Bishop Chris: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBishop Chris: Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9823. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS BISHOP (National): This is my first opportunity to speak on the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill and I want to pay tribute to the Government Administration Committee because my good friend and colleague Sarah Dowie has up until I think today—is that right Ms Dowie?Sarah Dowie: Today.CHRIS BISHOP: She has been the deputy chair—Brett Hudson: Yeah she was rolled today. She was rolled.CHRIS BISHOP: Ha ha! My colleague Brett Hudson says she was rolled today. It is a real shame for Sarah Dowie but for the last 18 months she has been a very good deputy chair of that committee. I think as other colleagues have noted it is a reasonably robust environment on the Government Administration Committee—I have sat on it once or twice—Carmel Sepuloni: Talk about the bill.CHRIS BISHOP: —but she has done a good job. Well I am talking about the good job that the Government Administration Committee did on the bill and I want to talk about Part 2. I was interested in Ms Dowie’s comments about how the select committee considered potentially introducing a savings provision and also a sunset clause into the bill. They are funny old things sunset clauses because of course sunset clauses are clauses in bills that provide that after an expiration of a particular period of time the legislation will cease to be on the statute book. Parliament does not like to legislate for sunset clauses it is fair to say so it was very interesting to hear from Ms Dowie that the Parliament—or at least the committee in this instance—had considered putting a sunset clause into the bill. [Interruption] Thank you Mr Mark Mitchell.I was also intrigued about the savings provision and I was going through the bill—it is only a short bill it has two parts and this is the chunky part as somebody has mentioned—and I was trying to think about what particular savings provisions you would include in the bill and whether you would actually need them because savings provisions of course are parts of bills that protect and carry forward pieces of legislation that you may be repealing. It is just a simple way of keeping I guess the best bits of legislation and making sure you throw out the bad bits.Of course in this particular instance what we are doing is—the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board Empowering Bill is a long bill title but this is certainly a short bill. So this is repealing a particular piece of legislation and dissolving a particular board but it is simultaneously transferring all the property and the powers and the obligations from one particular body—that is the Associated Churches of Christ Extension and Property Trust Board—to a new charitable trust the Christian Churches New Zealand Property Trust Board. That happens simultaneously upon the commencement of this legislation and that comes into force the day after it receives the Royal assent.So I was sitting there as Ms Dowie was speaking just pondering in my mind what particular savings provisions you might need in this bill and of course Ms Dowie rightly pointed out to the Committee in the forthright manner with which she has become known in her time in Parliament that no savings provisions were required. That is why in Part 2 the chunky part of the bill we do not have any savings provisions.So what do we have in Part 2? Well we have the transfer of property rights and obligations. So from the commencement of this legislation the property rights and obligations of the old board are vested in the new board. That just harks back to what I mentioned a few moments ago which is that simultaneous transfer from one body to the new body.I particularly want to pick up on clause 5(2) of the bill which is about how the proceedings that could have been commenced or continued against the old board before the commencement of this legislation can be commenced against the new board. That is particularly important because what that means is that anyone with standing who is taking suit against the old Associated Churches of Christ Extension and Property Trust Board can take action against this new body. That is really important because we would not want to deprive people with standing of their rights under the law just because Parliament was passing a private bill.They are funny old things private bills. In the second reading I was considering how many had actually been passed over the years and it turns out that in the last decade—since the modern-day parliamentary website has gone live—there were actually nine. So you know on average we pass about 1.15 or 1.2 a year. They are odd things private bills and they tend to deal with very very small private obligations for people. It would be fair to say they are more historical quirks—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Back to the bill.CHRIS BISHOP: —but they are funny old things.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Interesting history lesson but back to the bill.CHRIS BISHOP: Clause 7 of this part is very important. This is the important point that the old board is dissolved and that of course is part of the purpose of the bill. It is very important. I just want to also refer to—