Mallard Trevor: Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMallard Trevor: Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 08 May 2013. Volume:689;Page:9812. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South): The Labour Opposition will support the first reading of this bill the Trustee (Public Trust) Amendment Bill and will be interested in explanations from other Ministers and those who are supporting the bill. I do not think there is any doubt around the principle of the bill. The fact is that currently the Public Trust looks like it is the designated receiver of hospital passes in a rugby sense. If there is something going badly wrong and there is going to be a loss involved toss it to the Public Trust because it will carry it. I think it probably comes from the days of thinking that when there is a problem give it to the Government. The private sector especially people involved in this sort of industry—and we saw it in South Canterbury Finance and a number of other places—thinks that if something makes a profit it is capital and if it makes a loss let us socialise it and get the Government to pay for it. I think the Public Trust was treated as that sort of organisation.I have had a lot to do with the Public Trust over many years. I used to get involved in delivering scripts to it when I still had short pants on. I think it is seen as an organisation that is upright and has integrity and should not be placed at risk of having to demand some sort of Government support as a result of the activities of organisations that have made a lot of money out of being trustees and have basically sucked organisations dry. When they work out that the cash flow is likely to stop they then seek to offload to what is seen to be a public organisation. I think that is wrong.My question for the Minister of Justice and for others goes to process and the necessity of using urgency to pass this bill. I mean I think the Minister does make a good point. She does not want to open the floodgates to similar organisations passing off their responsibilities as they see the gate closing. But my question to the Minister—and it goes to our support of this bill at its later stages—is for her to give a good explanation as to why an alternative approach could not have been taken. I know that she is deeply involved in important conversations but as the length of the sitting time of the House—Hon Judith Collins: I’m listening.Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well the question I have got for the Minster is why she did not include in this bill an effective date of today for the shutting off of the gate and then send it to a select committee to make sure that there were not any unforeseen circumstances so that we knew exactly what we were doing so that the other organisations that she is seeking to shut out would have the opportunity to have their say and so that we could also make sure by getting the Law Society and others involved that we had the legislation absolutely right. Doing that—shutting the gate as at an effective date and maybe sending it off for a shortened period to a select committee and giving people the chance to have their say—in my opinion would have made Parliament look better.It would have meant that we had not rammed things through under urgency. It would have meant that the public could look at the process but we could have had the gate shut because the effective date could have been well probably today. It would have been appropriate for it to be 9 May rather than 8 May. That is the date on the wall but 9 May is the day of the introduction of the bill. In fact if the bill was tabled yesterday we could still have had the date of 8 May in the legislation as being the effective date. People know that the principle of retrospectivity does not apply when notice is properly given on the introduction of a bill. It would have been retrospective in effect in its coming into force but not retrospective in that people would have been aware of it coming into force from the date of its introduction.I know that it is you know relatively finely tuned. I know that it is certainly easier for the Government to ram it through like this. It gets it out of the way some time—you know 10 o’clock tonight or something like that the law will be changed it will go off to the Governor-General and will get signed tomorrow and that is the effect of all of that. But the question that I would like to get answered is whether the Government considered the alternative approach especially given the lack of consultation which is apparent from the regulatory impact statement—the fact that people who are affected by it have not been consulted. We know why they were not consulted because they could have shot in and lodged their papers—I understand that. But given the opportunity of having the select committee process to give the Government some consultation at that point but not to open the door to others why did the Government not take that approach?