Wong Pansy: Business Law Reform Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Wong Pansy: Business Law Reform Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:616;Page:12412] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 Part 1 of this bill amends the Building Societies Act 1965. As that Act was passed quite some time ago the National Party supports an amendment to update it. I can imagine the intention of updating that legislation but I am slightly concerned about how building society members will be communicated with in terms of their rights and entitlements to receive financial statements. 
So—and since the Minister does not seem to be showing any interest—I would like to take this opportunity to go through some of the provisions and ensure that members of building societies get a fair go in terms of understanding their entitlements. After all Parliament is using time—as my colleague pointed out the Minister wants us to go through the bill part by part—and I think we should use this opportunity to see whether we can better inform the people. 
The effect of one of the amendments in Part 1 is that if members of building societies do not want to receive the full financial statement—which I take it includes profit and loss accounts cash flow statements balance sheets notes to the accounts auditor’s report etc.—they can elect to receive a copy of a summary of the financial statement. As I do not sit on the Commerce Committee I wonder whether my very informed hard-working colleague Brain Connell would like to take another call and tell me whether select committee members discussed how much detail has to go into this summary of financial statements. 
Brian Connell 
: We went into a lot of detail. 
PANSY WONG 
: I am assured by my very hard-working colleague that they spent a lot of time discussing how much detail should go into this summary of financial statements. Each member of the building society can elect to say: “I do not want to receive the full set of accounts because nowadays believe me some of those full sets of financial statements could be up to 100 pages long.” So they might elect to receive just a summary of that material. 
I am also happy to see the provision that spells out quite clearly the responsibility of the directors. It states that the financial statements must be signed by two directors and also be approved by the board of directors. As my colleague Brian Connell mentioned just now it is very important to make sure that the board of directors takes responsibility for approving those financial statements and eventually two of them must put their signatures on them. 
I also understand that there is a time line in this provision. The financial statements must be tabled within 4 months of the end of the financial year. I think from memory that that is probably a shorter time frame than was previously allowed. The financial information and accountability report has to be produced in a timely manner for it to be useful and I think that members should receive that information as soon as possible. The provisions also cover how many days of notice have to be given for an annual general meeting to be held and how long a time the building society has to send out the financial statements. 
So when I look through these three pages of amendments to the Building Societies Act 1965 it seems in general that they are spelling out more the responsibility of the directors. They also lay out quite clearly the time frame within which those financial statements have to be prepared and in what format.