SpeechJAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on the Incorporated Societies Bill at the third reading and I do so as a member of Parliament and also as the chair of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee.I'd like to begin by acknowledging the Hon David Clark for his work on this bill bringing this bill to the House. I'd like to thank all of those officials who have worked on this bill both in the past 12 to 18 months but also earlier than that. As we've heard from other speakers this bill has had quite a long life going back to the previous Government. I know that when this bill was introduced it was certainly the desire of the Minister to get this legislation right to ensure that there's an aspect around bipartisanship in this legislation and to ensure that it is enduring. I do believe that through the work of the select committee which I'll get on to in detail soon the bill has reached a good place and strikes a good balance.The last time this Act was updated was 1908 so it certainly has been a long time and the function of incorporated societies has changed a lot over those past 120-odd years. If we look at some of those changes the 1908 legislation talks about the birth and the death of incorporated societies primarily whereas this legislation and the focus of this legislation is in terms of the living aspect of the society so the day-to-day operating aspects of a healthy positive incorporated society. Yes there are also aspects around the birth and death but it goes a lot broader than the 1908 bill. So certainly it was a bill that needed updating and I'm very pleased to see it updated.There's a couple of aspects I really want to touch on which is the thresholds and the dispute resolution. We have heard a little bit of this from other speakers but just to give those members in the House and those who are listening at home a little bit of context we heard from a number of submitters and there was one particularly common theme that really struck me when we heard from the submitters and that was around the thresholds for reporting particularly for small incorporated societies. There was a concern there that for example we'd have a small incorporated society earning around $10000 per year having to do quite extensive reporting. Then they would have to get an accountant—probably a couple of thousand dollars a year—and possibly a lawyer but certainly an accountant in order to get that work done. Right there that's around a fifth of their income gone in terms of the reporting. So quite a few of the submitters believed the threshold needed to be raised.The second aspect was around the assets. Now you could have an incorporated society with a very small income possibly even maybe around $5000 per year but they own a building worth around half a million dollars a year and they would initially be captured in terms of that reporting. A lot of them said Well look we really don't have the capacity to do this reporting."So there was a lot of discussion between us as MPs and the officials in terms of trying to find where the right balance is because the reality is that it's important for incorporated societies to do robust reporting absolutely. As the Hon Andrew Little said before when you're on an incorporated society it's a role that has to be taken very seriously and with an aspect of soberness—balancing that with the capability and the cost for the reporting. So it was quite a process that we went through to find where the sweet spot is for that. People may know that we actually delayed reporting the bill back because we wanted more time to really get this right and I believe that where we have landed is in a really good place.We have heard from two members of the Opposition the Hon Judith Collins and Melissa Lee but I'd also like to acknowledge the Hon Todd McClay. He was on the committee at the time and Todd and I certainly worked quite closely together as he did with other members of the Labour Party on that caucus in terms of really thrashing this out with the officials. We asked the officials to come back to us with various charts to see how many incorporated societies would be captured at what income levels so that we could work our way through this.Now where we landed was that we proposed amending clause 96(2)(b) to increase both the operating payments and the asset thresholds to $50000 each. As I've said before this was based on quite a strong theme from submitters.So look this was an example of the select committee process working well where you have a piece of legislation come to the House at the first reading you have a number of submitters make submissions there's a common theme through those submissions and then the House takes note of that and makes some changes in the legislation and that's exactly what we've seen. I believe for that reason this legislation will be enduring and that's really important. The reality is that's what we're looking at for all legislation—it really is the holy grail of legislation—and I believe that this does fit that criteria for enduring legislation.We also recommended clarifying that the asset threshold would require a society to have total current assets of less than $50000 rather than total assets. Now the difference here is like I said before—you could have an incorporated society with a half a million dollar building but a very small annual turnover like I said of maybe $5000. Under the original legislation at the first reading they would have had to report and a lot of them said "Look we just can't do it. We just don't have the capability to go through the External Reporting Board processes." Whereas in the legislation now it is total current assets so basically that existing asset—the building for example—would be excluded. We're talking about current assets which I think strikes the right balance there.The other aspect I want to touch on as I bring my speech to a close is the aspect around clarifying dispute resolution provisions. Many of us as MPs I'm sure have had examples of people coming to our office from incorporated societies where there have been various disputes arise within that society and they haven't known how to deal with that. There hasn't been a process that they could go to in order to deal with those disputes. So this legislation clearly gives that guidance and that support around those processes in terms of dealing with disputes. I think this is certainly important—a very practical step in terms of supporting our over 24000 incorporated societies.I believe that incorporated societies are the lifeblood of our community. Many members of the House will be members of incorporated societies. I am personally a member myself. When we go to those meetings we look around the room and we see people who are so passionate about their community. We see the beating heart of New Zealanders there—people coming along and giving their time giving their energy unselfishly for others. It's a really wonderful thing to see that in all those 24000 societies and hopefully more societies spring up that will support our communities.Just in closing as a previous speaker said I'm also very proud of the place that we've landed with this legislation and I hope that it will serve New Zealanders well moving forward. Thank you."