Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I rise for a much anticipated—I note —contribution on behalf of New Zealand First on this particular bill. Now first may I start by commending Mr Muller for bringing this bill forward. He obviously believes strongly that there are some anomalies—Hon Nathan Guy: You believe it too.MARK PATTERSON: —in the law that need to be fixed—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Please don't bring me into the debate.MARK PATTERSON: So Mr Muller brought this in in good faith. We did look at it through the Primary Production Committee. But unfortunately New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill forward which in terms of Mr Muller it has been a bad week unfortunately. It's disappointing I'm sure for him to be rejected by New Zealand First and Labour but he has also been rejected by his own leader and is much more highly regarded on this side of the House than on that side by all accounts.But nevertheless we had to address this bill on its merits and the supposition was that there is a technical conflict between sections 36 and 53 of the Companies Act 1993. Mr Guy in his contribution called it a small but very important amendment." There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that this is a very important amendment and that ultimately was where our decision fell. There is no case law to suggest that this is a problem.The Zespri example that has been given—they found a way through that. There is plenty of precedent here as Mr Tirikatene pointed out in his contribution. There are already these provisions in place within our cooperative companies. So this essentially is a solution looking for a problem.There was some specialist—and some quite high-powered specialist—opinion that did suggest that we should take this bill: David Goddard QC. But also there were other specialists that refuted that there was a problem. I'll quote Stephen Laybern who is a member of the Commercial & Business Law Committee at the New Zealand Law Society and he submitted "it is logical that only if section 53 is an irrevocable rule which cannot be overridden by the constitution … there is a problem that needs fixing." Section 53 is not an irrevocable rule so there is no problem to fix.So we as laypeople sitting on this committee with no precedent to bring forward no conceivable groundswell of cooperative companies which are a major part of our economy coming forward and demanding that we must put this in place because their business model is in peril—none of that came forward. So essentially as Kiritapu Allan pointed out in her contribution if we change the law for the sake of it because we feel that Mr Muller is a nice and well-intentioned member of this Parliament that somehow we should acquiesce when there may be some unintended consequences that have not been canvassed—when the law itself has been proven to be negotiable for those companies that wish to bring in these provisions the wet and dry shares there is essentially no problem to fix.So New Zealand First thinks the threshold for changing the law of New Zealand should be quite high and in this case the bar has not been met so New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill. Thank you."