Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise in support of this bill. I'd like to commend the Minister for bringing this bill. He did actually say that good things take time. I just hope that the Minister doesn't take another hundred years to actually bring in another good bill to this House while he's actually here.Hon Andrew Little: What was that member's party doing about it?MELISSA LEE: It was a joke. Jamie Strange sort of said he wasn't going to have a go at the National Party but he couldn't resist. Let me actually say this: back in 2015 when this exposure bill was put out by Hon Paul Goldsmith the hard work was already done. It seems typical that this Government likes to tinker and so it has taken so long a whole term of Parliament and now we're in the second term and it's finally coming back. Just like—what was that called?—the Trans-Pacific Partnership that the Government decided to tinker with and called it the CPTPP"; just changed a couple of letters at the front and the rest of the content was pretty much the same.I digress Mr Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: You do.MELISSA LEE: I will get on with it. I guess there are many communities in New Zealand who actually incorporate societies to run whether it's hobbies or whether it's actually a common interest or some real good that they want to do in their communities and the very fact that this piece of legislation this piece of law is so old—1908—and updating a law like this is much needed and hence we are supporting this.Earlier the Minister as well as my colleague Todd McClay had actually said the duties of the officers in charge—the fiduciary duty of any officers in charge—whether it's a company or whether it's actually a trust or even an incorporated society are really really important in that they need to do what they're required to do. And I think updating their responsibilities to make sure that it is aligned with perhaps in terms of what those company directors have the responsibilities that they are given as officers of incorporated society is actually a good thing. And it also provides penalties to deal with breaches of those duties and I think it actually brings seriousness to their responsibilities when they are running incorporated societies.In terms of the conflict of interest one of the things that I questioned when I initially read the bill information was that when anyone is involved in an organisation whether it's actually a company or a trust or anything when there is a conflict of interest they declare it; they actually declare the conflict. But preventing them from being involved in the decision-making process if the committee or the board are not too worried about the conflict of interest because it doesn't impact on the work I think is necessary and I think it's probably a good move to get those people who are often in a very small grouping in an incorporated society. As the Hon Todd McClay actually said there are some societies like rugby clubs that have humungous amounts of income versus some societies that only literally deal with hundreds of dollars or a couple of thousand.I have also been involved in some of these incorporated societies where we were promoting films or ethnic communities where they're dealing with works of promoting cultural events for example. The burden on some of these communities is that when they need to do the accounting or the auditing often the cost to actually deal with those are more expensive or even higher than any income that they might actually earn as a society for the work that they do as volunteers. The work that the Government has actually done in terms of changing the draft bill to where it is now I think is something where I look forward to the submission process. When small societies are not required to comply with the external reporting board accounting standards I think it's actually probably a good thing but I will actually wait for the submissions process to see whether it's actually going to work or whether it already causes a problem at the moment. But I know for a fact that for the organisations that I was involved with they would have much rather not have had the burden of those costs.The very fact that this Act is over a hundred years old—I think it's probably right to say "Let's get on with it." I don't really need to waste too much time of this House and I commend the bill and I look forward to the select committee process where we will hear from the communities who are affected."