Bayly AndrewHon ANDREW BAYLY (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to be talking on the Companies (Address Information) Amendment Bill. First of all I want to acknowledge and congratulate the Hon Dr Deborah Russell for having a bill pulled—I presume this is her first?Hon Dr Deborah Russell: No second.Hon ANDREW BAYLY: Oh second?Hon Dr Deborah Russell: Yeah.Hon ANDREW BAYLY: Oh that's outright greedy! I've never had one pulled in the nine years—and I'm now going in my 10th year—it's just unbelievably lucky that you've had two!But anyway I'm glad you acknowledge Sarah Pallett who—obviously she was the one who filed the bill initially and we all know the game and it's good that you picked this up. I also wanted to acknowledge Laura Trask who had a very similar bill in the ballot and I understand that she withdrew that bill once this one was drawn which is a proper thing to do really and I congratulate her on doing that.Of course this is a very worthy issue and the member has talked about the issues. I think particularly we've heard many stories specifically around women being stalked but as the member noted it's not exclusive to women. But I think we are very mindful of that fact: that people can use this information as they can use other sources of public information to identify where people live to actually do serious harm in terms of chasing them hounding them and all the other things that go with that. So I think from that perspective I've got to congratulate the intent of this bill. It is a worthy bill; it is an excellent bill that ordinarily would be considered and should be considered by this House as a member's bill.But we're not going to support the bill and the reason why is not because we don't find the bill is worthy; we do. It's as I've said—Hon Dr Duncan Webb: If you say you've got a bill coming!Hon ANDREW BAYLY: Interesting I've just been interjected by the former Minister of commerce and I've just got to say that I find it staggering that the previous Government didn't take the opportunity to progress this issue when it was in Government and particularly that Minister who progressed many things—and in fact I'm having to tidy up some of them at the moment. But you should have had the opportunity—sorry Mr Speaker; the member the former Minister of commerce should have taken the opportunity to pursue this and it's interesting—I see him sitting there showing outrage. But this is a worthy thing and I think it's something that the Minister of commerce should have pursued.I just want to go into why we're not going to support the bill. But I just want to look at the main provision. So clause 4 of the bill amending section 215 of the Companies Act allows replacing a director's residential address with a service address in public records provided new section 360D conditions are met. Obviously that is a fair bit of discretion around: when does someone really have safety concerns and when might they be using this provision to escape the attention of creditors or other reasons legitimate or otherwise? So it is a test that is somewhat subjective and I'm not denying the situation that there are people who are sometimes very much in danger—that's not the issue. All I'm noting is that the test is somewhat subjective as set out in new section 360D.The second one is specifically around 360D. There is a requirement for a process requiring a personal application risk declaration alternative address been specified and a fee applicable across multiple companies. So that's obviously the process that people go through and then of course the prescribed fee which I'm not sure that's been set but obviously that would come with some cost. Whether this is something you should be charging for I'm not quite sure given we're talking about safety matters. It's one of those interesting things that we would be asking the Companies Office to make a change for the reason of protecting someone's safety and seeking to charge for that rather than other aspects where sometimes we don't charge for this type of registration. It's an interesting point.But there are some reasons why we see a little bit of concern with this bill. The first one is—and I've noted before—it is principally around meeting safety concerns and the member introducing the bill talked about that tonight. It overlooks the critical issues relating to privacy for both directors and shareholders and actually increases probably inadvertently the potential risk of identity theft and fraud. I'm not sure whether the member has thought about it in the wider context of it but by moving to this arrangement by removing one of the identifiers of a particular individual who might be a director it does create the opportunity for theft and fraud. The limited focus may not adequately protect against fraud and privacy. That's the first thing. There are times when people also may want to have their addresses withheld not only for safety reasons but quite separately for privacy reasons and of course this bill does not address that issue at all.The second one is that—Hon David Parker: You could fix that at select committee.Hon ANDREW BAYLY: —there's a lack of logic Mr Parker and I'll tell you what the lack of logic is. The lack of logic is: if we accepted this solution to this important issue and we allowed people to strike off their residential address the lack of logic is that if they are a shareholder—and for many smaller entities the directors are also the shareholder of those companies—the shareholder residential address would not be changed under the provisions in this bill and that is rather much of a glaring issue. I don't know whether the member thought about this further. It seems inconceivable that we're going to achieve much of an outcome where you go through the process under new section 360D strike off your residential address as a director but guess what! When you're listed as a shareholder just as accessible your residential address is also highlighted there. So this bill does not adequately address that one.The third element is that the bill lacks provisions for a clear differentiation of directors sharing the same name posing difficulties in terms of identifying who people are. So just before I came to the House I went to the Companies Office and I put in Brian Smith"—and by the way I think it went to 51 pages but I've just printed off a few of them. So here we are: I've got Brian Smith lives at 394 Vaile Road Reporoa. Now we've got the next one Brian Smith—Smith Brian actually—7 Darcy Place Massey Waitakere City. Third Brian: Smith Brian—Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Point of order. I'm just aware that there is a convention in this House not to identify individuals and certainly not identify individuals' personal details.Hon ANDREW BAYLY: Well these are on the Companies Office.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): I'll just take some advice on that as I was thinking that could be an issue. I wonder if the member could give us some assurance about whether that information is in the public domain and/or whether he got assurances from the people whose addresses he just read out.Hon ANDREW BAYLY: It's come straight from the Companies Office. Anyway I think Mr Speaker I've made my point—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): I think the point's been made if you could just move on from reading the addresses. Hon ANDREW BAYLY: So what I'm saying is that as soon as you remove the address identifier—so we end up with 51 pages full of Brian Smiths all spelt with the same B-R-I-A-N.I think the fourth element to this is that inevitably what will happen is people will see people taking advantage of this clause and then actually moving to the recommendation that everyone should strike off their name and we will end up with inevitably I think over time people's addresses not being made available at all.Look I agree with the member—it is an important issue—but the reason we are going to oppose it is that we will be introducing a revised Companies Act which will include amendments to it which will address this issue in particular. I think the big issue is around: how do you distinctly and uniquely identify specific directors so that people are accountable particularly as the member quite rightly pointed out where people choose quite deliberately phoenix companies where they have companies—particularly we see it unfortunately often in the construction sector—they get into trouble they close them down open them up same name but with a different date on it and continue to operate.People do manipulate the Companies Office records by either putting their name—it might be Brian Smith it might be Brian D. Smith it might be Brian Daniel Smith it might be a slightly changed address because people who deliberately try to avoid detection and identification use those things they may even try and change the Brian from an "i" to a "y". I think we will be introducing changes that will specifically deal with those unique identifiers. That is why we are not supporting this bill."