Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Mihi mahana ki a koe Mr Deputy Speaker. I do not have an awful lot more to say in this contribution but I do want up front to say a couple of things. Firstly I want to acknowledge the new Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector and I want to say on behalf of our community the Cook Islands community that we are very proud to have Alfred Ngaro as the Minister. I am also very keen as Labour's spokesperson for the community and voluntary sector to engage with the new Minister on some very robust discussion about how the community and voluntary sector can be supported better and in particular the longstanding issue of whether the promised review will actually take place—in particular looking at the provisions around charitable purpose which is a discussion that the community and voluntary sector has wanted to have for several years. I look forward to the opportunity to discuss that with the new Minister.There are more than 100000 perhaps 120000 organisations in this country. They help our kids with sport provide community services and support older people. There are environmental groups and surfing groups. There are many many organisations in the community and voluntary sector without which this country would really fail to exist—our kids would not have access to sports and a lot of our environmental projects would not get off the ground without the hard work that our community and voluntary sector does.Of that sector there are about 25000 organisations that are registered charities. There are some benefits for those organisations to be registered. Some of the benefits are of course around their reduced tax obligations. Also if these organisations are wanting to have a relationship with philanthropic trusts or to seek funding from funding entities it has become almost a requirement to have registered charitable status because it implies that there are good processes in place that audit processes occur and that the management and governance structure of these organisations comply with and meet certain standards and that is well and proper.With this particular piece of legislation there have been a couple of slight changes to the Charities Act just to I guess assist these organisations with meeting some of those necessary audit processes. One of the key aims of this particular bill has been around ensuring that people who are officers and office holders of charitable organisations are people of good character and that they have not had convictions under the Tax Administration Act.There is also another change which is largely administrative but is in place for good reason and that is about community organisations that are staffed largely by part-time or volunteer staff. If their registration form to charity services—if the information to ensure that those charities continue to be active and comply is not received within a particular time frame their charitable status will be withdrawn. There was a bit of discussion within the charitable sector about that because there are often some constraints upon small organisations about their ability to maintain a consistency of personnel to actually manage these organisations but this change was thought to be a mechanism to ensure that Charities Services could have a way to withdraw registration that would not place huge compliance costs on organisations.There is one other point I want to comment on and that is around clause 55 which looks at ensuring that there are certain protections to charities from public and malicious and criminal individuals by ensuring that the calibre of people who are actually employed in these services is such that there are certain protections for charities.I am sure my colleagues will continue this discussion further and it has been a great opportunity to speak in the House this evening. Thank you.