Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you sir. I'm back—back again" as the song goes.SPEAKER: It sounds like an old girlfriend but anyway keep going.CHRIS PENK: I couldn't possibly comment.The Partnership Law Bill—I suppose the first and most obvious question is what kind of partnership it is that we're talking about. There are a few different meanings of that word. There's the general sense of a partnership—working together I suppose we could say. There's the sense of a partnership in the relationship sense of the phrase—a legal entity a particular legal entity can be a partnership—and of course the most important definition is the cricketing type of partnership referring to a number of runs or a period of time etc. that two batsmen—or batters I suppose we could say—have been together. Disappointingly I'm going to focus on the aspect that is the legal entity if only because that's the subject of the bill. As the Minister—or a Minister at least—has said in relation to the bill it's an exercise in updating. So it's essentially re-enacting that statute from 1908 that's currently on our books and has been added to and taken away no doubt in piecemeal fashion perhaps as is the case with a lot of legislation that dates back to over a century ago. And so as the Minister of Civil Defence has said there's a certain amount of revision omitting of redundant and spent provisions changes in language format and punctuation and so forth. I don't propose to go through all those but perhaps by way of example to illustrate the kinds of changes that have been made—and I think worthily—the first note that I'll make as referred to in the bill itself within the general policy statement relates to the word "retirement". The way that this has been interpreted over the years includes partners who have been expelled or compulsorily retired. So the update that we are now engaged in makes it clear that more general circumstances are implied by the phrase "leaving the firm". So that's one of the changes that is being made by this legislation which—I should pause and go no further before explaining—we on this side of the House do support.Another change—or another category of change really of which there is one example that I will give—relates to the phrase "partnership agreement". Elsewhere in the Act but in a similar place we see "partnership contract". The difference between an agreement and a contract is not one of any significance. It's not an important distinction at all. So it's slightly anomalous that the law would have two different phrases to mean essentially the same thing. In interpreting statutes it might be that lawyers or the courts or partners themselves might wonder if there is a meaningful distinction being made there. That's not intended. And so it is that it's a worthwhile thing for this House to turn its mind to simply aligning those and making them essentially the same thing throughout the course of the one Act. Other examples include trust money versus trust property. And then one other one I'll give is a reference to books. The bill itself refers to the reference of books as being archaic. It is a slightly sad thing I think even in 2019 that books might be referred to as archaic but in the sense of accounting and record keeping for an entity it is probably unrealistic I must concede that we would have physical books that must be kept on location at the place of business of the partnership. Of course there are a lot of ways of storing records which is the language that is being shifted to so we talk now about records being reasonably available. So they might be "in the cloud" as the young people say or otherwise available than as physical books on the—Fletcher Tabuteau: Oh you can say it too. It's OK.CHRIS PENK: I think I'm being heckled by some young people—or rather he might wish that were so.But actually one more because I can't resist—one more: so "servant" has been updated to "employee". "Servant" obviously has a slightly archaic and perhaps even slightly uncomfortable class-based notion. It has a particular legal meaning so we needn't get too caught up in that.Then the bill itself in making all those changes retains a similar kind of structure as you'd expect. It talks about the nature of partnership. It explains that it's a relationship that exists between persons who carry on a business in common with a view to profit. So there are a number of different entities that we can say that it's not. The short version would be that a partnership is not a company which leads to the irresistible conclusion that a company is not a partnership. That doesn't get us very much further along so I can only commend anyone who is particularly interested in the provisions to read the bill itself. On that note I shall commend on behalf of the National Party this bill to the House."