Adams Amy: Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Adams Amy: Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 09 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:2133. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 I did want to come down to the Chamber tonight and take a call in the Committee stage of what began life as a bill in my name the Fair Trading (Soliciting on Behalf of Charities) Amendment Bill and has now been so ably picked up by my colleague Michael Woodhouse who is shepherding the bill through this Parliament.  
I want to just reflect a little bit on the genesis of the bill and where it came from the thinking in bringing it to the House and where we find it now with the report back from the Commerce Committee. The original concern for me in this space came about in listening to a report on the radio talking around recent fund-raising or a recent audit into the work of a particular charity—I will not name it out of fairness—where more than 80c in every dollar that had been collected on its behalf never made it anywhere near the charity. Now let me make this really clear. We are not talking about the costs of charity and running organisations. We are not talking about the normal good work and administration overheads that go in within charities. We are talking about 80c in every dollar that hard-working New Zealanders gave never getting anywhere near the charity that the donors thought they were giving to. That is a rort. It is a rort. When I give money to charities and when other members of this House give money to charity as I know we all do we fully expect that the bulk of that money if not all of the money will go to the charity we anticipate will receive it. When I started looking into the area though I found actually that in some cases the problem was worse. In a number of situations with what are often called “chuggers” on the street the charity muggers 100 percent of the funds—100 percent—often did not make it to the charity. It is not unusual for some professional fund-raising firms to keep the full first year of regular donations— 
Andrew Little 
: Well that’s not 100 percent. 
Hon AMY ADAMS 
: —the full first year of donations—before they gave anything to the charity if the donor continued giving past that time. A lot of donors will say: “Well I will give to this charity for a year and then I will support that one and I will support the other.” They have no way of knowing that possibly nothing they have contributed from their salaries has gone to the charity. I have got no issue at all—and I want to make this really clear—with charities using professional fund-raising firms. I have no issue with firms running a profit for business by collecting on behalf of smaller charities that do not see the value in doing it for themselves. That makes perfectly good sense and during the select committee process I sat and heard most of the submissions. Absolutely we can accept that that is a valid approach for charities to take—to not do this in-house. There is nothing in this bill that is intended to stop reputable honest transparent firms contracting to charities to do this work out of house and I absolutely want to make it clear that this is not anti - professional fund-raisers. What this is is anti the element in society that saw this as a way to set up a bank of telephones somewhere get on the phone say: “We are raising money for this. Won’t you give?” and frankly ripping off New Zealanders. This bill is about protecting consumers but it is also—as my colleagues have so ably said in this debate tonight—about putting transparency back into the sector. A number of people came up to me during the process when this bill was being debated and said: “Do you know what? I have lost faith in giving to charities because I don’t know where my money gets to.” There are issues obviously around the auditing and regulation of charities. I think that area has made incredible progress over the last few years and that is certainly well in hand but it left a gap between when you gave your money and the time it ever got anywhere near that registered charity. That is what this bill is intended to address.  
I want to address the last two speakers. Mr Parker suggested that the bill did not do anything and then Mr O’Rourke suggested that frankly it did too much. So the answer to it is this. Initially we tried to provide this in primary legislation to make a very clear approach. During the process what became clear was two things: this did need to be a reactive flexible tool—and I accept that—and primary legislation is never a good place to put in place fixed rules that are going to need to be able to be flexible and reactive. What we also found out though was that actually there was no way to do this without changing the law. There was no way to give the Ministry of Consumer Affairs the power to protect consumers in this area of law without making a change to primary law. So to Mr Parker I would simply say that if you think this bill does nothing you do not understand consumer law. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
Hon AMY ADAMS 
: My apologies Mr Chair. Without this bill there is no ability to protect consumers from the impact of unscrupulous rip-off merchants. I have been very proud to be associated with this bill. I thank the House for its support to date and the givers of New Zealand support it too.