Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): I have got to say that this has been a unique process in my experience in Parliament in terms of dealing with a bill that was just provisions in the statutes amendment process initially. Hearing submissions in the select committee process actually threw up the fact that there was significant concern and disagreement around these provisions which we on this side of the House have managed to I guess hold off to be able to get the best parts of what was in there into this bill and save the debate for another day where the community can participate in it on the contentious issues. I do want to just frame this. This is the Charities Amendment Bill that we are talking about and we are told that this is you know small and minor and technical. What is in this bill we agree on and we can support. They are things like ensuring that somebody who has been convicted of tax evasion cannot become an officer of a registered charity and that does seem pretty sensible. It provides that an application for registration as a charity can be treated as withdrawn if that organisation has not responded to correspondence in 18 months. Again it seems good to clarify that. But initially the Government intended to put another provision in there that we were told was correcting a drafting error. I have got to say that this is something that I have heard a few times on different pieces of legislation going through this House on what were often quite contentious points and where no evidence was provided by them to back up that analysis of the original intent. In this situation we had the department and the Minister saying: This is inconsequential; it is really just tidying—don't worry." Then we had the community and voluntary sector peak organisation Hui E! Community Aotearoa and its lawyer Sue Barker who is generally acknowledged as the person in the country with the most expertise in this area of law both saying that this change or "correction of a drafting error" would take away rights to appeal a decision—very very different views. We considered that that was not appropriate to pass through as if those different views did not exist. So we are pleased that that did not happen and that we have this legislation without that point in it that we can support. But I would back up the Hon Ruth Dyson's point that we certainly would not be supporting this if it was put back in at the Committee stage.Getting beyond the detail of what that provision is and whether or not it is taking away appeal rights it is really really important to us in the Greens about negotiating roles in our society. I spent most of my working life working in the charity sector and we used to talk about the charity sector as the third sector. There was Government; there was business which also included unions; and there was tangata whenua the community and the voluntary sector—roughly the charity sector. That was not a hierarchy; it was almost like a Venn diagram but with not much overlapping around working together to make this society work with different pieces of knowledge and understanding of what was going on.There used to be a respect for our experience in the community and the Government used to listen to us. Obviously we always wanted it to listen more and do more things but there used to be a time when we could speak out and say what we thought. Sometimes the Government would agree; sometimes it would not but there was respect. Well through this and what was shown in the select committee process—and what I am hearing pretty much every day out in the community—is that that culture does not exist under this Government. There is not respect for our community sector our charity sector shown by this Government. We do have agencies that are not able to speak up because when they do speak up advocating for the people they are working for then a few days later or maybe a few hours later they might get a phone call from their funders at the ministry saying: "You do know you are not indispensable."Hon Jo Goodhew: Just rubbish.JAN LOGIE: That is not rubbish Minister. You need to get out more. You need to listen more Minister. You need to read the reports that tell how many agencies are on the point of collapse because of a lack of funding because of the short-term funding contracts that you keep on imposing on them so that they are too scared to challenge you. There would be not one person on this side of the House who has not had that conversation on a regular basis with people working to protect the most vulnerable people in our society who are too scared to contribute to the public debate because of the actions of this Government. This bill is part of that disrespect where the Government Ministers go "Oh we can sneak this through." and then do not even tell the agencies that they are looking at making these changes. Not even the peak agencies that they used to have regular meetings with and a relationship of respect—they do not even tell them. So when it comes through in this process and there is absolutely fundamentally different views on what this provision would mean it takes the Opposition parties the Labour Party and the Green Party to say: "Well actually if there is this level of agreement this should not go through." The Government members of the select committee—backed up I can only assume by the Minister who brought it to the House—would have let it go through thinking they were right because that—Brett Hudson: We were.JAN LOGIE: And there we hear it again—they were right. That sums up the arrogance and the bullying power of this Government. It will ram things over so certain in its own knowledge and so certain in its own rightness regardless of any other feedback that it might be getting. So we are proud that this bill now no longer includes that provision."