Halbert ShananSHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you Madam Speaker. I've enjoyed hearing the speeches albeit some in debate about this particular bill before us this evening. Charities are a core component of a well-functioning society and when I think about my community on the North Shore and Northcote and Beach Haven and Birkdale I think about the number of voluntary charitable organisations that do the hard work on the ground. I look back to the work that was completed over the COVID-19 pandemic the groups that got out on the ground delivered food to families in very difficult circumstances and who helped vaccination sites across the country lift our immunisation rates. I think about the people in this room and just looking at my colleagues not only do we have people that have worked voluntarily in their church organisations we mentioned Women's Refuge in chairing community houses in community justice organisations and in local marae. We certainly have a good wealth of experience of not only people that have run charitable organisations managed them but also acted as volunteers for many many years. I have the privilege of chairing the Birkdale Beach Haven Community Project. Our core line of business is about running facilities that are available for community groups for free in most circumstances—for young people and children to come and host events there for mums' groups to come and meet there for our new migrants to share in Aotearoa New Zealand experiences. Those are the hubs of our community. We also do the outreach of course and I think to a major project that our organisation runs which is Community Eats which focuses on the redistribution of kai across the community both in those that are giving and those that are distributing back out to the community. Those are the types of initiatives that we want to enable and we want to support.But I know as the chair in a very detailed way the heavy load that our small team carries in order to both deliver the work that they need to on the ground but also maintain the administrative and operational background that they need to and the challenges of sometimes complex situations to manage the regulatory expectations and the compliance expectations of both funding of council so on and so forth not to mention the charitable responsibilities that they have under what is the current Charities Act 2005.Now we know that the sector overall is incredibly diverse it's nimble and about 28000 organisations are registered nationally. My understanding from the information that I have read and I wasn't a part of the select committee hearing but of that 14000 effectively half of that will benefit from the changes that we make through this legislation this evening. This bill includes the provisions to enable reduced financial reporting requirements for very small charities just like the ones that I spoke to this evening to mitigate the compliance burden; to clarify who an officer is and their role; and measures to improve the governance. It is very challenging in many small organisations to establish good governance groups people that are prepared to do it on a voluntary basis and able to mostly commit the time that is needed to make these organisations effective. The bill will also clarify and improve compliance and enforcement under the Act and increase the transparency and fairness of regulatory decision-making by the Chief Executive of the Department of Internal Affairs and the Charities Registration Board and lastly to introduce a similar appeals mechanism by empowering the Taxation Review Authority to hear appeals under the Act.This piece of legislation makes steps to lifting some of the compliance responsibilities on 14000 very small charitable organisations. Let's be charitable this evening to them. Let's lighten some of their workload. I'd like to commend this bill to the House.