Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to be talking on the first reading of the Charities Amendment Bill. This is a new bill put up by the Minister the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan. I'm not sure how many bills she's put up but—Hon Michael Wood: More than you.ANDREW BAYLY: —no doubt it is good. I've had two bills Mr Wood go through the House so I may or may not have had more than the Minister actually but thank you for that little snarky comment.We will be opposing this bill as my good colleague noted. Of course this is a really important piece of legislation because it is a really important set of organisations who do fantastic work in our communities. It's interesting you know: 114000 not-for-profit organisations spread across New Zealand taking in just under $20 billion of income and paying out most of that just over $18 billion in terms of supporting vulnerable New Zealanders and obviously quite significant assets that underpin it.But it's interesting looking at the breakdown of charities operating in 2021 by far the biggest component was education training and research—just under 6000 charities Mr Speaker and I know that you have a very close association with some of these charities. Religious activities Mr Speaker was the next highest component—and again I know that you have a very strong interest in some of those. They're about 5000. Then you start going down through arts and culture community development—health actually is amazingly low at only 2000 which I am rather surprised about especially given the dire and perilous state that we find our health system in today after five years of shocking mismanagement and restructuring by a Government who shouldn't be restructuring anything in the middle of a COVID crisis—but let's move on. Social security sport and recreation and then it pretty much drops off after that. I think it employs about 160000 people. They're hard-working people who freely give their time to their communities and we should welcome and celebrate them for what they do for our communities.This bill should've been a substantial change and unfortunately we've ended up with a tweak. I think that's wrong and I suspect many people in this House are disappointed that what was previously set out as a major plank for the 2017 election for the Labour Party turned out to be a whimper. This so-called first-principles review—Maureen Pugh: Where is it?ANDREW BAYLY: Yes Ms Pugh I'm not sure where it is. I don't even know where to find such a thing. But that's what should've happened in this bill because it is so important as I've said before. That first-principles review according to the manifesto if I'm not mistaken was going to be undertaken by an independent sector or expert in the charities sector. Well what we get—ha ha! We got the Department of Internal Affairs who basically already are overseeing the activities of the charities sector anyway. So that's sort of like saying Let's go and review ourselves." I find this amazing. So the first-principles independent review has turned into a bit of a sham. I think if we had a more discerning Minister who knew more and wanted more she might have said to that sector "Let's get this right." It is a shame that it's taken five years—half a decade—to get to this point where we can finally talk about this little bill. I think that is a missed opportunity—a huge missed opportunity. As my colleague Maureen Pugh said we should've taken the time to get it right. I don't know how much more time it should've taken to get right but I'm sure Maureen Pugh if she's lucky enough ever to have hands on a portfolio like this would get through it in a dose of salts.There are some interesting things: the appeal process going to the Taxation Review Authority instead of the High Court. I think we should acknowledge the Minister. She talked about the appeal process taking up to two months. The big issue about that of course is we've got a bit of a backlog in the High Court—you know that's half a decade of mismanagement in the court system unfortunately. It all sounds good—extend it to two months but if you can't get an appeal; you can lodge it but if you can't get an outcome for probably at least 12 months—Maureen Pugh: Years.ANDREW BAYLY: —if you're lucky—years—putting it out to 12 months is probably impractical and probably unreasonable.So these are the sorts of changes that you know look sound good. Some people will look at it and go "It's OK." but I'm just not sure it's going to deliver the quantum leap that this sector's been crying out for. So it is with some regret that we have to oppose this bill. There's no doubt we'll work through the process during the select committee. Hopefully we can knock it into shape—needs a bit of intellectual grunt I think which Maureen Pugh will bring to the part and our other colleagues on this side. But let's hope we can get to a better outcome so we don't end up getting into a place where we are squabbling over it and not doing a good thing for a sector that does so much for so many people in New Zealand all free of charge of course. That's why we need to get this bill right."