Adams Amy: Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill — Third Reading 
Adams Amy: Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:659;Page:8395] 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I am also pleased to rise and take a brief call on the third reading of the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill. I certainly endorse and agree with everything that Brendon Burns the member who spoke before me has said about the bill. Considering a bill like this is one of the many occasions when this House acts in a very multipartisan and supportive fashion. It is one of those opportunities when select committees come at a bill strictly on its merits and without any political overtones and that makes it a very enjoyable process to work through. 
The bill really is a case study of a lot of what we do in the House which is working out where to draw the line so that people are given a path through what needs to be done in a way that properly protects third parties but at the same time ensures that it is no more onerous than it needs to be. The discussion we had at the select committee on this bill was very much along those lines. As Mr Burns has said the Methodist Church found that it had a number of obsolete trusts gifted to it for various purposes that could no longer be carried out. It could have gone through the very long and expensive Charitable Trusts Act amendment process but sought instead to come to the House as other churches have done before it to seek a streamlined process to allow that to be done without gobbling up too much of the money that had been left for charitable purposes. We certainly want to support the Church in that endeavour. All that was left for our committee to do was to ensure that it was done in the most appropriate way. 
I want to pick up on two changes that the committee suggested and discuss them further. The first of those concerns the oversight of the Attorney-General. The bill as it came to us after the first reading suggested that most but not all of the amendments that the Methodist Church might make would go before the Attorney-General to make sure that there was a final level of objective oversight. We felt it was appropriate that all changes should have that oversight. The Church indicated that it did not have any issue with that and saw very few cases where that would not happen anyway. But again I think it is an important step for us to ensure that there would be no situation where a change could be made without some sort of objective oversight on behalf of the House. I think that is a good change. 
The final change which Mr Burns referred to was to omit what was clause 21 and insert its contents changing the wording slightly as a part of new clause 19A. The movement from clause 21 to clause 19A is more significant than the numbering itself suggests. It brought the clause out of Part 4 and inserted it into Part 3 of the Act. The change means that instead of the Methodist Church having the power to amend appoint and remove trustees of any trust that the Church is involved with it makes sure that that power which is a very important and significant power in trust law is limited to the sorts of trusts that the Church has brought before us as problem trusts; that is trusts that the Church needs to get into tidy up and fix in an efficient way because the purposes are no longer practicable to be carried out. In that sphere we had no problem with the Church having that power. The committee did feel though that it was too wide to give the Church an overarching power across any and all trusts it may be involved with. We made sure it had the power in respect of the trusts it had presented to us. I think the change is an important one. 
I think the bill is now in a good state. We have certainly always supported the objective of the bill on the Government side of the House. I thank Mr Burns for bringing the bill and for his role in sponsoring it and I thank my fellow committee members for working very constructively on it. I am pleased to commend the bill to the House.