Dean JacquiHon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to congratulate Stuart Smith on working through all the issues to do with this Friendly Societies and Credit Unions (Regulatory Improvements) Amendment Bill. It has been a bit of a process quite technical and he's worked his way through those.I want to acknowledge the Hon Kris Faafoi for his comments around the credit unions. As Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs he will be well familiar with the issues that have surrounded the credit unions and he outlined some of the history of that in his contribution. But today belongs to Stuart Smith because he is making through the passage of this bill—and it is very good for Stuart to have the support of the Minister and also the Labour Party on this bill. The impact of the passage of this bill shouldn't be underestimated and I want to focus in particular on communities and then small business.From the community perspective it is the credit unions who will go into a community and provide banking services when the trading banks pull out. That is just a reality of what has been happening in New Zealand. In a prior reading of this bill I did talk about the small rural town of Palmerston. Their last banking service moved out of town. The local authority held a meeting with local members of the community and acknowledged that business owners in particular but also elderly people—and indeed everybody—needed a banking service to remain in that small town. Credit Union South then stepped in and there is now a cash machine located in the library of that small rural town. We need to acknowledge that degree of community service that credit unions and friendly societies do bring to the banking scenario in New Zealand.But looking forward and to the other tranche of what I wanted to say the benefit that the enactment of this bill will bring to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) is potentially quite significant and potentially—and it will be I believe—hugely helpful for those small businesses who find themselves at the end of the month generally around the 20th not in a positive cash-flow position. The reason they find that—there are a number of reasons but this is one of them—is they are waiting for their debtors to pay them so that they can go on and pay their own accounts and their wages bill.Too many small businesses in particular trade off their credit card and we all know the expense of trading off your credit card. So it would seem to me that the enactment of this bill and the focus of the credit unions and friendly societies will support SMEs and in particular small businesses who are not always well resourced—start-up businesses family businesses small tradie businesses; you know the garage or the sole electrician who is not well resourced and has to come and go through cash negative and positive and resort to expensive credit. Well if the credit unions and friendly societies make funding available to those small businesses then bring it on I say. I also say congratulations to them for having their focus on their initial reason for being which is to support their members.There are a number of other provisions in this bill which have been raised by the member in charge—the Minister over the other side of the House—and no doubt many other members but I just wanted to reinforce the point that the enactment of this bill is going to have a significant effect on banking and the support of small business in New Zealand. I congratulate Stuart Smith and I commend this bill to the House at its third reading.