of the organisation at hand. We did come up in the select committee with something that is not necessarily done all too often in legislation and that is that we did exempt people with certain religious beliefs from being party to or members of an organisation—or in this clause under section 36M exempt from membership of accountancy bodies—because of their religious beliefs.Obviously this created quite a bit of debate as to whether or not we were setting a dangerous precedent but I understand and maybe we can get a nod from one of the officials that there was one other precedent for this—I am getting a nod so that is good—in legislation where we did give people who held certain religious beliefs an exemption from being members of organisations such as this. But I think in all honesty that we came to a happy arrangement. We had a submission from members of the Exclusive Brethren where they said that they would act in the spirit of the rules of the organisations that they did not want to be members of and if they were seen to be breaking any of the rules and regulations that that organisation had they would be quite happy to I guess be ruled by that as well.There were some conditions upon that. There had to be a written agreement between the parties looking for an exemption and the body they were looking to not become members of and at any time I believe that body could take away that exemption. If it did that my understanding is that it would almost be impossible for them to trade as accountants under the new law. I think that this was an issue that the Commerce Committee looked at in great detail because we did think that there were some concerns around setting a precedent in this way for this type of exemption. It was heated because the members of the Exclusive Brethren obviously have had a role in politics in the last 10 years but I believe that the select committee of the last Parliament looked at this in a very constructive way. They were given quite a grilling as to why they wanted to be exempted from this particular part of the bill but I think we came to what I would call a happy medium.I think we should watch this very closely. I wonder whether the Minister in the chair Paul Goldsmith would be able to suggest how we monitor this over the next 2 or 3 years as this is new ground not just for the Parliament but also for those people with those particular religious beliefs. I do think given the heat that could have been in the situation there—