Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Firstly can I commend the Government Administration Committee and the work that it has done in ensuring that Part 3 of the Statutes Amendment Bill was able to be examined on its own after some significant issues were raised by the community sector. In that regard I also must commend Hui E! Community Aotearoa for its ability to read through those particular provisions in the Statutes Amendment Bill and flag with the committee that there were some issues that the wider community would be really concerned about. It actually sought to have the ability to submit on that process. I just want to defer to my colleague the Hon Ruth Dyson in that as I go through my contribution on this piece of legislation there are some technical parts to this that I might not get exactly right. I hope that she will take the opportunity to ensure that I do actually have this correct. The Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector Jo Goodhew was right in her comments about ensuring that the community and the charitable sector actually has some trust and confidence in the Charities Registration Board. I think that sits at the heart of why we are here today and why we are discussing this particular piece of legislation because it was a Court of Appeal decision that kind of started the conversation about the ability of certain charities to have the right to appeal decisions. That further provided the opportunity to have some examination of the particular relevant clauses in this bill. I am going to use the departmental report as my reference in my contribution today. I do want to start with the case on appeal which was regarding whether the Foundation for Anti-Aging Research and the Foundation for Reversal of Solid State Hypothermia were eligible to register as charities. Why I start there is that this kind of sits at the heart of a lot of the discussion: the ability to register as a charity and therefore the ability to be deregistered by the Charities Registration Board once you have registration. This along with other examples was cited as one of those cases where the Charities Registration Board would take a particular view about what constituted a charity. In the discussion on this particular bill at the select committee even though it was slightly out of scope of the bill it actually formed an important part of the discussion because sitting at the heart of appeals by charities to the High Court is their ability to remain registered. Those are the reasons that charities actually seek support from the High Court: because they have been deregistered by the Charities Registration Board. The Court of Appeal decision involving a particular submitter to the committee cited an interpretation of sections 59 and 61 of the Act and the consequences of amending section 59 to include appeals against the decision of the chief executive—charities' ability to complain to the Office of the Ombudsmen. Further to that in the departmental report the Department of Internal Affairs notes that the court's observation reinforces its advice about the proposed amendment to section 61 to remove the words or the chief executive" which was going to correct that drafting error but it does not remove charities' right of appeal as one of the submitters stated that it did. But at the heart of this is the level of trust within the sector that that was actually going to be the case. There is an amount of discussion in the sector about charities' ability to appeal any decision that the Charities Registration Board makes and about the high threshold that is required by having to take a case to the High Court. We have heard the examples that were given such as by the National Council of Women of New Zealand where the test in those cases was whether providing services specifically for women and around gender equality for example was actually charitable purpose. If we had had the ability to have a review of charitable purpose as was promised when the legislation—the original legislation—was first enacted then perhaps that level of trust in the community and charitable sector would be such that we would not necessarily be at this point where we are having to take Part 3 out of the Statutes Amendment Bill to examine it separately to provide some opportunity for the sector comment and to have that faith restored which is exactly what we are doing. Further to that there was a real sense that the charitable sector would actually be impacted by not only decisions made by the board but decisions made by the chief executive. During our discussion the department was very clear in its response to say that there are no statutory decisions that are made by the chief executive. However members of the charitable sector—specifically the submitters to the committee—were concerned enough about that that they wanted to ensure that the words "or the chief executive" were removed from section 61. What actually happened in the end was that the decision was made by Labour and the Greens to say that section 61 in its entirety should be removed and that would provide certainty to the sector that those decisions around the chief executive decisions would not go on to impact them. That was in fact done. So for Labour the discussion was around restoring some faith and some trust back into the process for charities. There has been some damage done in that relationship between the charitable sector and the Charities Registration Board and this is seen as an opportunity to actually have that conversation to start restoring that relationship. Just in conclusion I want to say that if we had had the review that we were promised when the Charities Commission was devolved when charity services came on board and the Charities Registration Board took over the process of registering and also deregistering charities we probably would not be needing to discuss this. I am very grateful that Hui E! Community Aotearoa was vigilant enough with the Statutes Amendment Bill to signal that there was a problem and that it wanted to have the opportunity to provide comment on the legislation and therefore actually provided an opportunity for other charities to make that comment. We are supportive of the work of the committee and hopeful that at the Committee stage we will be able to examine these clauses further. Thank you."