Leary IngridINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm so grateful to get this burning question off my chest. Actually I've got two questions but I am going to limit my contribution this time to a question about overseas donee status but I also will have a question later on about gift exempt bodies as well. And the reason I raise this—and I'll refer the Minister to clause 64 of the bill—is that this relates to creating a charity with overseas donee status whereby they're able to claim tax benefits such as a donation tax credit for their donation. Schedule 32 of the Income Tax Act lists organisations that have that status.Now I know from my previous role with the British Council which was a registered charity how difficult it is to get charitable status let alone be able to get a tax exemption for an overseas donee. In some cases it can take up to 18 months I believe but in this case it seems that this particular charity—the Emergency Alliance—has been granted overseas donee status very quickly; in fact quite soon after the election on 26 October 2023. So I do have some questions for the Minister about this.One of my reactions is that this seems like a good thing because this relates to Gaza and it relates to being able to get aid into Gaza at a time shortly before there were questions I believe about the only international organisation that was able to get humanitarian aid in and there were questions internationally about whether they would be supported. So it's really interesting to me that New Zealand has supported the Emergency Alliance. But there are also risks to this because there are other charitable organisations that would also like to get donee status which is very relevant to this Act because this is around what process was followed what transparency is there what risks were looked at and why did the Government decide towards this particular donee status to the Emergency Alliance.Now I looked up online—I had not heard of this particular charity. It seems to be an amalgamation of eight different charities and it has certain criteria that it says it must meet including that it must be responding to international events that are of a very particular magnitude and that there must be efficient ways of working and so on. So it looks like on a quick Google search this is a good thing to do. But we did hear in the House today a lot of speeches about what's happening in Gaza about the need for a ceasefire immediately. This is something that's very much on the minds of New Zealanders. And I know that lots of New Zealanders have contributed to other charitable organisations. They will be wanting to understand why this particular charity Emergency Alliance has been able to get this donee status.And if we look at the recommendation from the select committee which I did not sit on and that's why this has peaked my interest because I don't have the background to it but they recommended inserting clause 2(14C) into the bill so that the Emergency Alliance would be deemed to have had overseas donee status beginning on 26 October 2023. Now that's very soon after the election. So that's a couple of weeks perhaps.So I'm very interested to know what advice did the Minister seek—that's my first question. What assurances can the Minister give to other charitable organisations that they have been treated fairly? What criteria did the Minister use? What risk analysis did he apply so that we're not in a situation where we find out later that there were risks around this charity? And does this set a precedent in his mind for other organisations to be able to apply for this status? And if so what are the criteria that they would need to fulfil in order to be able to get the same status? Because it's great to be able to respond quickly to these types of events but we know that when there are a discretionary types of decisions and when due process is not followed it can also lead to uncertainty and a sense of unfairness for other charities. So I'm really keen to hear from that and I will come back with another question later about gift-exempt bodies. But I can see the Minister is dying to answer my question.