Reserve Bank of New Zealand Amendment Bill (No 3)

I will take just a brief call, given that we have covered most of the issues in the debate on Parts 1 and 2. I shall refer to the commencement date, which is part of the three clauses we are debating. The commencement dates of many of the bills we are involved in are fairly superfluous, but in this case the commencement date is very important. From the way that the bill was written, these prudential changes would have been immediately imposed on a raft of non-bank deposit takers—depending on the definition. The Finance and Expenditure Committee in its wisdom sat back and saw that a heck of a lot of information would need to be churned through and provided to the Reserve Bank; a lot of detail is involved, even in terms of the definition of which organisations fall under the auspices of the Act, and which do not. So the commencement date was moved out by 18 months, to make sure that the organisations that fall under this regime have time to find out exactly what they need to do to meet the requirements of the bill. This is a short call just to say that the select committee gave due consideration to making sure that the organisations captured by the bill have time to come to grips with what is required, to provide the necessary information, and to do so in a way that reduces their compliance costs. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill reported with amendment.

Report adopted.

Third Reading