Clendon David: Insolvency Practitioners Bill — Second ReadingText is subject to correctionClendon David: Insolvency Practitioners Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 07 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14526. Text is subject to correction.]DAVID CLENDON (Green): I would just like to begin by echoing our Labour colleague Clare Curran’s comments about the rather leisurely progress of this bill the Insolvency Practitioners Bill through the House. Some 3½ years ago it was introduced and had its first reading. I was on the Commerce Committee at the time. I have to say that there was a sense of urgency in that this was one of a raft of pieces of legislation that were seen as being important and needing to be passed.I think that credit for this bill belongs to the former Minister of Commerce Mr Power—he has now left this Chamber of course—and if my memory serves it is one of a series of bills that Simon Power put in place to put some regulation around the finance sector generally. We saw what happens when finance sectors remain unregulated. We all paid an enormous cost—some more than others. Lots of people lost money when they ought not to have done.Mr Power to his credit put in place a raft of bills to put some reins onto the finance sector. I think it is fair to say that this is one of those bills so one would hope that we will see this bill through all its readings and passed before its fourth birthday. It will become enacted into law and enable a sensible regime to go into place around this reasonably important albeit small-scale area of finance—the insolvency practitioners.The Greens opposed this legislation at its first reading because it created a negative licensing system. It was the classic example of parking an ambulance squarely at the bottom of a cliff the idea being that we would wait until people offended until they failed to provide good service inevitably at some considerable cost to the stakeholders in an insolvency be they the creditors the owners or whomever. The idea was that when they were proven to be incompetent dishonest or whatever it might be they would go on a blacklist and would be either obliged to practise under supervision or banned from practising for some longer or shorter period of time. We frankly did not see the sense in that. The argument was that a negative licence system was appropriate because to create a positive registration model would be inappropriate given that at thetime it was believed that there were fewer than 100 practitioners and that there would be costs involved in creating and managing a register and all of these things.We saw then that the notion of short-term cost savings certainly did not compensate for the long-term risk that it would impose on people needing the service of these practitioners; the almost inevitability that at least some of them would lack the experience the competence and the integrity to do a good job for their client for their customer. So we opposed this legislation in the belief that what we actually needed was an upfront and positive accreditation or registration system.I am very pleased to say that in the course of the Commerce Committee’s consideration of the bill the logic of that position became acknowledged by all parties. What we see now is a piece of legislation that does establish an upfront accreditation model where people will be obliged to demonstrate their skills and the correct attitude the competency and the integrity that really we need to see. I mean it would be odd if we allowed auditors or accountants or even real estate agents or tradespeople to operate without some form of accreditation and we saw no reason why insolvency practitioners should be any different.So I am pleased to say that given the almost 180-degree shift that has occurred in the drafting of the model that is now proposed in this bill the Greens from now on will be quite happy to support this legislation. We will oppose what we think is bad legislation. As I said the select committee did a good job. It listened to the overwhelming majority of submitters who said: “Hey why are we doing it this way? Why not do a positive accreditation model?”. We have gone to that and for that reason the Greens are very happy to support the bill from here on in through later readings.In terms of the substance of the bill I probably need not dwell too long on that this late on a Thursday. It is a fairly straightforward piece of legislation now and it does create a process for accreditation for recognition of practitioners. It also creates a process for removing the accreditation of those people if there is malpractice or a lack of integrity or honesty or whatever it might be. Their registration can be cancelled and of course that is entirely appropriate. There are appropriate penalties put in place. So without dwelling on that any further I am pleased to say that the Greens will support this bill and I commend it to the House. Kia ora.