McClay Todd: Financial Markets Conduct Bill — First Reading 
McClay Todd: Financial Markets Conduct Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:678;Page:876] 
TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 It gives me pleasure to rise and speak on the Financial Markets Conduct Bill. Can I thank the Minister of Commerce for his speech to the House and the direction he has led. This is a phone book full of certainty for New Zealand investors. There are 561 pages in it and I very much look forward to it arriving at our Commerce Committee and to our starting our work. 
Can I recognise and agree with much of what the Hon Clayton Cosgrave said earlier. Can I thank him for the career-limiting comments he made about me and can I say that I am sure that the committee will work together to the greatest degree possible to make sure we do the best job we can on behalf of New Zealanders. 
What is this piece of law this significant piece of law reform about? Well it is about ensuring that investors are provided with understandable and accurate information to guide their decision making. That is extremely important. All of us in this House will have had constituents approach us over the last 3 years email us and write letters to us and bring forward some very sad stories about the way that they have invested and what has happened to their investments and about how this has called into question some of their future retirement plans and otherwise. I know that all members of the House want to do whatever they can to work through this and to provide much more certainty ensuring the governance arrangements in respect of financial products available to the public are robust and minimising unnecessary compliance costs for those raising capital and promoting innovation and effective competition. Very clearly I think it is important that this bill focuses on some of the difficulties that have been experienced by New Zealanders in the past. 
I want to recognise that over the last 3 years a significant change in this area—the FMA or the Financial Markets Authority—came into effect. One of the first things the Financial Markets Authority did when it came into law was to act upon somebody who had been acting unscrupulously and trying to promote products and sell things to New Zealanders where they were not able to back that up and it is good to see that it was able to provide greater information to New Zealanders around that. In fact Mr Cosgrove is correct: it is not possible to legislate a zero-risk environment in this respect but what is important is that all New Zealanders are given the opportunity to have full confidence in the regulations and to go out and seek information themselves so that they can make an educated decision around their investment and where they seek this information they can rely upon it. 
I do not want speak for much longer because I am quite keen for this to get to the committee and for it to get out to the public for wider consultation and submissions. But I will just say that a couple of parts of the bill that I think will be important will be introducing civil pecuniary penalties of up to $1 million for individuals or up to $5 million for companies—that is going to be important there—extending the maximum period for prohibition by the Financial Markets Authority or the Registrar of Companies on a person managing companies from 5 to 10 years where they have not acted appropriately establishing licensing regimes for specific financial sector participants introducing stricter requirements for management of investment schemes and introducing a new system to regulate the securities exchanges. As I said it is a very important piece of legislation. Well done to the Minister for being able to have this bill promoted up the Order Paper. We of course will do our job diligently when it gets to the committee. Thank you.