SpeechDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a real pleasure to rise and speak in support of this bill and just noting the advocacy and the sponsorship of my colleague the Hon Grant Robertson. It's been a real pleasure to just listen to the debate across the House tonight and to various colleagues reflecting on their engagement with St Peters' on Willis. For me I haven't had the opportunity to attend a service there and I haven't had the opportunity to attend an event but it gave me a really good opportunity just to sit down and have a read about the church's history and some of the contributions that they've made.And I think basically—I mean we're talking about the St Peter's Endowment Fund Trust Board which was established on 8 August 1922. But going back through the history the actual parish has had a much longer engagement with the Wellington community. The parish had a church on site and was engaged from basically 1848 and then the current building that many of us walk past every day was consecrated in 1879. And it was just interesting reading some of the history around—in the context where there was a significant earthquake in Wellington and how the church became a base for reaching out to the community and providing support. And even going on to the current church's website and just having a read of some of the activities they're currently involved in. As colleagues have said they've done a lot of advocacy across a whole range of issues in the Wellington community but also engaging here in Parliament. But particularly the one that was interesting to look at was the partnership they've got with The Free Store which operates out of their car park as a converted shipping container and basically that ministry takes food from all around the city. So businesses donate food and then that's passed on a daily basis to people can just turn up and access food without any questions being asked. I think the whole model indicated by the church also is that people can turn up as a safe space and they can engage and be part of things without any questions being asked. So really really great to be seeing some of the work that's been done. But what they're operating out of is a very old trust deed. And so basically as we've heard in 1927 the trust deed was modified by the St Peter's Parish Endowment Fund Act 1927. And one of the things that did was increase their requirements for the funds accumulated. You know prior to that amendment the requirement was that the funds had to accumulate to £1500 before anything could be distributed and that amendment increased it up to £10000. And as you can see we're really really out of date in terms of the provisions of that Act. And so basically what this bill will do is allow the current trust board to basically be able to provide funds for charitable purposes in a much more flexible manner. So now what they can do—if this bill is passed—is to distribute up to 4 percent of the fund each financial year rather than being tied to a requirement that they can only distribute the equivalent to the income that they had in the previous year. And so basically now they can distribute up to 4 percent without having to take into account the fund's income or capital. It also allows the trust board to lend to the parish. The other thing that it does though is in exceptional circumstances it will allow the vestry to request the trust board to make some additional distributions and there's a number of criteria that they need to consider when they're thinking about whether that could be possible: looking at what the investment strategy of the trust is what the need of the parish is and the desirability to maintain capital in the fund and anything else that they consider necessary. But once they have considered that that allows them to basically distribute up to 20 percent of the fund in any one year if they think in those exceptional circumstances that that is necessary. And what that means is more flexibility in terms of the trust board being able to consider what the needs are within the boundaries of the trust. So really really important. One of the other things it does too is it updates some of the governance and administration arrangements—and particularly talking about the legal liability of the trust board in members because I think it's important that that is kept up to date with other equivalent legislation. So this is a really wonderful bill that will basically just update and mean that the Trust Board has got much more flexibility in terms of managing the funds that it's responsible for distributing. And I'm very happy to commend it to the House.