Lee Melissa: Financial Service Providers (Pre-Implementation Adjustments) Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Lee Melissa: Financial Service Providers (Pre-Implementation Adjustments) Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 22 June 2010. Volume:664;Page:11965. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MELISSA LEE (National) 
: 
 The Committee stage of the Financial Service Providers (Pre-Implementation Adjustments) Bill was going so well. As we were all speaking we had agreed that the Commerce Committee worked very well and cooperatively with the sheer volume of paperwork we had to get through. Some 93 submissions came through the select committee and 42 were heard. 
I start off by commenting on the statement of the previous speaker Clare Curran. She said something like anyone can be a financial adviser at the moment. I remind that member that before National became the Government Labour was in Government for 9 years. We had 30 finance companies fail in the last 4 years and the model we are working in is the Financial Advisers Act 2008. Labour passed that Act and we are trying to amend it. 
The committee worked really well. I know Lianne Dalziel worked really hard. She was not in the Chamber when I gave her a compliment but I acknowledge once again the sheer amount of work she did. I thank the officials who are here. I do not know how they did it but they managed to meet all of our deadlines and I appreciate all their hard work. I thank them very much. 
On the back of the global credit crisis encouraging savings to create a greater pool of capital in New Zealand from which credit can be accessed so interest earnings can be retained within New Zealand will enable us to build a stronger economy and a stronger export sector which will be good for New Zealand. This National-led Government is trying to encourage New Zealanders to move from consumption to investment and to bring them from spending money to saving money which will strengthen our economy. We needed good financial advice but we did not quite get it. We are trying to make sure that we have solid financial advice for the mums and dads who made bad choices because they got really bad advice in the past. We need to make sure they have confidence in the advice so they can invest their money and have something for their children and their grandchildren. 
One of the things I talked about earlier was the definition of “financial adviser” but now we are moving on. One of the things we clarified was the whole territorial scope for the financial advisers that this bill covers. When financial advice is given in New Zealand this bill makes sure that those people give good advice—I think I got that right; I hope I am reading this right. I think Lianne Dalziel talked about carving out a whole lot of things. This bill is not about protecting people who are sophisticated or who work in the financial sector and know how to do it. We wanted to know what harm reduction we were going to provide through this bill what mischief we were trying to remedy and who we would be protecting. This bill is about protecting unsophisticated investors who lost a lot of money. Let us hope we do not have that situation once again.