Ngaro AlfredHon ALFRED NGARO (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): I rise to take a call on this third reading of the Charities Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge and thank the member Poto Williams for her comments and I do appreciate the support. I think that for both of us as Cook Islanders here in this Parliament where we did not have many representing our communities it is a proud moment for us to be able to do that too.I want to acknowledge the previous Minister the Hon Jo Goodhew who was the Minister for this portfolio for the work that she has done and also acknowledge the Government Administration Committee and the Hon Ruth Dyson as well for the work that they have done. I know that this has been important and we know the importance of that to a lot of our charitable organisations in our communities—27879 are registered charities. But we know there are a whole lot more too that are looking to seek registration—there are about 114000 and 110 not-for-profit institutions.As the previous speaker Poto Williams has said in regard to the role that they play and the importance that they have in civil society up and down our country they make up almost 70 percent of our voluntary fire brigade. They are part of our surf lifesaving clubs. They are part of the Rotaries and Lions. They play such a significant role that really they are the bedrock of our civil society. We do not often use that language but they make a huge contribution as well. We also know that under the not-for-profit institutions their contribution is equivalent to $6 billion which is about 2.7 percent of the total of our GDP so they make not only a physical contribution in the time that they give but also in kind the contribution that they make to that GDP is quite critically important as well.What is also important I suppose is the public trust and confidence in these charities. Our priority there is to increase public trust and confidence so that New Zealanders who are generous by nature know that this resource is being used in a way that does make a difference to our communities. So this pathway to higher trust and confidence in the sector is an important part of the work that is being undertaken as well.Key to maintaining that trust and confidence is to have good regulations surrounding the registration of charities which is a key part of this bill. Even though this bill has three small technical components they are important as well. If I can just make mention of them briefly: there is the introduction of the 20 working day time frame to respond to a notice to provide further information as part of the registration. That becomes important because it means that through that iterative process it will provide greater certainty for all concerned as well. It will reduce the time and cost for registration and applications and will remove the reputational risk that could arise if its application is formally declined. This bill provides for the application to be deemed withdrawn if the entity does not respond to requests for further information as well. Likewise it also makes sense to include the tax evasion and similar offences under section 143B of the Tax Administration Act of 1994 in the list of offences that disqualify someone from being an officer of a registered charity. I am sure that most people or all people would agree that it is important to have the credibility and integrity of our charitable organisations as well.I just wanted to make these brief remarks. I want to acknowledge the role up and down our communities throughout New Zealand that charities and not-for-profit organisations play and again I just want to acknowledge that this is one part that I think is important in providing support for our charities and support for our communities as well. So with that I commend this bill to the House.