Faafoi Kris: Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 18 June 2014. Volume:699;Page:18673. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):Thank you very much for giving me a call on the title and commencement date clauses of the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill. This is usually the part of the debate where people have a bit of fun with the title of a bill. I will not do that and I will turn to clause 2 the “Commencement”.Generally as my colleague Clare Curran has pointed out the commencement of this bill is going to come far too late. This is a Government that claims it is business-friendly and works in the interest of both big and small—usually big—business. But this piece of legislation which is designed to protect the reputation of the legislation around our companies and limited partnerships has languished on the Order Paper under this Government. I think it was Minister Simon Bridges who said it was because this Government has been a busy Government. Well yes in one respect it has been a busy Government—selling our State-owned assets introducing rank changes to our education system—and all of a sudden this piece of legislation lands in the Committee. We have not seen it for some time and we have to ask the question around its commencement: why is it all of a sudden here?Why is this what we would call relatively mundane piece of legislation which has support from both sides of the House all of a sudden arriving here in Parliament? It is because—for the people at home who do not understand what is going on here—John Banks is not here any more and this Government cannot pass any of the legislation that it really wanted to pass. That is really the bigger game here. That is what is going on. Because John Banks is not here you will not see anything go through this House that the Government can just squeak through with its one vote majority and that is the likes of selling our assets changes to housing and changes to our education system. You will not see much of that any more because this Government no longer has the numbers to make sure that that kind of legislation gets through. For a long time now this Government has relied on the votes of John Banks and Peter Dunne to get all that kind of controversial legislation through. But no longer will we see that—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Clauses 1 and 2.KRIS FAAFOI: —because the vote of Mr Banks is no longer here.That goes back to the commencement date and why I say that this is coming in far too late. This is a piece of legislation that is very important and that has cross-party support. As you have seen there are a number of changes that the Minister has made in Supplementary Order Papers post the select committee process that members on this side of the Chamber are very very happy to support. So you would think that because of that relatively good working relationship on this side of the Chamber this piece of legislation would be shuffled through pretty quickly by this Government. We have had this legislation there for the benefit of protecting the reputation of the legislation that governs our companies. But no the commencement date will not be for some time because this piece of legislation has sat quite a way down on the Order Paper and its commencement date will be some time into the future. It could have been quite sadly passed much much sooner.We wanted it to be passed much much sooner again because of the protections it gives to our firms to protect the reputation that they have around the world. I have a number of small businesses in my electorate. They trade—I will not mention names because they will not enjoy that—and they go out there to the global market and because they are from New Zealand the people they work with are quite happy to work with them because of the reputation that New Zealand businesses have. As I said earlier there has been concern both domestically and internationally because like in a lot of other countries around the world there has been a fair degree of people using the reputations of firms in countries like New Zealand and taking advantage and using shell companies. So to protect the reputation of New Zealand firms—and I think quite rightly and with the support of this side of the House—the Hon Simon Power in 2010 began work for this legislation to be improved. That is right I did say 2010. So it was quite some time ago and National has had quite a high degree of support from this side of the House but it was not until 18 June 2014 that we have got to this stage where this can get through the Committee stage.I think that is a sad state of affairs where the Government does not think that this kind of legislation is very important more so for those smaller businesses that use our reputation for doing business to ensure that they can get business. Those kinds of firms are very strong around the world. They could have had a lot more confidence in going overseas and selling their products overseas with more protection from this piece of legislation months or years earlier had this Government given this piece of legislation priority. I think it is a sad state of affairs in terms of when this piece of legislation will commence. As I say it could have happened much sooner only this busy Government was doing much more controversial things and now it has got to the stage where because of the mathematical realities of the House non-controversial pieces of legislation will now be coming through the House.I just want to talk about some of the things that will commence under this bill. I want to talk about clause 4 where under section 131 of the Companies Act I understand it will be a criminal offence if a director breaches his or her duty where a director knows that a breach is seriously detrimental on the interests of the company or where under section 135 he or she breaches his or her duty knowing that a breach will result in serious loss to the company’s creditors. I am trying to think of a situation where that might be the case. It certainly might be the way that Ministers have carried out their dealings with the likes of say Solid Energy because we certainly know that the direction given to that company had a detrimental effect on that company and now it finds itself in a very tricky position of trying to work itself out of a serious amount of debt because of the pressure that this Government put it under. It will be interesting to see how this piece of legislation would lie over that kind of situation because in that situation the directors of that company were put under a fair amount of pressure to increase their gearing to make sure the Government could get a better return from what was a well-performing State-owned enterprise but is now one that is struggling to quite an extreme extent and has to force many lay-offs. That is the kind of management of our State-owned enterprises that we have had from this type of Government.In terms of the title and commencement on this side of the Chamber we say that it has happened far too late. We have made requests to the Minister as to why this piece of legislation which deals with criminality in a corporate sense was not given the same priority from the Government in terms of the other legislation that deals with criminality at a street level. Again we think there is a degree of dog whistling going on over there from a Government that said it was business-friendly but really in this sense it has not walked the talk and has not given those smaller companies the protection of the reputation of doing trade in New Zealand. I think our businesses may have suffered to a degree because of that. The Government has not given what it calls its natural supporters the protection of this legislation which could have happened much much earlier.I do again offer the Minister in the chair the Minister of Commerce in the dying stages of this Committee stage the opportunity to explain the Government’s position on that. Again I am not so hopeful of getting a response.