Tremain Chris: Securities Trustees and Statutory Supervisors Bill — First Reading 
Tremain Chris: Securities Trustees and Statutory Supervisors Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:661;Page:9733] 
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) 
: 
 Most Thursday nights when we leave this Chamber and go back to our electorates we go back to the real world. We go back to the world that is inhabited by all our constituents in the Napiers the Kaikouras the Northcotes of this world out to where the real people live. They work damn hard in this country pay their taxes seek to put a roof over their heads and look to save money for their retirement so they can live a comfortable life supplemented by their savings through to their retirement. When we go back to our constituencies we get back to the real world. We get back there on a Friday or a Monday or in the weekends and we deal with the real issues. We deal with immigration issues or accident compensation issues or Work and Income problems or Child Youth and Family issues or local issues faced by people that are pertinent to each electorate. All of us will have empathy with them or be able to understand what is going on. 
I am a relatively new member to Parliament but when I think back over the 4 years of going back to my constituency in Napier and think about some of the issues that I have had to deal with in clinics I tell members that probably the more difficult meetings—and I have had a number of them in my electorate office and out in people’s homes—have been around the financial collapse of companies in this country and the loss of savings that hard-working Kiwis have experienced. I tell members of one occasion when I had eight people come into my office—four hard-working couples—mums and dads in their mid-to-late 50s who had worked their guts out all their lives to save for their family homes who had gone out and had their homes geared up and basically lost their entire equity in their family homes. They were looking down the barrel of another 6 years before what they had looked at as their retirement. They now had no money saved apart from what they would get from national superannuation. That is not good enough. It is not good enough that we have had a financial market in this country that has not got in behind people and provided the safeguards that hard-working Kiwis needed to support them in their investment decisions. 
I am proud to see the Securities Trustees and Statutory Supervisors Bill before the House. I am proud to see Simon Power and members of this House bringing this legislation forward. I accept that it is a small step in terms of turning our financial markets around from the Wild West into what can be seen as a sustainable investment market that people can understand and trust. It is what the member for New Plymouth Mr Jonathan Young spoke about—a market in which we can build trust. Let us accept that we will not build up trust quickly in those markets because of the situation that we have got to over the last couple of years but this bill is a step in the right direction. It will protect investors’ interests and enhance market confidence. If that is a step that we can take via this bill then that is a step in the right direction. I commend this bill to the House. 
Bill read a first time.  
Bill referred to the Commerce Committee.