Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to be talking on the Companies Office Registers Funding Validation Bill. We will be supporting this bill because as the Minister has quite rightly pointed out it's dealing with an issue of inappropriate use of funds and how they've been applied across a number of registers which I'll talk about in a minute. I do want to acknowledge the Minister for bringing the matter to our attention prior to introducing this bill. So having an understanding about this I think bipartisan support across the House is an important thing at times even if it's a very short notice around when you receive it but at least gaining an understanding of why we're doing things like this. And I do want to acknowledge the Minister on that behalf.This bill as the Minister quite rightly said is dealing with an issue across subsidisation undertaken by the Companies Office. Effectively there's been amounts that have been charged too much in one or two registers administered by the Companies Act which has meant that in other registers there have been an underfunding or an undercharging of people using those registers. As the Minister said there are 16 registers that are affected. They are wide-ranging in terms of different registers. There's the incorporated societies register the financial service providers register limited partnerships disclosure register auditors register retirement villages register friendly societies and credit unions register. So that's not an exhaustive list but it's certainly a number of the registers that have been affected.So this bill as the Minister says does two things. One is it stops the potential of people saying Look you can go to charges previously and it is inappropriate even though they're modest amounts." So we clear the backlog of this and also just make sure that we've got an appropriate basis going forward.In terms of the new bill that the Government's proposing to bring in the Companies (Levies) Amendment Bill which obviously we haven't seen I'm glad that it's going to be subject to full scrutiny because as the Minister just said that means that the element of cross-subsidisation between registers will be permitted under the new bill that the Government is proposing to bring in. That's going to lead to a healthy debate because the principle generally is that funding and charging should represent the service and no more and obviously no less. And what has happened is that hasn't occurred under this arrangement. The use of the term "memorandum account" is one where effectively all the surpluses and losses whatever are accounted for in one account. It's what's meant by the words "memorandum account". And to then apply that back up into the Companies Office that administers 16 different registers that's going to lead to a healthy conversation and debate whether in fact that is appropriate because that starts to cut across principles of charging of Government services.But this one we will support. It needs to be done quickly and appropriately. Thankfully there's not large sums of money involved in it and I think it addresses an issue that has been long-standing. So on that basis I'm happy to see it proceeding through the House today."