Bennett GlenGLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora Mr Speaker. I rise in support of the Incorporated Societies Bill and I want to thank the Hon Dr David Clark for his work bringing it to the House and also referring it to the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee which I am a part of. I can't wait to get into the select committee process. Like many of us in fact probably all of us we have been involved in incorporated societies. So I think we all have a lot of information and a lot of listening to do in our communities. I just want to speak briefly on three points tonight: I want to speak around the historic nature of the legislation that currently exists; I want to talk about the reach that incorporated societies have around our communities; and I want to talk about modernising the bill. At the moment it's a bookend kind of piece of legislation. How do we actually modernise what we have?We've been down memory lane already tonight several times I know but I have some more fun facts from 1908; I know a couple of you remember them well. The first train to travel on the main trunk line in the North Island—it was actually called the Parliamentary Special"—so that was actually 1908. So appropriate—so appropriate.The year 1908 was also when Ernest Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.Kieran McAnulty: Big Labour man.GLEN BENNETT: That's right of course. So you know 1908 and we've heard lots of other information this evening around 1908; I'm sure all our history teachers are really grateful for the work they did educating us with Google as well.But anyway we've talked about the 24000 different incorporated societies: this is everything from sports and education health Māori organisations and marae you've got animal welfare groups religious organisations environmental welfare services music theatre the list goes on and on and on. I know for a lot of us we've been on those types of incorporated societies. Where else would we have such a diverse and rich array of lamingtons and sausage rolls that our nation loves? It is because of the work of incorporated societies I believe but I digress.So incorporated societies encompass all aspects of our society. They are so important for the work for the fabric of our communities as the Hon Andrew Little said earlier. So when the legislation was created in the year 1908 they very much focused on creating a society and they very much worked on how to wind up a society but kind of the bits in between—they had the bookends right. So I guess we're working with this piece of legislation to maybe put some books into that bookshelf for the bookends at each end. Because it left and it leaves today societies with the challenges of figuring out some of their own common rules how to act in good faith and looking at what they believe to be in the best interests of a society. We're helping with that work as we take this through the House.So like I said I look forward to being on the select committee talking this through working this through. I appreciate all sides of the House all parties so far have supported us going to select committee. I can't wait to hear what our communities have to say and for them to be heard for them to be valued and hopefully some lamingtons and sausage rolls on the way.So this is a historic piece of legislation that's about to be changed. This reaches into all parts of our community and this is around modernising the bill. I commend this bill to the House."