SpeechBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Mr Speaker and I rise too in support of the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill. I'd like to echo the sentiments about this necessarily truncated process. None of us want to see this as part of the new normal which faces New Zealand and New Zealanders in coming weeks and possibly months but I particularly want to reiterate the comments around the officials who supported us over these few days that we had to scrutinise this bill.We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that while it is their job to support the committee to work with submitters and to provide advice they too are people that are living as we all are with the circumstances we are under and the challenges that that presents to our society to our families and to individuals. Their work was exemplary and their response was quite frankly fantastic. It was a challenging set of circumstances to do all the work in such a truncated time but all the more so because the committee members had a number of questions and challenges that they posed to officials who were very very good indeed at responding to those.But if I look at the bill and the nature of the process we had to go through and the purpose—particularly to the areas I want to spend most of my contribution on which are the safe harbour and the business debt hibernation—I look at them and I think of the work that we had to do and I think the fundamental principle in terms of what we could do with the legislation could be summarised with the maxim First do no harm" because unquestionably when dealing with such a tight time frame there is a real risk of unintended consequences of overlooking certain things. So top of mind certainly for me was to make sure that what we brought back to the House was first of all not going to introduce harms particularly to creditors and customers—or indeed risks to directors if we talk about safe harbour—that would be undue and would actually unravel or undo the principles of what we were looking to achieve. I do believe we achieved that; in fact I'm very very confident that we have achieved that. But linked to that is a nagging doubt as to whether or not the measures that will be brought in should this bill be enacted will make a large-scale material difference.We heard that there is a view amongst directors—a misapprehension we were told—that too many of them believe or perceive that their personal risks particularly around offences related to reckless trading—they believe that those provisions are all too similar to those that exist in Australia. We were told that that isn't in fact the case but the fact that the perception persists was one of the principal reasons for instituting a safe harbour for this period of time so that directors who might otherwise be too keen or too pressed into potential liquidation of a company that might otherwise actually be able to trade out of the current challenges might feel themselves pressured into taking a less than optimal route. So the safe harbour provision gives them some confidence that they won't expose themselves to the sorts of personal liability that they perceive that they could be placed under even though some advice we received says that that level of risk isn't there in practice—in New Zealand at least.So absolutely going into it we supported the idea of the safe harbour and we still support it on the way out. But I questioned in the first reading and I questioned again through the select committee process if our directors are quite rightly quite conservative quite risk-averse if we look at the safe harbour provisions and the conditions they still place upon directors not only must the company have been solvent at the end of December 2019 but the director has to have some confidence that the company will be able to trade out of whatever current solvency difficulties it's faced with or in fact during this period of six months solvency issues that might arise. They have to have a confidence about the future likelihood of being able to trade out of that and yet we exist we live in extremely uncertain times. I think we could all contend—I would certainly contend—it will be challenging for a director to gaze into that crystal ball and have any view of strong confidence of what the conditions might look like in the next six weeks 12 weeks or even more months into the future because the duration of the economic impacts resulting from this pandemic are equally uncertain.So that leads me to being concerned that their risk-averse nature could lead to the point of not taking up the safe harbour because they can't have sufficient confidence in being able to attest that they have the confidence that they can trade out given those uncertainties. So we could well enact good provisions—good provisions that do provide protection but which is a protection that won't be taken up in all too many cases. That would absolutely meet the criteria of doing no harm but we can't guarantee that the measures we're putting in place through the safe harbour will lead to a sizable a larger scale material difference. I'm not sure that there is anything that we could have done differently about those provisions but it is still a worry because fundamentally our objective is to promote that businesses which feasibly could trade out of the difficulties of COVID impacts do so.So I'll move on to the business debt hibernation. We heard a lot of concerns there about the complexity of the scheme. We also heard concerns about those general security agreements (GSAs) and how the holders of those might refuse to enter into a debt hibernation arrangement if they were unable to enforce their securities during that process. It could be likened to a case of those holders having their cake and being able to eat it too. Quite frankly some of us feel it's quite a difficult position to be in and for other creditors to be in—that someone has that incentive that unless they get special treatment the business debt hibernation could never work but in getting the special treatment they do and persist with exceptional special treatment vis-à-vis other creditors and that leads to a concern as to those other creditors. Where are the incentives for them to actually agree to enter into debt hibernation arrangements particularly when they know that a GSA holder is going to still maintain extra special advantage over them? So I worry too with those provisions that not as many companies that theoretically could take it up will be able to—and that creates a very real worry.I just want to finish off—because it doesn't feel like 10 minutes Mr Speaker—with the Arms Act amendment around—SPEAKER: It's because the clock was late starting. I started at five—a bit of time.BRETT HUDSON: —the ability of licences. Thank you Mr Speaker. I'll just finish with this point then. It's pleasing to see—because I got a lot of correspondence from firearms owners worried that if licences expired during the lockdown period then they were going to be left high and dry. It is extremely pleasing to see that the Government decided to come forward with provisions that do a simple extension of validity which means the licence is unchanged and subject to alert levels—whatever they may be at the time—the licence holders will have every right and privilege of the use of that licence as it existed prior to the lockdown during that extended period along with the very clear pledge that they won't be paying more because of a late relicensing through no fault of their own. I think that is a very very sensible way to deal with a troubling issue—we will all have received correspondence from firearms owners over the last year or so and we know the concerns that they have held and which persist for them. So doing that was a very sensible move and I welcome it and I do commend this bill to the House."