Russell Deborah; Tuiono TeanauCOMPANIES (ADDRESS INFORMATION) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingHon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour): I move That the Companies (Address Information) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee to consider the bill.This bill proposes a small—but I think important—measure to enable company directors in some circumstances to have their address removed from a public register of a company. It's had quite a history coming to this Parliament. I would like to acknowledge first of all Sarah Pallett formerly the MP for Ilam—this was her bill in the ballot. When she left Parliament we put the bill in the ballot in my name and it was drawn recently. However it is Sarah Pallett's bill and I am honoured to bring it to the House on her behalf.I'd also like to acknowledge Laura Trask ACT MP who had a very similar bill in the ballot. I will talk about the issue she was addressing a little as I go on through this speech but she had some particular reasons as to why she thought a measure like this would be quite good too. I look forward with interest to hear what she says.I'd like to tell you a bit about why this bill is important. As part of our companies law there is a public register of company directors names and addresses. That's publicly available—anyone can go and search up a name of a company director and can search up their home address. Back in the olden days before the internet if someone wanted to go and find a company director's address there was quite a barrier to doing so. The person who wanted to search it up had to go to the Companies Office and look through physical records in order to access a company director's address. It might take quite some time to find that particular address. So it took time and effort. What that meant was that there was quite a barrier to people searching out a company director's address for frivolous or for malicious reasons. But contrast that with the way the Companies Register is kept today. It is online; it is readily accessible. So in fact with a little bit of effort if you know someone who is a company director and you know that person's legal name then it is perfectly possible to go and type in the person's legal name and come up with their address in a matter of moments—seconds even. I've done it myself and it is an easy thing to do. What it means is that there is no barrier to finding out where someone lives in the way that there used to be. With that comes hazards. In particular the hazard that this bill addresses is that where a person feels that she or he or that someone they live with is in physical or mental danger they could be traced very very easily. At the moment a stalker someone who wished a person harm can find where they live at home so quickly and so easily. People might think that this is just a theoretical problem but it is not. At this point what I would like to do if you will excuse me is to read something that Sarah Pallett herself wrote about this. It's a way of getting Sarah Pallett's words into the Hansard. This is from a letter that Ms Pallett wrote to the then Minister of commerce:[I've] been approached by one of my constituents who has raised some serious concerns relating to her personal safety. My constituent is a Clinical Psychologist and Neuropsychologist whose work involves assessment of violent offenders and clients who often have serious mental health issues and brain injuries. The outcomes for her assessments can have substantial impacts on the lives of her clients determining matters such as custody sentencing parole and eligibility for financial compensation. Inevitably my constituent's assessments do not always conclude in the client's favour and this can result in her clients becoming very angry and threatening towards her. For this reason my constituent goes to great lengths to protect her privacy and safety. For example she is on the unpublished electoral roll and has ensured that her child has a different surname to avoid them being easily connected to her."My constituent recently discovered that a quick google of her name links it directly to her physical residential address [off of] NZ Companies Office website. [She's] appealed to the Companies Office and explained her situation in an attempt to have her residential address removed and replaced by an alternate contact address … as the visibility of her residential address to any and all members of the public who wish to find out her location constitutes a very serious risk to her safety given the nature of her work. She was advised that there was no way to have her residential address removed from their website unless she had a court order under the Family Violence Act [2018] and that they would not accept any alternate contact address other than her personal residential address."So that is the issue: a person's address can be found readily and then that can expose that person to malicious actors. So how does this bill address that issue? What it says is that if a person thinks that she or he is at serious risk of mental or physical harm then she or he can after swearing a statutory affidavit to that effect—so there's a statutory declaration to that effect; there's a test in there—then that person can apply to the Companies Office to have their physical address removed from the records and they must provide an alternate address for service. So that's what this bill will enable to happen. I think it is a very sensible measure.It could go further. I think there is a case to be discussed about whether all company directors should be able to have an alternate address rather than their personal address. There's some pros and cons on that one. I think most of us in the House would know the stories of the phoenix companies which rise up and disappear very quickly and stiff the subbies on the way. Where company directors do just disappear into the ether having a personal address available might be a counter to that. But that is something that could be weighed up—that I think allowing all company directors to perhaps have some way of making sure their own personal address is not available is a rather bigger issue and it would take a lot of time to discuss.In the meantime I think it would be worth it to enable people to improve their own personal physical and mental safety by not having to have their home address publicly available to anyone and everyone. So that's the issue—you may recall that I mentioned that that Laura Trask had been working on a similar issue and she had looked at that particular issue. It's worthy of consideration too. However I am asking this House in the meantime to consider this rather smaller measure to take the small step that would improve the safety of many many people.Of course I have read out the example which Sarah Pallett gave and one of the obvious groups of people that this applies to is women that women are more likely to be stalked or subject to violence. We also have stories of people whose former partners have been stalking them and so on. But it is important to note that it is not only women who are affected by this sort of issue. As I was writing about this bill being pulled from the ballot on my social media I had my old friend contact me to say he'd been out in public on some issue someone had tracked him down through his personal address and then had managed to turn up outside his kid's school to harass him because he was able to trace him.So this does actually matter the public availability of company directors' addresses and it is a broader issue. I would hope that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs the Hon Andrew Bayly would consider addressing it one day. But in the meantime I would invite the House to consider this rather smaller case and this rather smaller measure that possibly in the short term would provide some better safety particularly for women but also for men whose addresses are so publicly available. I commend this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to."