Tabuteau Fletcher: Public Collections and Solicitations (Disclosure of Payment) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: Public Collections and Solicitations (Disclosure of Payment) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 12 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5774. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): I would like to acknowledge Mr Doocey tonight. I asked to speak on this bill. It is not my usual specialist subject but I would like to acknowledge the fact that Mr Doocey had his member’s bill drawn from the ballot. But I would say that it is a bit of a doozy of a bill. I beg your forbearance Mr Assistant Speaker.Let me just read from the purpose statement. A lot of what Mr Doocey said in his opening speech I would like to take this time to contest and ask questions about. But it comes from the purpose clause—to bring transparency which is fantastic to public collectors who are paid or remunerated to collect or solicit donations subscriptions signatures or other support for an organisation or cause in a public street or place. This is part of the issue—the main issue. It is to ensure that the public is fully informed of all relevant information.Mr Doocey acknowledged quite a few of the deficiencies in this bill in terms of that transparency. I will just go into that now. Firstly New Zealand First would like to acknowledge that yes the intent of the bill is right. I think that what you are trying to achieve is appropriate. We would add that we are one of the top five charitable countries in the world. New Zealand First has asserted that volunteers are the fabric of New Zealand society and enable society to continue almost day to day.Numbers were spoken about tonight—$1.2 billion in the last financial year with 400000 New Zealanders contributing to charities. We think that is remarkable and long may it continue but here is the rub. We think that Mr Doocey is misinformed. He says that having collectors declare that they are going to be paid will increase transparency. Well that is a very small part of the costs of a charity and an organisation of this type. What we have seen in the very recent past is the reality that wages are often a very small part of what charities around the world whether they are registered or not have decided to allocate to the end beneficiary. So then the question is whether this actually improves transparency. The wages may be part of it but what charities have chosen to incorporate in costs and retain from their collections varies widely and this Mr Doocey is only a very very small part of that.The next point that Mr Doocey raised was the Kiwi spirit—this is the intent. It does not sit within the Kiwi spirit that people are being paid to collect money for charities and then he talks about transparency. Well where were you when I had my member’s bill a couple of weeks ago—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Excuse me my apologies. Where was the member when I was asking for exactly the same thing about transparency and about democracy for this nation? It does not seem to sit well and there seems to be a conflict there.Then there is the other issue that has been raised. I think I heard it only once tonight but it is a huge issue actually. It is where the collection takes place and it speaks about public places. The issue there is that if I am in a supermarket carpark or in its entrance or in its foyer this does not apply. It has no bearing on anything I do whether I am a registered charity or not. So there is a huge disparity and I would suggest that it creates huge gaps. Another speaker who spoke earlier Jan Logie asked about phone solicitation. So there are a whole lot of questions about consistency in how you would apply this. The issue also is: why not make it apply to everyone—why not a registered charity as well?