McClay ToddHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) (remote): Madam Chair thank you. I thank the Minister for some of the clarity he's given. The committee did a lot of work on this as the Minister and others have said—in fact more work on this than many bills that come before the House. I actually want to recognise and praise the chair Jamie Strange for continuing to allow the Opposition to seek answers from officials so we could get it right. We surprisingly got a large number of submissions on this bill. Although there are many incorporated societies around New Zealand most of them are very small and don't know the legislation is going through. We heard the idea of an incorporated society with only a very few members with hardly any income at all; and actually what was happening with the original legislation as drafted they were being dragged from a bit of legislation from such a long time ago kicking and screaming into actually something that was fit for very large corporations that had a large income or a large amount of assets. And unfortunately what this would have done is place unreasonable burden through regulation and therefore cost upon these small societies—many of them would not have been able to meet; they would have closed. And actually that was wrong.The committee sought permission to delay consideration of this a number of times and Jamie Strange had to go to the Minister and explain that we were working to improve it. I'm surprised actually that we were able to because I think the many things that Andrew Bayly said—I agree that the Minister is in a rush to do some of these things but actually I think we struck the right balance. And small incorporated societies now won't have the same burden they were going to have and the Minister's come forward with a Supplementary Order Paper to add a little bit of clarity around a new incorporated society which makes sense. They still have to be accountable; they still have to report. But it doesn't make sense for them to report to the standard of a large organisation or incorporated society when in some cases they have only a few meetings and their purpose is specific and the cost of meeting those requirements with the audit would be greater in some cases than the income that they had. So those are the changes that we sought. I've heard since we pushed for that that many incorporated societies now believe they have been listened to by the committee.I know many of them did make the case to Government and the Minister previously. The officials fought the corner on behalf of the Minister for a very long time as to why we couldn't do the things we wanted to in the committee. They kept bringing forward reasons. We challenged their logic and turned it around and I've got to say Minister I equally praise your officials because when you said to Jamie Strange OK let's do this." officials came in and made it look like it was their idea—or at least your idea. But the good news here for the incorporated societies is that the committee dug in we did the work that they asked us to do and that is the reason this bill has support of all of the House—not because actually we just want to cooperate but because actually it was improved to the degree that now it will achieve what it needs to. It will give a clearer set of rules for incorporated societies but it will not overburden the smaller societies unreasonably unnecessarily with cost. This is possibly the first time in the last 4½ years under this Government that they are passing a piece of legislation that doesn't unnecessarily burden business or incorporated societies—in this case small incorporated societies—so I praise the Minister for that albeit it only happened because the Opposition dug in and other members of the committee agreed and actually went to him and sought the changes. So I'm very happy to support that and the sooner we get this into law the sooner the incorporated societies can get on and do what we need them to do which is to run their societies and not worry about this Government as is the case for so many in the country at the moment. Thank you."