Bradford Sue: Charities Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Bradford Sue: Charities Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:19980] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 I would like to take a short call in the final stage of this debate firstly to acknowledge everybody in the House everybody on the Social Services Committee and the officials who were involved in putting the Charities Bill together. Although I feel really sad about the opportunity we have missed with this bill I feel at the same time—as we saw on the select committee and as we can see in the debate tonight—that MPs from both sides of the House have engaged with the debate and recognised the significance both of the bill and of the community sector it deals with. That is a good thing. 
But I think it is a real pity that the Government in the end did not have the courage to accept that the fundamentals of the bill were flawed from the start and in particular that its very beginnings and very flawed consultation processes meant that it was not going to build at any point the kind of trust needed between the Government and the sector to make something like this really work well. 
We had submissions hundreds of them from all parts of the sector—from what I would call the very conservative end of church groups mission groups priests and nuns right through to groups at the other end of the scale the sort of groups that I might have come from. We also had groups like the Tindall Foundation which is probably respected by every party in this House as a very significant philanthropic body in this country. Tindall Foundation representatives came to us and said that the best thing we could do with this bill was to chuck it out and start again and to learn from the experiences of places like the UK and not be so silly as to go ahead with a bill that to make work we would have to amend and amend in almost every clause. In fact that is what has happened so we have this piece of miscegenation and that is a real pity. 
Even after the select committee had made its rather fumbling amendments the Government restarted a small consultation process which succeeded only in annoying a whole lot of groups around the country a whole lot more because only a few groups were involved and brought to the table. Groups in the north of the country retained a heap of concerns as did others in the South Island. 
There were concerns such as why the meaning of “charitable purpose” had not been dealt with and brought up to date and ongoing concerns about the threat to the independence of the sector particularly in relation to advocacy. There were concerns about the functions of the commission and in particular that its potentially good role in playing a developmental role with the sector would be subsumed into its regulatory and policing role. There were issues relating to the payment of trustees—for example in respect of bogus charities such as some primary health organisations where trustees can receive very substantial payments but the organisations are still seen as not-for-profit. Those kinds of issues that are very real in the sector are just not dealt with by this bill. 
There are ongoing concerns about the lack of detail and the information provided during the consultation processes and I know there has always been an anxiety about what will happen once this bill is passed in terms of its regulation-making powers and what kind of consultation will actually happen at that point. That is really getting down to the nitty-gritty. 
Just recently too there have been changes announced by the Government about proposed alterations to the Financial Reporting Act. Financial disclosure under the Charities Bill will be determined by the Financial Reporting Act’s requirements which are still subject to work by the Ministry of Social Development. What is all that going to mean? We do not know. None of the community sector organisations in the country know. We do not really know what we are passing tonight or what the implications are and will be for the financial reporting requirements of all those groups in the future. 
Just this week we had an announcement by Cabinet on Monday—which stunned many parts of the community sector—of its sudden withdrawal of support for a body whose establishment the sector had spent 5 years working through with the Government. The new national entity had been backed by the Government but in one day that support was withdrawn. I do not know how some of the groups that might have supported this bill may be feeling tonight about the relationship between the Government and the sector. It has certainly not been a fantastic trust-building process. 
There has not been at any point comprehensive analysis of the genuine need for or real cost of the proposed legislation nor has the Government really ever had a clear understanding of what the bill seeks to achieve and how. What we have ended up with tonight is a far cry from what could have been a really empowering and enabling piece of legislation supported by all the different groups and by MPs across the House. I believe it is most unfortunate that the Government still appears not quite to understand what an excellent opportunity it has missed.