Robertson Grant: Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Robertson Grant: Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I beg your indulgence Mr Assistant Speaker Roy at the start of my contribution and say that on behalf of all members of the House who reside south of the Bombay Hills we wish you all the best for tomorrow evening in Invercargill. I think I can speak on behalf of most members. [ 
Interruption 
] There may be a few noises from north of the Bombay Hills but I hope that things work out well in Invercargill. 
Paul Quinn 
: Until Wellington goes down. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: That is right; that is precisely the point. Mr Quinn has totally blown my cover. Here I am congratulating the member for Invercargill and Paul Quinn blows my cover. I am sorry Mr Assistant Speaker this week you can hang on but after that we want the shield back. 
It gives me pleasure to rise and speak in the second reading of the Christ’s College (Canterbury) Amendment Bill. The bill was referred to the Government Administration Committee and the member who has just resumed her seat Jacqui Dean reflected on the discussions that took place at the committee. I think it was a good example of a private bill coming to the House. Generally speaking I think most members think that is fine—the particular organisation needs to be able to do what it needs to do to continue to operate and we should just let the bill go through and it will be fine. However I think that what the select committee process drew out was the importance of select committee scrutiny. This is not a bad mark on Christ’s College at all. The college governors have been entirely cooperative with the committee but I think it draws out the importance of every bill getting the scrutiny it needs in this House and not bypassing the process and thinking it does not matter. This certainly was a situation where the select committee I believe has added significant value and has ensured some consistency and— 
Jacqui Dean 
: It’s a great select committee. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: Well it is a great select committee and it is chaired by the Hon David Parker. Mr Gilmore— 
Jacqui Dean 
: Who’s the deputy chair? 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: The deputy chair is Jacqui Dean. While we are at it let us name all the members—there are not that many. On this side of the House we are very proud of our chair David Parker. He led the Government Administration Committee through its often trying and difficult work programme so that it was able to come up with a good result with this bill. 
I want to pick up on what Jacqui Dean was saying about the fact that all of us on the committee understood what the preamble of the bill means. For many organisations including Christ’s College when they are dealing with trusts that are based in the past and with bequests that are from long ago it is difficult for them to be always able to continue the exact purposes of those bequests and trusts. We understand that the administrative burden that can fall on organisations when they want to vary a trust can be very hard. A school has education purposes and it would like to see as much money as possible go directly to that; it is certainly not in our interests to put a further administrative burden on those organisations. We can understand why Christ’s College instigated the bill and why it wants the changes to be made. 
Having said that I point out that when the committee came to analyse the bill a number of concerns were raised about the exact wording. Again other speakers have referred to this. Firstly it is a question of any inconsistency between the wording here and the wording in the Charitable Trusts Act. The Charitable Trusts Act does try to operate across a range of very different trusts but the point is that charitable purposes are what should lie behind any situation where the Act comes into play. Therefore the committee recommended changing the language so that it is consistent with the Charitable Trusts Act and the board of governors at Christ’s College was happy to go along with that. 
Another area where the committee wanted an amendment was to allow the governing body to use for another purpose excess income from the trusts that generate more than is necessary for their donated purpose. We were comfortable that this was consistent with the Charitable Trusts Act but we needed to make sure that the language was correct. 
The area that I think concerned the committee the most as Jacqui Dean alluded to was the more general language about being able to extend a new purpose for the trust for the benefit of the college generally. Again this is no black mark on the college itself; it was merely trying to create an environment in which it felt it could manage the bequests and the trusts in a way that was beneficial to the college. But we felt that it could spread things too far particularly around the notion that perhaps the college may be undertaking activities that are not for educational purposes. They may be doing different kinds of activities that support the wider purposes of the college and the board of governors. We wanted to be able to keep some kind of management that was close to the idea of a charitable purpose. That is why we have inserted an amendment that requires trust properties to be used for charitable purposes. This is an area where it would have been easy for the committee to simply let that pass but we wanted to make sure that these trusts are used as closely as possible for the purposes for which they were originally put forward. 
So following on from that the committee is also inserting a requirement for the purpose of the trust to be as close as reasonably possible to the purpose for which the property was given. I do think that is important. Jacqui Dean has alluded to cases involving soldiers who died in the war where money came from their families and to trying to make sure there is a way of reflecting that. More broadly we want to make sure that particularly the educational purposes of these trusts are kept in mind. 
On this side of the House we are obviously acutely aware that one of our former members Dr Michael Cullen has in this House expressed his gratitude to some people who helped him get his scholarship into Christ’s College. Perhaps he did not express his gratitude in a way that noted just how grateful he was but he certainly did note the people who had paid for his education through Christ’s College. There was a scholarship that had a particular purpose to allow someone like Michael Cullen who would not otherwise have been able to afford to attend Christ’s College to be able to be there and what great benefit the country has had from that scholarship. I am sure those farmers in the South Canterbury area whom he alluded to are very pleased they were able to put him through Christ’s College. It is an important example of the fact that there are a lot of different trusts and scholarships go through Christ’s College and it is obviously important that in the future if there is a need to make change Christ’s College will make that change and it will be as close as possible to the purposes of the original trust. 
We are happy to support the bill with those amendments. We think that this has been a good exercise in drawing the attention of the select committee and the House to the fact that we will need to amend private bills from time to time to ensure there is consistency. The governors of Christ’s College have been helpful and have worked with the committee to ensure that we now have a workable situation whereby they can deal with trusts and the property of those trusts and can make changes but that when they do make those changes it will be done for charitable purposes. Any changes will ensure that the property is used for a purpose that is as close as reasonably possible to the original giving of that trust. For all those reasons the Labour Party is very happy to support the second reading of this bill.