Collins Judith: Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCollins Judith: Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9826. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Justice): The question has been raised again about the urgency. I am happy to address it again and hopefully more to the member’s satisfaction. I think there are always options around this and this is certainly not a step that I have taken lightly. But the advice has come to me in only the last few weeks or so that the situation could become quite serious and that this is not something that we could leave for the normal select committee process. The Committee will be aware that this Government has not taken urgency for some time which would give an opportunity for this. I would actually think that this bill the Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill is exactly the sort of bill that should be going through under urgency.I take on board the concerns that Mr Little has raised about urgency and why we could not just put a start date in that is essentially retrospective to the legislation coming into force. That is absolutely an option but what we are dealing with here are 60 finance companies all failed. What is being achieved by that? I would be more inclined to do that although I am not someone who generally believes in retrospective legislation. For me that is a very difficult step to promote. I think it inherently has issues particularly around process.In addition to that in this case I was also given some comfort from the fact that this bill is only a stopgap measure. We do in fact have the Financial Markets Conduct Bill coming through the House through the normal process and it does not come into effect until April next year should it be passed by the House. As the Green member Ms Genter raised earlier will it be in contravention of this bill or will there be any issues with it? Oh no I think Ms Dalziel did sorry. Will it be in contravention of this bill? It will actually replace this bill. So really this is very much a stopgap measure.If we were looking at urgency urgency is often around issues that must be dealt with and certainly in all stages like excise tax issues where behaviours will change. I do not think I could trust frankly that the lawyers for these failed finance companies or rather the trustee companies would not charge off to court tomorrow to file proceedings under the existing law if they had the notice. We are not making this law for them; we are actually making this law for the public of New Zealand the taxpayers and the Public Trust which has actually done nothing wrong—not a thing. It has not done anything wrong. It was not paid large fees to be corporate trustees. It did not fail in its duty. It did not mislead or do anything wrong. It is an innocent bystander andfrankly I do not think that we can risk having it put further to the test when it comes to this sort of litigation that that would ensure. Yes this is a test case that we are looking at which is due for hearing on 6 June this year so we do not have a lot of time.Knowing the legal profession as I do and with the greatest respect for it I am sure that there are people right now preparing documents to be filed if this bill does not go through tonight. But I would like to take the opportunity again to thank the Committee for taking such a mature and responsible attitude to this legislation which is entirely necessary.Clauses 1 to 5 agreed to.Bill reported without amendment.Report adopted.