Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am really pleased to support the Charities Amendment Bill through the Committee stage. This bill started off as part of a Statutes Amendment Bill and as you will know Mr Chairman and I am sure other members of the Committee will know statutes amendment bills have some particular criteria that must be reached before changes can be included within a Statutes Amendment Bill. They are meant to be a small number; you are not meant to do a big raft of changes to any particular Act. They are meant to be technical—so no policy changes. They are meant to be non-controversial. So if you meet those criteria then your proposals as a Minister can go into the Statutes Amendment Bill and that is how the Charities Amendment Bill started its passage in the House. When it was received at select committee as part of the Statutes Amendment Bill there was suddenly a flurry of activity from people—primarily from Hui E! Community Aotearoa and charitable organisations—who were adamantly opposed to the provisions that were contained within the Statutes Amendment Bill. As soon as our committee was alerted to that fact by dint of emails and submissions and phone calls and visits—they were pretty upset and concerned—we decided that we would no longer accept these provisions as part of a Statutes Amendment Bill. Clearly with the controversy they did not meet the criteria. But in good faith to the Minister whom we do not believe was trying to trick anyone but we believe was legitimately trying to progress what she thought were Statutes Amendment Bill provisions we decided to progress this as a separate bill. The alternative for the committee was just to say No strike it out." We would have done that if we thought it was a problem.Scott Simpson is getting very energised by this speech.Scott Simpson: It's doing it again.Hon RUTH DYSON: Yes that is what happens after big quakes: you get a lot of aftershocks. Just carry on. Keep calm. We thought that the Minister had introduced these provisions in good faith so instead of striking them out we said we would put them in a separate bill and thus the Charities Amendment Bill has come to the House. There were four clauses in the bill originally and the aim of those clauses was to provide that a person could not be an officer of a charity if they had been convicted of tax evasion or a similar offence under the Tax Administration Act. That had been admitted not clarified previously. Another aim was to provide that an application for registration as an entity could be treated as withdrawn if an applicant did not respond to a request for information or some other requirement from the chief executive under section 18 of the Act. So if they just do not reply and do not provide the information that is required then they can have their application treated as withdrawn.The third provision which covered two clauses in the original Act was to correct 2012 drafting errors. It was in the second of those two that the controversy arose in the first place and that caused this bill to be carved out of the Statutes Amendment Bill and then was the subject of nearly all the submissions to the committee. Nearly all of them on this bill were in opposition to the proposed changes in section 61 and as my colleague Poto Williams explained the submitters' view which was contested by the officials but in the end agreed to by the Labour and Green members of the committee was that it took away the right to appeal a decision of the chief executive. Their view is that that right has always been there. It may not have been used but it was there in the law and they did not want it taken away.The other changes were not contentious and we believed that they met the requirements of a Statutes Amendment Bill. The Minister might want to comment on this but we were advised during the process of this that even though we had carved this bill out of a Statutes Amendment Bill and named it against its own primary Act if changes were to be proposed to the bill that we are now debating—so if in the Committee of the whole House a Supplementary Order Paper was put forward—then it would have to get the agreement of every single member of Parliament because it is still under a Statutes Amendment Bill even though it has been carved out. I think that is really interesting. I have got no idea whether that is agreed or understood to be the case by everyone but that was certainly the advice that we have given. So we have taken one of the four clauses out. I hope the Minister understands that we did it thinking we were doing the right thing and that we have progressed the rest of the bill to her satisfaction."