Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you Mr Speaker. I thank the previous speaker Mr Goldsmith for the support for this bill to work on it at the select committee stage. I will I think look forward to working on it. It is quite a technical bill and I just want to speak about a couple of things in connection with it today. What the bill does is it regulates financial market infrastructures.My guess is that the people listening at home—because of course there are lots of people listening at home to highly technical bills like this—may not know what those financial market infrastructures are. It is a technical term. Let me give an example of one of the types of infrastructures—one of the types of entities—that will be regulated by this bill.One type of financial market infrastructure is a payment system. It's a payment system that needs to operate smoothly and effectively and it's a payment system that everyone needs to have a degree of trust in to ensure that all transactions happen smoothly on an ongoing basis. For people watching at home the payment system that you're most likely to be familiar with is EFTPOS—the EFTPOS system a system that most of us use every day. It is probable that under this bill the EFTPOS system will be regulated as a financial market infrastructure. So payment systems are financial market infrastructures.Settlement systems are financial market infrastructures. That's systems or arrangements for making settlement or for processing settlement instructions. So that's quite important. There's a large one NZClear which needs to be regulated. It turns out that the average daily value of transactions that go through NZClear is about $7 billion. That's a lot of money and we need to make sure that again it's being processed effectively and efficiently and that the people using it and the entities using it are sure that their transactions are going to be processed properly and that they can engage with that system with a fair degree of trust. There are central counterparties (CCPs) which are entities which help to settle as a counterparty. So they become the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer. They in effect sit in between buyers and sellers and it eliminates the credit risk to both parties. Again that sounds like quite a complicated system. Everyone who's using it needs to be sure that it's going to be operating effectively and efficiently and that they can trust the system. We have just the one CCP in New Zealand the New Zealand Clearing and Depository Corporation NZCDC and that operates as the central counterparty in markets operated by NZX—by the New Zealand stock exchange. Again there's several hundred million dollars of transactions going through that every day so it's very important to us.There are also trade repositories and central securities depositories—again financial market infrastructures. So these are all quite technical entities and for most of us the way that we come into contact with them is through the very basic one of a payment system the EFTPOS system. But they are important to the functioning of our trading systems to the functioning of our markets and to the functioning of our economy.It was very clear that the IMF thought we really did need to review our rules around them and to improve them. The process of consultation on this started back in 2013. It carried on through into 2015. So this bill has been a long time in gestation in terms of the consultation that has gone on around it to make sure that it was doing what it is supposed to do.So it started under the previous Government. It is being progressed under this Government. I think it likely that we will reach agreement on it particularly if we do attend to the issues that are raised in select committee.There is one issue I wish to raise and it's something that is puzzling me and I think it's going to irritate me right the way through this bill: financial market infrastructures". That plural word is somehow just tweaking something on my grammar wonk soul. I guess I'll just have to deal with it because it looks like a technical term that's sitting in the bill.Hon Judith Collins: No I'm with you.Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: I'm pleased to hear that my colleague the Hon Judith Collins agrees with me. Ms Collins I'm sure that we will enjoy discussing it at length in the select committee process. I recommend this bill to the House."