Kerekere ElizabethDr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Tēnā anō koutou ki a koutou. [Thank you all again.] Community voluntary and tangata whenua sector organisations play many different roles including direct provision of services to individuals whānau and groups but also to the environment offering mutual provision of support and self-help by members to members advocacy education and resource and community business. The sector brings many benefits that are often unfunded but are just as important as the official roles they hold. These include the building of civil society; the strengthening of our democracy through the spreading of information; the discussion of topical affairs and taking action on those; contributing to the economy; supporting people who are affected by social economic environmental health or disability problems; job creation; skills development research and development; and the building of culturally diverse and connected communities. The Green Party envisages a strong and independent tangata whenua community and voluntary sector within Aotearoa that contributes in ecologically and socially sustainable ways to enhance our social economic cultural spiritual physical mental and economic wellbeing. We would hope that central and local government will play a constructive enabling role and the sector is generally respected and valued for what it contributes to our society. Describing the 1908 law as incomplete inaccessible and unclear is quite emphatic but still quite an understatement. For those of us who have worked in the community and voluntary sector for many many years along with me you've probably written a whole tonne of convoluted constitutions and worked really hard to make it work within the Act that we've had to deal with. So the Green Party welcomes this new bill that will replace it and acknowledges the report from the Law Commission of 2013. We support using the Māori legal frameworks—Māori? I slipped that in. Modern"—modern legal frameworks and incorporating the case law that has been built up over the years. But we'd just like to comment quickly on three kaupapa. Number one: we're interested that a new legal provision also recommended by the Law Commission is that an incorporated society may express its tikanga now in the constitution. Now many of us always have and the Law Commission—I quote "This express recognition of tikanga or culture in the statute will encourage the courts to give greater weight to it when they're interpreting constitutions." We note however that while targeted stakeholder consultation was done with Māori on this bill no formal process for assessing whether the policies comply with Te Tiriti o Waitangi was done and we'll be encouraging absolutely our Māori organisations to be contributing that whakaaro during the select committee process. Secondly individuals families groups of people often come together to form organisations to carry out purposes not recognised by other institutions and that may oppose existing Government policy or social norms. The risk taking and innovation is a key characteristic of many community organisations. It puts them at the cutting edge of our social and political economic and environmental development and that's really really important. So we want to acknowledge the need for the independence of incorporated societies. No incorporated society should be penalised because they look out for and advocate for their members on the issues that they represent. Given almost every incorporated society will outlive the Government of the day no organisation should have their funding or charitable status threatened because their advocacy challenges the policy of whoever happens to be in power at the time. Thirdly we welcome standardising transparent and clearer financial reporting for incorporated societies—absolutely. I have to say my mother signed me up as a junior member of the Māori Women's Welfare League when I was 15 and the first thing they did was make me the treasurer. I have been doing books for 40 years somewhere or other and depending on what organisation we were in and the scale of our operations the intricacies and the accounting you need to learn or the money you had to pay for sometimes very—maybe if you're lucky—asset rich but usually cash-poor organisations. So we still have a concern that financial reporting will still be a burden for some of those smaller ones and we see that "small" has been defined as operating payments of below $10000 assets of below $30000 and that it is not a donee organisation under the Income Tax Act. We're hoping that rather than the Minister using their powers to change these thresholds later via an order we can do it this time; we can make it really really sensible for those small organisations now. I am so very mindful of those thousands and thousands of volunteers out there who could do without the extra paperwork. When this goes to select committee again we'll be listening for the submissions from the legal and accounting sector to see how much of an actual concern or risk these small organisations are in the scale of things. The community voluntary and tangata whenua sector is the lifeblood of our country. They could do with an incorporated society Act that reflects this. So on that basis I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora."