Edmonds BarbaraBARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): It's always great to be collegial across the House so you're welcome. I take lollies at any time during the House for snacks.The reason why I missed my call is I was so speechless. My breath was taken away by one of the previous Ministers and his challenge to me about making sense of this particular bill particularly as I wasn't a member in the previous select committee. But what you learn as a policy official—which is part of my past life—is that the fundamentals of policy come back to three very basic questions: what is the problem you are trying to fix what are the options to fix that problem that you are trying to fix and what are the next steps? It was really clear through the discussion today through other members of the House that there was a problem that was identified by the IMF. It had come through the National Government. It had gone through the Labour Government. Now we're here today on this bill.So I would like to echo the points made by the Minister of Finance that there are areas of technical policy that are not at the forefront of the public's mind but which are intended to make sure that our systems such as plumbing run smoothly. And again having come from a policy background we see this often in remedial and omnibus bills. Other examples on the Order Paper include the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill and the Secondary Legislation Bill. But I come back to the point that it's important to stress that although some of these bills are technical in nature and they're not attractive enough to have big media bells and whistles they are extremely important for our everyday lives—such as EFTPOS such as credit cards such as the financial system that underpins that. So I acknowledge the select committee for your work in the previous term officials from the Reserve Bank and the 10 submitters who took their time to submit on the bill. So more specifically to the bill—because yes this is a new bill for me being a new member in this Parliament. So what I did is I actually looked at the purpose clause and then what I did is try to relate the elements in the bill back to the purpose clause so I could understand what this bill is intending to do. So if I look at the purpose clause which is clause 3 of the bill subclause 1(a) it says to promote the maintenance of a sound and efficient financial system". I understand by the commentary by the select committee that they included the new words of "(including by responding to threats to the stability of or confidence in the whole or a significant part of the financial system);". Now I understand that the reason why the select committee put that particular element in the bill is because those particular words have been threaded throughout the bill but hadn't linked back to the purpose. So I congratulate the select committee for picking up on that point and bringing it back into the bill.If you look at clause 3(1)(b) the second part the purpose of the bill is to "avoid significant damage to the financial system that could result from problems with an FMI"—a financial markets instrument—"an operator of an FMI or a participant of an FMI". So what part of the bill helps to make that purpose clause come to life? It's Part 2. That is the information-gathering powers and investigative powers all for the ongoing oversight and monetary of the FMI sector and examples in the bill include clause 15. So you look to clause 15. Part 2 is the "Regulator's powers to require information reviews and independent reports". Clause 15 then enforces that through offences. So clause 15 is an "Offence for failure to give information". Then look at clause 17. That is an "Offence for failure to obtain review". Again that links back to that second part of the purpose of the bill to avoid significant damage to the financial system by including offences and an offences regime.I turn to the third purpose of the bill. The third purpose of the bill in clause 3(1)(c) is to "promote the confident and informed participation of businesses investors and consumers in the financial markets;". So where does that relate back to in the bill? What I found was not only in Part 2 the information-gathering powers in the regimes which shows enforcement but if I could also point to clause 37 whereby "Operators must publish copy of rules of designated FMI"—why is that important? So for transparency's sake you want the public or a consumer to be able to go to a particular place to be able to look at what those rules are. Clause 37 says that it must be "maintained … on behalf of the operator … is publicly available free of charge" and the really key part here is "on an Internet site". So it puts the onus back on the operators to ensure that it's transparent and it's there for the public to be able to review and to see.But then you also look at clause 40 which is that an "Operator of designated FMI may apply for [a] rule change". They can't just change these rules willy-nilly. They can't just change their internet sites and therefore change the game on consumers. What they have to do is go back to the regulator and provide "(a) a copy of the proposed rule change; and (b) a description of the rule change and the reasons for the change; and (c) the time at which the operator would like the change to come into effect."—so again another sort of backstop or safety net for our consumers.So then I go back to the purpose clause again. I look at the fourth purpose part in clause 3(1)(d) which is to "promote and facilitate the development of fair efficient and transparent financial markets." Again it's those policy analysis details coming back in. So where does this link to in the bill? I look to clause 40 and that was again—which is in Part 3 which I've just discussed where you need to go back to the regulator for those rule changes. Then if you look deeper into the bill in clause 89 "Making FMI operator subject to statutory management"—now that's really important. If for any reason an operator comes under the statutory manager the Governor-General may by Order in Council—under clause 89—on the advice of the Minister given in accordance with a recommendation of the regulator declare that they're subject to a statutory manager appoint one or more persons as a statutory manager of that operator and the order must specify the date on which it comes into force and also appoint two or more statutory managers. The key thing to that is that it is through an Order in Council. An Order in Council is gazetted weekly. So again there are layers of transparency that come through this bill which again fall back to the initial problem that the IMF recognised.So I think I've given a well enough contribution to prove to one of the previous Ministers of Revenue that there is definitely competence on this side of the House to be able to pick up a bill that they're not necessarily on a select committee of fall back on to the policy analysis of "What is the problem we are trying to fix? What are the options to fixing that problem? And what are the next steps?" So the next steps in this bill are that we see this through the committee of the whole House and I look forward to any potential Supplementary Order Papers that the Opposition on the other side of the House might lay down. I recommend this bill to the House."