Clark DavidCOMPANIES (LEVIES) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingHon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister for State Owned Enterprises): I present a legislative statement on the Companies (Levies) Amendment Bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I move That the Companies (Levies) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.I'd like to start by thanking the Finance and Expenditure Committee—Barbara Edmonds: Great committee.Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: —for their work on the bill which has resulted in some thoughtful amendments to it. A very modest committee unlikely to sing their own praises so I shall make something of it at the start of my speech particularly for the member Barbara Edmonds behind me! The amendments strengthen the safeguards in the bill to make sure that the new levy-making power is used well. I'd like to thank also those who submitted on the bill for their valuable contributions.The Companies Office maintains 16 different registers all of which benefit our society and economy in different ways. Those registers include registers or entities such as the Companies Register and the Incorporated Societies Register; professional service registers including for licensed auditors and insolvency practitioners; and registers for disclosure of financial products and security interests over personal property. By maintaining these registers effectively the Companies Office helps to build trust and confidence in the economy and that is part of what makes New Zealand a great place to do business—the ease of doing business the acceptance that it's a fair and transparent place to do business.Importantly the registers also allow New Zealanders to search for information to help them make sound business and investment decisions—you can see who you're dealing with through those registers. The Companies Office registers also bring wider benefits to society such as not-for-profit entities like sport groups and community groups. The registers were set up under 16 different Acts of Parliament all at different times and in different contexts. Over time the Companies Office has developed an increasingly holistic approach to running its registers. That approach has had its benefits including achieving the economies of scale and a provision of registry services and all registry users benefiting from the registry expertise of the Companies Office.The bill is designed to support such a holistic approach to running the registers by allowing a funding model that supports that approach. That's needed because while the Companies Office remit environment and operating model has evolved over time the legislation governing it has not. At the moment the legislation requires that each register is funded only from fees collected from specific users of the particular register. As people who use modern IT systems know that can create a good deal of inefficiency.Money collected from users of one register cannot help pay the administration of another one under the current law. The Companies Office therefore cannot pool any money to use for the good for the registry system as a whole nor to make fees paid by users of the smaller registers fairer and reasonable. In short there's a mismatch between how the funding model is legally supposed to operate and how it actually has been operating.The bill will change the funding model. It'll allow the Companies Office to charge levies that can be used across the different registers to fund shared resources such as IT and registry staff. It will be able to collect and use money more flexibly across the whole registry system and I expect that that will ultimately lead to a more efficient and effective use of taxpayer resource. As I said the Finance and Expenditure Committee proposed a number of changes to the bill mostly to strengthen the safeguards around how the levy-making power can be used. The committee has recommended that the levy-setting regulations be a confirmable instrument and that adds an additional procedural safeguard in the bill's regulation-making process by expressly allowing for Parliament's scrutiny of the regulations. Another of the committee's recommendations was to require a review of how the new levies are working within the first five years of them first being introduced. That's something that the Companies Office is already planning for and the committee has also recommended strengthening the consultation requirements in the bill. The bill requires that before any levies can be set by regulation the responsible Minister must consult therefore with anyone who is affected. The committee has also recommended inserting an explicit statement in the bill that the consultation material must be published on a website of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. I'm pleased that the committee recognised how important consultation is in this particular area. The first stage of implementing the new funding framework will be a full public consultation. It will be detailed. It will cover who will be charged levies how much they will be what the money is intended to be used for and why and how and when levies will be paid. I am looking forward to hearing people's views on the options once those detailed proposals and analyses are available to them. It remains for me to again thank the committee for their work. They made recommendations back to the House I understand as a group unanimously. It's great that that degree of agreement could be reached on the committee and that they could work constructively together to ensure that we have fit for purpose legislation for running our Companies Office system—where we get the benefits of scale where we get the benefits of modern IT systems and where we use taxpayer resource wisely carefully and appropriately. So I take some pleasure in commending this bill to the House. Thank you Madam Speaker.