Coffey TamatiTAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I am stoked as ever to be taking a call on the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions (Regulatory Improvements) Amendment Bill.Matt King: Nine and 10—nine and 10.TAMATI COFFEY: Ah thank you. I am merely a new member so learning about things as I go has been a very steep learning curve in the last six months and one of the things that I've had to learn about has been friendly societies and credit unions. Being somebody who hasn't had to use the services of one previously I was on a very steep learning curve.This is a good piece of legislation. Labour does support this bill. I support this bill. I was fortunate enough to be there and to listen to the submissions on the Finance and Expenditure Committee and to listen to the heartfelt stories of people who live their lives inside this sector. As my colleague Deborah Russell said earlier credit unions—I was pleased to find out—are the places that people go to when the banks don't accept them. When I finally learnt about this thing and I opened my eyes and I went back to my community I was made aware that actually quite a few people in my community are credit union members. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find out as well that there are 194000 other credit union and building society members all across Aotearoa.This is a good piece of legislation. I do commend the sponsor of the bill Stuart Smith and also too my colleague Duncan Webb who did the heavy lifting on this particular piece of legislation—so congratulations to you both. It was a lovely experience to be sitting on a committee where everybody was singing the same song. That was a fortunate experience and hopefully we can do a lot more of that in the future—I am ever the optimist.This is an Act that has needed to be brought into the modern age and into the new millennium. As the previous speaker David Carter said this is an Act that was first drafted in 1982 and it is in desperate need of modernisation. Interestingly enough I've found that many Acts that I've stood and talked on in the short time that I've been here in the House have been Acts of that ilk—Acts that were once upon a time drafted for a time and a place and that have kind of fallen out of use in that time.So I'm pleased to be presiding over this and representing all of the many submitters that came before the committee. We received 20 written submissions and 13 submitters made oral submissions. Whist my colleague David Carter pointed out that one was in favour one was against one was in favour and one was against actually the majority of the submitters were in support of the changes to the Act.I just want to go over them and just take a short bit of time to do that before we get down into the nuts and bolts of the bill. The Aotearoa Credit Union strongly supported the bill. They were concerned however about their ability under the old legislation to remain valid and competitive in the market—so for Aotearoa Credit Union we are doing them a favour. The Association of British Credit Unions believed that the legislative framework was restrictive and that it limited the credit unions' potential and Co-op Money which is one of the big players in this sector believed that the Act was in their words not fit-for-purpose" and hadn't been for many years.I was pleased to find that the firefighters have their own credit union as well and have been doing it for quite some time for their members. They were looking forward to the bill being enacted. The New Zealand Credit Union (NZCU) another big player in the scene—both NZCU South and NZCU Baywide supported the bill and welcomed the changes and Samoa NZ Finance definitely supported the bill. They were looking forward to it becoming a full service financial institution that understood and was incredibly responsive to the needs of the Pacific Island community. So there were quite a lot of positive vibes not just from the committee but also from the submitters as well.There were a couple of things that definitely stood out in the submissions and one of them was around the issue which a lot of the speakers prior to myself have talked about which is the ability for credit unions to retain their mutuality. There was a certain fear that by incorporating the mutualities they were going to be slowly turned into a big corporatised organisation. There was a strong fear about that and it was also a big departure from what credit unions were initially set up to do which was on a very small scale to look after each other. In absence of the big banks being in there they were quite happy with that position. Those were probably some of the biggest fears that came out of the submissions that were against it. But the select committee have recommended new sections including new section 107B(1) which explicitly states that a credit union "must act only in pursuance of its objects or in ways that are incidental to its objects".The other thing that came out in the submissions was about the ability for a credit union to be able to make loans to enterprises related to its members. I remember one particular submission which said that they kind of do it anyway but they just used another route to be able to get there. It was interesting to be able to sit there and listen to that and to hear them say "We're doing it anyway but if you're going to modernise the legislation then why don't you do it to make it a whole lot more cleaner? We would like to be able to lend to our members for the purpose of business." Again that was quite a departure from what they'd traditionally done but that was the way that they saw themselves as being modern credible and responsive to their members' needs.Apparently there are lots of their members that come forward looking for money for their small or medium sized business enterprises and I'm pleased to say that the select committee recommended mechanisms to allow the credit unions to be able to make those small and medium sized enterprises accessible to loans. There are—oh time flies. Let me just cut to the chase then—Erica Stanford: We're not having fun. TAMATI COFFEY: Ha ha! Sorry. Let me just cut to the chase then—Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: More more! TAMATI COFFEY: —to what we had wanted—thank you everybody. Thank you very much—thank you very much. The bill includes measures and I just want to ping these off very quickly—the whole point of the reforms was to simplify the objects of the credit union; to cover the activities of its benefits to members; to provide the incorporation as I've just mentioned of the credit unions; and to enable the credit unions and the associations of credit unions to have all the powers of a natural person. This is a very important piece of legislation as I've said because the credit unions play a very essential part in the market for banking services—again as I've said before particularly for people on low incomes and for beneficiaries as well those people that find it very difficult to walk in with their head held high to one of our big banking organisations. They can lean back on credit unions to be able to provide that kind of lending.This is all new territory for me but I'm proud to have sat alongside the Finance and Expenditure Committee and to have listened to the concerns of the submitters on this. I was pleased to report back to our Labour caucus that this is a bill that we should be supporting. I support the credit unions. I haven't yet opened up an account with them but I'm going to be monitoring the progress of credit unions especially in my community very closely. Yes it was done in 1982. It is time for a refresh. Congratulations to all of the submitters and I'm sure that they will have great pride when they hear that we have listened to their concerns and acted accordingly. To those submitters who are still feeling a little bit left outside of the scope I hope that they can keep engaging with other credit unions to make sure that they can work together to iron out any kind of differences. Again I commend the committee and commend this particular bill to the House. Kia ora."