Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Madam Chair thank you. I'm delighted to have an opportunity to speak on this bill in the committee stage. It was an excellent bill to work on and I think I really thoroughly enjoyed working on it with colleagues from across the House in a very collegial and collaborative process. I want to speak about Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 40 which Mr Seymour has brought to the floor this afternoon. I rise to oppose this Supplementary Order Paper because it would undercut the entire bill. It would just totally subvert the purpose of the bill.So I want to talk about what's going on here. Look the credit union sector in New Zealand is very very small. There are about 13 credit unions—about 13 entities—that are going to be affected by this bill. When this bill appeared in the House there was a great deal of consultation about it. We got submissions from I think virtually all the members of the friendly societies and credit unions sector in New Zealand. The interesting thing is that those submissions were kind of split down the middle. Some of the credit unions were very strongly in favour of this legislation and some of them were very strongly opposed to this legislation.Now one of the reasons that those who are opposed to it said they were opposed was because they were worried about mutuality. Now mutuality is a very important principle of credit unions. It's about the members helping each other and it's an ethos they all buy into of people helping people. They do marvellous work. Look credit unions will open bank accounts for people leaving prison they will open bank accounts for people who are homeless—they're not bank accounts they're credit union accounts but they function like that. They will provide financial services for people who can get them nowhere else. So they really do provide a marvellous role in our society. As far as I can tell the people who are involved in credit unions do really look after their members. It's what they do—it's about mutuality.Now some of the credit unions who were opposed to this bill opposed it because they thought that mutuality would be taken out and we specifically put in a clause to address that. At the select committee stage we specifically addressed that worry. So whatever reason that credit unions now oppose this bill—some credit unions still oppose it—it cannot be because of the issue of mutuality. So perhaps it is around the issue of the cost of incorporation but I think we've just heard some very powerful evidence that actually the costs are not a huge amount. There will be a cost but it is not a huge amount. So I don't think that that argument's going to hold water either.So why should we introduce what would in effect be two separate regimes for a very small group of entities? There are only 13 entities involved in this and instead of having one set of rules for all of them this SOP would then end up with us having two sets of rules for just 13 entities. That seems a very odd thing to do—to introduce yet more complexity into this sector of the economy.I think one of the things that we've been asked to do as a Parliament and at the select committee stage is to make a judgment—all right? We don't just follow some sort of process of voting or of trying to weigh up preferences. As members of Parliament we are asked to reflect to consider to debate and to exercise our judgment as to what is the best position for us to end up in. Now in this circumstance where the credit union sector was actually—you know some of them were in favour of this particular bill; some of them were against it. We have been called on to make a judgment and the judgment of the Finance and Expenditure Committee—and the judgment as far as I can tell of all the Parliament bar one—is that in fact we should adopt a more contemporary structure for credit unions we should have a structure for credit unions that is consistent with what the rest of the world has done and we should in fact try to make sure that the structure that credit unions use is appropriate for the 21st century—and that's the structure of incorporation—while retaining mutuality.For that reason I reject this SOP. I urge the House to reject this SOP and I support this bill.