Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I join others across the House in commending the Foreign Affairs (Consular Loans) Amendment Bill to the House. The point of the legislation has been pretty well covered by others. I will just add that I think there's a lot of good public law in it small as it may be and of course all public law is good public law as I'm sure we all appreciate. It's actually an exercise in emphasising the importance of the rule of law in a way because this is saying that the Government and its agencies are not above the law. I think it was President Nixon who famously or infamously commented that When the President does that it means it's not illegal." But of course if the New Zealand Government does a thing that is not authorised by law or in fact is expressly prohibited by law then it is nevertheless under our constitutional arrangements capable of being illegal or perhaps I should say at least not lawful. So it's important and appropriate that the Government and Parliament take seriously the fact that at the moment on our statute book we don't have the ability for our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and its various representatives overseas to make the loans that others have referred to. So we don't even need to concern ourselves with the theoretical possibility of an action that's not expressly authorised but nevertheless may be legal because it's not prohibited. In fact as others have explained an amendment to the Public Finance Act 1989 which was made nearly 10 years ago put the situation such that loans cannot be made in these circumstances. Prior to that as others from the Minister onwards have explained it had been a longstanding practice that New Zealanders in distress would be able to have loans made to them in certain circumstances and the criteria are set out in this bill presumably carrying on that previous tradition and indeed as I say authorisation that such loans could be made. The reason that this is important as I say is to demonstrate and enable indeed the New Zealand Government to comply with the law. And to do that it needs to provide this authority going forward but also to look backwards for that intervening period where such loans have not been lawful and to say "Well actually we're deciding that those things we will regard now as having been lawful notwithstanding they took place in the way we've described." So it's an exercise in retrospectivity. Ordinarily of course the law—well at least I should say sometimes the law frowns upon retrospectivity most obviously in the criminal law. We don't make offences or punishments that didn't exist at the time that the offence or the act or omission was committed or took place but in this case it's something of a victimless crime. There's no particular reason not to allow these things to be retrospectively validated. Frankly that's good for the good name of the New Zealand Government. It's also good for the individuals the citizens or permanent residents as the case may be who are overseas and who have been made such loans in their distress and as others have pointed out subject to various terms and conditions of the repayment.The criteria that are set out in this legislation are simple enough on their face. As others have said at the select committee it will be an interesting exercise to understand the limits of the powers and maybe interrogate that a little bit. The Minister herself may already have a good feel for that because it is the Minister of Foreign Affairs from time to time who is given such authorisation. I don't know the extent to which she or he would be able to delegate those powers again. That's to me quite an interesting point and again it might be thrashed out at the select committee. But the Minister must be satisfied that the person is in distress—"satisfied" as in satisfied that that condition is met of course not satisfied in the sense of deriving any satisfaction from it—also that exceptional circumstances exist. So not only some manner of distress but also I presume an inability to gain equivalent assistance elsewhere maybe an inability to take out a loan locally for reasons of not having a banking or other sort of commercial arrangement possible in that country maybe due to lack of a legitimate or acceptable local identification and so forth; also that short-term assistance would be provided. So for all these reasons National has been supporting the bill. We think it's an important measure to tidy up the statute book and allow these loans retrospectively. So we commend the bill to the House."