Collins Judith: Charities Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Collins Judith: Charities Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:19941] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I was a member of the Social Services Committee who looked at this bill and I heard a tremendous number of submissions from a lot of people who came along to give their time to talk about what a silly bill it was. But there was a good thing about that committee that Georgina Beyer chaired and she chaired it very well too I should say—I like to give credit where it is due; I do not often get the chance to give credit in this place. [ 
Interruption 
] Mr Hide asked me to say nice things and I tell Mr Hide that I am going to do that. 
One thing that happened was that the Labour Party members on the select committee were very shocked that everybody who came along to submit on this bill submitted against it. Those people submitted against it for the very reason that this bill which is called the Charities Bill is not particularly charitable. It is all about trying to remedy a wrong that does not actually exist. The Government of course thinks that the great wrong is that there is not enough money going into Government coffers or enough people being employed to regulate the ordinary everyday lives of people who volunteer their time and money—and many times their family’s work—to be able to help people in need. 
We know there are lots and lots of charities in this country. There seem to be thousands of them. Most charities are not huge organisations. Many charities are actually very small organisations and the provisions for charitable purposes have been determined by the Inland Revenue Department ever since there has been an Inland Revenue Department. There cannot be a more powerful body in this country than the Inland Revenue Department when it comes to having powers to investigate look at and take money out of people’s bank accounts wages and almost everything else. 
Yet this Government which is utterly driven by a politically correct agenda and utterly incapable of seeing the wood for the trees is utterly incapable—as Mr Tamihere has said—of being able to relate to ordinary New Zealanders who go about their business who do not commit crimes and who pay their taxes. The Government is utterly incapable of understanding that. This Government feels that any people in charge of any money not actually their own must be about to steal it. 
That is the way this Government has acted. It has acted by wanting to over-regulate those bodies to the point we found out that even someone like Sue Bradford who is a very good hard-working member of the select committee would not be able to be on the board of one of those charities because of her previous time as an almost professional protester—no not professional but a person who would have been protesting. 
Sue Bradford 
: Radical protester. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: She was a radical protester as she likes to be called. Well this is a House of Representatives and everyone can be represented here even radical protesters. She is someone whom I would not mind having on a board I was on and I think she would be quite happy to be on that board but we found out that she would have been stopped by this silly Government that simply wanted to say it did not trust anyone. 
Now of course we have found out the real reason for it all. Apart from the fact that the Government wants to rip money out of the system and take money out of the little charities that pay for things like school uniforms or sports equipment for kids who need it and for poor schools in poor areas the Government wants to rip money out and control the system itself. The Government wants to get rid of those little charities and organisations. [ 
Interruption 
] I ask that member opposite who keeps screaming out why she did not give her speech as though it actually had some meaning. I really did think before that I should have been seeking a point of order and suggesting that maybe the Minister could stand up and be given the chance to redo her speech. But next time she should sound as though she means it because the speech she gave earlier sounded as though it had been written by some flunky who did not know any better. 
Of course we understand that this Government is so much better at talking about charity and about what it wants to do for people than it is at actually doing it. And there is no other example really that is quite as good at the moment as the example of the attitude of Government members in their charity towards Mr John Tamihere. That is certainly an act of charity towards Mr Tamihere—and it is one of those stunning acts of charity that the women members of the Labour caucus will stand by and support a man who has referred to them in such a disgusting way as Mr Tamihere did. Those members do not have enough in them to stand up and fight for their rights so they leave it to me—a National Party MP—to have to stand up for them. Well what sort of attitude is that? Fortunately I am a pretty charitable person and I am happy to stand up for them if they are too weak and emotionally crippled to be able to do it for themselves. I will stand up for them because they definitely need it. 
Peter Brown 
: Are you charitable to tossers? 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: Mr Brown is asking me whether I am charitable—and under this bill I am thinking in a charitable way—to tossers. Well I say to Mr Brown that it is not really a term I would normally use. I would not like to call any member of this House by such a term but unfortunately Mr Tamihere does. We have to understand that there is a certain amount— 
Rodney Hide 
: Who said “tosser”? 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: I think there are a couple of members who did but I tell Mr Hide that we will not go into that. 
I will seek in the Committee stage to bring about a change to some parts of the bill. One of the changes I will seek to deal with is the fact that the Charities Commission—which will of course be made up of Labour Party flunkies—will have to try to minimise compliance costs. We know as people who have been involved in small businesses that it is the compliance costs that grind people down in business and they will grind people in those charities down. Generally the people we are talking about are not people who are financial wizards. They are often mums and dads who help out at Scouts and all sorts of organisations like that. Yet here they are being treated in this bill as if they are some form of great big business. 
The compliance cost in the bill is something that Mr Tamihere has talked a lot about. He has said a lot about small-business compliance cost yet the Government will not see its way to be charitable towards the very people who spend their time and money raising money for other people—which is a very charitable thing to do. 
I cannot understand why this Government thinks that the Charities Commission will have more power and ability to deal with the deceit or criminal actions of people involved in charities than the Inland Revenue Department and the police have. We know there is a shocking shortage of police particularly in south Auckland and particularly in Manurewa which is in the Hon George Hawkins’ electorate. There is a shocking shortage of police there yet we have a bill here that says maybe that is why the Government is going to have a Charities Commission. 
We know that the Charities Commission will always be full of Labour Party flunkies while Labour is in power—but fortunately that will not last long—and we will see a huge amount of cost. We can just imagine how many trips overseas there will be for those commissioners to look at charities. How many little people will be paying for that? How many school uniforms will be lost because of those costs? How many people will be told: “I’m sorry; we won’t be able to fund your child going to Scouts this year because the money has had to go in compliance costs.”? Charities and the Charities Bill should be all about getting the money out to the people who need it not about building a huge administration in order to stop money going where it needs to be going. 
I think that almost every—in fact every—submission I heard on this bill was against it. Government members eventually listened to some of those views but what they could not get their head around was the fact that it was a bill nobody wanted except for themselves and their officials. 
Unfortunately the Minister who was previously in charge of this bill simply could not understand what was actually in the bill or how it would work. I understand that the Labour Government may have some trouble with understanding how charities work but if the Greens can understand it why can the Government not understand it? I mean everyone else here can understand it. 
The exception is United Future members I think who will do what they always do and help out the Government on anything tricky. That is a real shame because I have received submissions from interfaith people saying: “Please—we’ve got a bill here that’s going to set how we have a board. We don’t always have boards.” Yet the Government will be dictating through this Parliament who will be in charge of the very church charities that United Future says it is happy to support. 
In essence this bill is unnecessary. It imposes a load of extra compliance costs on charities and the money should be going where it is needed.