Hudson Brett: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHudson Brett: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9826. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BRETT HUDSON (National): We move on to Part 2 and I will absolutely focus on this part of the bill. Just to recap as I did say in Part 1 when we were on that the purpose of the bill is to transfer all the existing property interests powers and obligations from the old board to the new. Here we are under Part 2 which talks specifically of that transfer—the rights the property and the obligations—from the old to the new. I think when we are making this change we can appreciate that it is about a seamless transition.Actually the bill is about giving the board—which is a new board—greater flexibility to do the right things for its constituent members by removing some of the constraints that exist under the existing legislation. It is very important in doing that that we do not abrogate any rights and that we do not actually leave someone in a worse position than they would be or remove rights particularly rights of challenge by creating new legislation that may remove an ability for a party to take action against the old board because of course the old board will no longer exist.So if I draw your attention to clause 5(2) it notes very clearly that “Proceedings that could have been commenced or continued by or against the old board before the commencement of this Act may be commenced or continued by or against the new board on and from the commencement of this Act.” This one subclause will ensure that the transition to the new board will ensure that that board retains any of the obligations that existed with the previous board under the legislation that shall be repealed and will also not prevent any parties—so a party may have a contract with the old board. It may maintain property. It may provide a service to the board—maybe a cleaning service. There are any number of services for which individuals or companies or sole trading businesses may have some form of express or implied contract with the old board.So it is very very important that in making this change that we do not suddenly wipe out the rights that those parties have to enforce their own contract provisions and to ensure that they have a means of redress a means of having issues heard with the new board. It would be quite frankly an injustice I think in terms of the intention of this bill if we have created a situation where old legislation was repealed and a new board constituted and all of a sudden people did not have rights to take action for historical issues or services. So I think it is very very important that we are taking that action and I think it is something that can give a great deal of confidence to existing service providers to the board the trust as it exists today.Along with that we have to make sure that in doing so we do not create issues that were not there to begin with. We have clause 6 with matters that are not affected by the transfer of those rights obligations and those properties. The very clear and express provision there in clause 6 for instance notes “The dissolution of the old board and the transfer of its property rights and obligations to the new board—(a) are not to be treated as placing a person in breach of or default under any contract or in breach of trust or in breach of confidence or as otherwise making the person guilty of a civil wrong;”.It goes on to say that the dissolution and transfer “are not to be treated as entitling a person” to terminate a contract to “enforce or accelerate the performance of an obligation;” or to “require the performance of an obligation …”. Those areas together are saying that if the first subclause of clause 5 was making sure that no one had their rights quashed by the creation of a new board then in the process of constituting this new board people could not use that as some sort of clever leverage to create an issue where none existed previously. The new board cannot be made to suddenly provide a different level of performance or to face an unsubstantiated allegation of an issue that did not exist—or in fact someone could not use the switch the transition as a vehicle or as an opportunity to terminate an agreement.We are protecting rights and obligations on both sides if you will—the trusts and the members of the board but also the providers of services to those trusts. I think there is still a lot more to be said on Part 2 but if we look at Part 2 the part that is giving effect to these transfers and creating the sort of necessary protections that we like to see—