Power Simon: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Power Simon: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 07 April 2011. Volume:671;Page:17846. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon SIMON POWER (Minister of Commerce) 
: 
 I move  
That the Financial Markets Authority Bill the Securities Amendment Bill (No 3) the Securities Markets Amendment Bill (No 2) the KiwiSaver Amendment Bill the Financial Advisers Amendment Bill (No 3) and the Securities Trustees and Statutory Supervisors Bill be now read a third time 
. The passing of these bills marks the completion of a significant part of the Government’s programme of reform of New Zealand’s financial markets and I would like to take the opportunity to comment on the most important changes made by these bills. 
The Financial Markets Authority Bill establishes the new Financial Markets Authority which will replace the Securities Commission and take on responsibilities of the Government Actuary and some of the regulatory roles of the Registrar of Companies. The main objective of the Financial Markets Authority is to promote and facilitate the development of fair efficient and transparent financial markets. The Financial Markets Authority will act as the single market conduct regulator for New Zealand’s financial markets introducing a culture of visible proactive and timely enforcement. An important regulatory tool that the authority will have is the power to exercise a person’s right of action where this is in the public interest. 
Amongst other things this will enable the Financial Markets Authority to take action in order to pursue directors for breaches of their duties under the Companies Act 1993. I look forward to working with the authority’s inaugural board whose members I announced earlier this week. They bring exactly the right mix of expertise and governance experience to the authority. 
The Securities Trustees and Statutory Supervisors Bill implements a licensing regime for trustees and statutory supervisors of issuers and importantly retirement villages. The new regime will require trustees and statutory supervisors to be capable and to perform their functions effectively. It will also enable the authority to hold them accountable for any failure to act in accordance with their obligations. During the Committee stage specific commencement dates were inserted into the bills to the effect that the Financial Markets Authority will be established on 1 May 2011 and the new trustees and statutory supervisors regime will come into force on 1 October 2011. I am pleased that these urgent pieces of work will be in force in a timely manner. 
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Financial Markets Authority establishment board—in particular the chairman Simon Botherway and also Paula Rebstock Bruce Sheppard Shelley Cave Andrew Harmos Frank McLaughlin Scott St John Mariette van Ryn and Neville Harris who have been working on the operational establishment of the authority. They have done an outstanding job and have ensured that the new authority will be up and running nearly a year to the day after I publically announced that the Government was going to set up a new financial market conduct regulator. 
I would also like to thank officials for their extremely hard work in what could be considered short time frames and of course the Parliamentary Counsel Office for its hard work on these bills. I would also like to acknowledge the contributions of financial markets participants who provided comments on the bills. These bills constitute essential steps in restoring investor confidence in New Zealand’s financial markets. A major focus of this Government has been to ensure we are putting in place a regulatory framework that will give investors confidence in our markets. These bills represent significant achievements in that regard. I am very proud to commend these bills to the House.