Financial Advisers Bill

We come to the only two surviving original clauses of the Financial Advisers Bill, which, as we said earlier in the debate, has been completely rewritten, with 61 pages being deleted from the bill.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: A hard-working committee.

It is pretty hard-working, all right! Sixty-one pages have been deleted, but what stays? Since this bill was referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee in February of this year, or thereabouts, what has remained from the years of work and reviews, stakeholder meetings, workshops, and the like that occurred? What is left is the title—the Financial Advisers Act 2007—and the Government is to be commended for retaining that during this process.

Secondly, what has also remained during the last 8 or 9 months is the commencement date. That is clause 2(1), and it will come into force on a date to be appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council. Secondly, clause 2(2) states: “One or more Orders in Council may be made appointing different dates for the commencement of different provisions.” That is it. They are the only two clauses that survived the original bill.

💬 Hon Dr Michael Cullen: We listened!

That is right—it is a listening Government. So we wiped out 69 pages of ineffective legislation and replaced it. But, as we said earlier, that was the right thing to do, and we now have what we view to be a crucial first step in workable regulation around this industry. I think it is worth noting that the Minister has always been careful in her public statements, and particularly in her press releases and speeches—which we have followed pretty carefully—to make the following two statements in either this form or in a form similar to it. The first statement is that she is not inclined, she tells us, to regulate for regulation’s sake, which is something that we support. We believe that regulation in this case is necessary. Secondly, the Minister has made the statement many times that we cannot legislate to prevent risk, and that is also a position that the National Party endorses.

I have to say that I think this is the only time in my short time here that I have seen legislation so thoroughly amended by the select committee process. It was not comprehensively amended, of course, because we still have clauses 1 and 2, but it was thoroughly amended during that process. That tells the Committee that the select committee process adds value to the final product, and it also tells the Committee that where a Minister is prepared to allow the legislation to form up following further input and advice, from officials, other political parties, and the select committee, the Parliament can find itself with workable legislation. I will make some comments on the future of this legislation in the third reading debate, but I will leave my comments on what are now really known as the enduring clauses of this legislation.

I would like to speak to the enduring clauses of the Financial Advisers Bill, and to beg to differ just slightly with my colleague Simon Power, who claimed there are only two enduring clauses. When we look at the amended legislation in the mark-up version, we see that in fact only one clause remains in the legislation. If we look at page 9 of the new bill, we see that only the title has remained the same from day one. Clause 1 states: “This Act is the Financial Advisers Act 2007.”, and everything apart from that clause has changed. The commencement clause has quite clearly been changed. In the first draft there was an original provision there, but that has actually been changed.

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill reported with amendment.

Report adopted.

Third Reading