Yule LawrenceLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): It's my pleasure to give the concluding remarks on the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions (Regulatory Improvements) Amendment Bill. Like other speakers and particularly the Rt Hon David Carter I joined this process later in the piece and I do want to acknowledge the work of the member for Kaikōura Stuart Smith because this is a complex piece of legislation. It took me a while to get my head around it—and some of it I still don't know—but what you've done and what you've brought before this House and this Parliament is actually a very good thing for nearly 200000 New Zealanders and the business that that will grow on and support.Chris Bishop: He's done a great job.LAWRENCE YULE: It's a great job and Stuart I know at times—and I remember you shaking your head when submitters were asking questions and you'd already answered them and you'd covered them off and you'd spent hours in the background doing it. But here we are today. I actually believe this bill may ultimately go through and be unanimously supported and for a member's bill that's actually pretty significant.I also want to acknowledge Duncan Webb for his role in the background and for working with Stuart to iron out some of those complexities. Actually the committee did work together to try to resolve this and it was fundamentally about mutuality. Most of the issues that were brought up by the submissions were about mutuality and if you strip that back it's really about not-for-profit—working for each other. That's really what this is about and people were concerned that would be lost.I want to bring a Hawke's Bay story in here because NZCU Baywide started from the Whakatū freezing works credit union in 1971. Stalwarts of my community including people like Roy Gardiner Iain Taylor and the likes set up afforestry schemes. They then set up a credit union and it has managed to survive the closure of that freezing works and the decimation of all those jobs to now have assets in a credit union alone of over $320 million and 16 branches throughout the central part of the North Island. And that is because people in my community—and it's replicated all over New Zealand—believe they can make a difference for their fellow human beings.All this bill actually does is support them in those measures and modernise them with today's technology and make sure others—and particularly the large banks—don't have an unfair playing field. I look at the directors in the NZCU Baywide credit union today and I've been to a number of their meetings. I've sat through how proud they are of what they can do for their communities. I've sat with hundreds of members—how proud they are of what their particular credit union is doing for them and that in my view is to be encouraged. But it's not some little backwater organisation. They have to run an Oracle-based platform for banking. Not just anybody can buy and afford to do that so they have to be commercially successful. This bill is about two things for me: one the modernisation of the credit union legislation to allow things like a body corporate perpetual succession and the fact that people do not need to run around in small towns like mine and get signatures for loans from several different people. It's about bringing it into the modern era and managing some of the risks of directors and trustees. And importantly it's about how those members can benefit their other affiliated entities namely their businesses. I did hear at various AGMs I went to how disadvantaged NZCU Baywide was feeling when other banks were poaching clients for business and ultimately would end up with their personal accounts as well because they offered things like credit cards and a whole lot of other transactions that credit unions couldn't. So that has all been worked through in this case and instead of complex workarounds for business solutions credit unions can now offer small to medium enterprises lending such as commercial banks can. They can offer things like credit cards and importantly can allow these 194000-odd members in the financial markets of New Zealand to offer products that allow for growth. It wasn't all unanimous as everybody said and that was all around mutuality but I'm pleased to say it will be enshrined in legislation and from where I sit those submissions that were concerned about that have been made null and void. The Finance and Expenditure Committee worked really well on this. They got it sorted and I commend it to the House and hope it gets unanimous support. Thank you.Bill read a second time.