Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): 谢谢 Mr Speaker. It's a real pleasure to speak on this first reading of the Charities Amendment Bill and I'd just like to congratulate Minister Priyanca Radhakrishnan for bringing the bill to the House—it's a wonderful bill. Before speaking today I had a look on the web and went through the Charities Register and just looked at the huge number of charities that are operating in New Zealand. It was amazing to see how many of them were bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars but then some only bringing in a few thousand each year. So we've got a huge diversity in terms of the scope of charities operating in New Zealand and the financial size of each of those entities. Also going through the names of a lot of those charities it was interesting to see how many of them we relied on for aspects of our daily lives. So we had academic institutions we had churches we had rotary clubs we had animal rescues and we even had highland pipe bands. So just a huge diversity of things in terms of the charities in terms of the work that our communities rely on. We rely on good charities to deliver the services that our communities need but we also rely in many cases on the work of the volunteers. They put in many many hours to make sure those charities can deliver the benefits that they have been developed to do so. Looking at the Charities Register I think what it does is it maintains public trust in these charities. I think that's really important because if you've got information that's publicly available then anybody wanting to sit down and think Can I volunteer for this charity? Do my views and my beliefs align with what they're doing?"—if they're wanting to volunteer if they're wanting to donate but also if they're wanting to use the services of the charity they can actually go online and have a look at all their contact details. You can have a look at what they're doing in terms of the work and you can also have a look at their financial position. I think that's really important. For many of the organisations operating in our community that's really useful information that we can have on their work. I also think it's important to acknowledge—and that's what this bill does—that charities are often run by volunteers who have limited amounts of time but absolute passion for the work that they do. And in many cases the financial documents that they need to put in place are actually quite disproportionate to the scrutiny that's required. I think that's the thing that we need to weigh up and I think what this bill does is it looks at that balance. I'm really looking forward to hearing submissions on this during the select committee process because it's important to be thinking about what is the basic amount of information that we need to make sure that the transparency and the accountability of the charities is there but also thinking that what we don't want to do is unduly take up the time of those volunteers when they should be out there in the community doing the important work that they do.One of the things the bill does is it enables simpler financial reporting for very small charities so that it can reduce their compliance burden. I think what we're looking at here is the capacity to have regulations that can provide a lot more detail around who those smaller charities are and then be thinking about what it is that we need in that respect to be able to provide the information we need. So what that will mean is that those charities if we get that right can spend a bit of time on their financial reporting but they can spend most of their time out there in the community doing the work that they love. Another issue that we've got is again coming back to thinking of these charities and the work of volunteers many of whom like I said are busy doing other tasks and also have limited resources. And if you want to get access to justice to have appeals if the charities want to appeal decisions of the Charities Registration Board then at the moment what they have to do is they actually have to go to the High Court. Anybody that's been through a court process will know that not only is that incredibly costly it is incredibly time-consuming; there can be delays in terms of being able to get access to your case being heard. What this will do is it will enable a charities review authority to be able to hear those appeals in the first instance. It won't mean that people don't have access to the High Court and indeed you know the Taxation and Charities Review Authority may well refer the case on. But what that means is that in a much more simple and a much more affordable way charities will have access to being able to appeal and have those issues considered. So I think this is a really really important bill and I think it will allow charities to as I say get that balance right between what they have to do in their financial reporting and also what they can do in terms of the work that they do. I think the select committee process is incredibly important because what I'm hoping is that many charities will come and they'll discuss how the bill will relate to their situation. Because as I said when I was looking through the register what we've got is some of those very large academic institutions who are doing some amazing research. We've got other organisations churches rotary clubs. They're going out there in the community but their needs are very very different and their reporting needs are very different. And I think the other thing is that for people wanting to access the services of those charities then basically that reporting requirement is very different. So I think this is a really important bill and it will provide that extra support for charities to be able to get that balance right and think about where they want to go next. There's a range of other issues that are covered in the bill some of them are minor and technical; some of them are more substantive. But I think this is a really significant bill and I'm looking forward to hearing submissions during the select committee process. I commend this bill to the House."