Rurawhe Adrian; Simpson ScottFINANCIAL SECTOR (CLIMATE-RELATED DISCLOSURES AND OTHER MATTERS) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 23 September 2021.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members when we last considered this bill we were up to call No. 9 which is a split call.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Mr Speaker. For people who may be listening at home or watching this on television we are into the second reading of this Financial Sector (Climate-related Disclosures and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and it's a bill that seeks to ensure that organisations and entities that are subject to the Financial Markets Conduct Act will be required to broaden their financial reporting requirements so that they include climate-related disclosures.Now the Government speakers have made much of the fact that this is ground-breaking legislation. As far as we are told by Government members there is no other jurisdiction that requires similar legislation of financial entities of this sort. It will affect about 200 financial entities and so that will be something that will be new for them. It is something that many of them we were told are actually in some cases already doing.So on this side of the House we are supporting this legislation. I didn't sit on the select committee—it went to the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. Collectively the committee received submissions—they had 55 submissions in fact that were presented to the committee and the committee heard from 27 oral submitters. So one of the things that I think is interesting about this is that it's going to require these 200-odd entities to report climate-related matters that will have an impact on their business and the way they do business or the funds that they manage or the organisation and the entities over which they have control. They'll be required to prepare an annual climate statement and in that statement there will need to be a disclosure of information about the effects of climate change on their business of any funds they manage. There are several other matters as well that they will be required to report on but I've got some reservations about this notwithstanding the fact that this is a regulatory requirement and it will impose some costs on the entities concerned. But if we look at the situation in the United Kingdom for instance over there they implemented legislation very similar to our own zero carbon Act about a decade or more ago. And one of the things that we have learnt from that is that business and the commercial world actually got ahead of the legislators. Actually in the UK it is and has been the commercial world and business that have actually leapt ahead in terms of responding to the need to report on climate-related matters. Most businesses now have taken a lead from other businesses because their stakeholders their shareholders their customers and the people that they supply are asking questions of that sort.I can remember myself being in business many years ago when ISO requirements started to become mandatory. It was not so much the independent assessment of process and assessment of process and procedure and business methodologies that was being imposed by Government or the Parliament as in this case but it was our customer base our suppliers our stakeholders and shareholders who actually were driving the requirement for businesses to adopt a more transparent open and clear pathway to the way they ran their businesses how they managed their businesses and what have you. And certainly that's been the case in climate issues in the United Kingdom.So my concern is that here is a piece of legislation put in by regulation in the Parliament and one that the businesses will I think adopt. The principle and the processes are sound but the methodology I think leaves something to be desired. I would have preferred that business be allowed to get on with it themselves and be able to get on with it in a way that saw them responding to their customer and supplier needs rather than being forced to by the Government. So here we have something of a piece of legislation that is a bit akin to fiddling while Rome burns—while this country is importing record amounts of Indonesian coal to generate electricity and whilst our emissions are going up we have a fiddly little piece of legislation that is good in principle but actually a very small part of what the Government needs to be doing in a climate emergency.