Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill

Part 1 of the Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill contains the real meat. It is the part that lays out the arrangements for combining the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants with its Australian counterpart, or perhaps it should be put the other way round. This move opens up both opportunities and risks, as one would expect. The opening up of audit activities to trans-Tasman competition effectively will ensure that the standards are fair across things, and we can imagine that there is going to be an advantage in scale for some auditors. Often where there are big jobs New Zealand firms miss out in favour of those Australian firms that are geared up, have an office in Sydney, and can service the greater Australasian area for overseas clients. However, New Zealand is also a nimble economy, and often competitive. We have people here who are ingenious and can create opportunities, so we would be hoping, in supporting this bill, that those risks of trans-Tasman dominance that we have seen in the banking sector would not take hold in the audit sector in the same way and that, instead, we would see some innovative New Zealand firms bidding for, and picking up, audit work through being competitive, professional, and generally good at the work they do.

The provisions in the bill that we like are about simplifying things and making the system more transparent. That has got to be a good thing. Transparency is incredibly important in our market place. Quality auditing and the ability to have a look through companies are the kinds of things that make for a competitive and effective market and one that services the needs of New Zealanders and people offshore for the provision of services that assist with growing an economy. We will be supporting the bill, and we will be lending our voice to it getting through this Parliament non-controversially. Those in the area who submitted to the Commerce Committee pointed out those risks that we have already discussed and the opportunities that lie there. The Institute of Chartered Accountants is not fighting this, so we are prepared to take its lead in seeing less red tape across the Tasman, and we will be waiting to see what happens.

We do hope that New Zealand’s interests will be protected too in the setting of standards. We have seen in areas like housing regulations that where red tape is removed, solutions that are regarded as standard across Australasia can give more weight in the regulations to Australasian climatic conditions than to New Zealand climatic conditions. So in the audit sector, as we know, issues that arise in Australia are likely to dominate in an Australasian environment. We may see regulations, or the expectation on those auditors, that reflect the situation, the conflicts, the risks, and so on that arise in Australia more nearly, more closely, and more loudly than they reflect the risks that arise in New Zealand. So there we are putting a heavy burden of proof on the New Zealand companies to be innovative, to be professional, to put their case when it comes to setting standards for audit, and to carry out those audits in a way that is both compliant and cost-effective.

I want to take a second to congratulate the Minister in the chair, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, on his recent elevation. He has been alongside this bill as it went through the select committee, if my memory serves me correctly, and is now in the ministerial chair, shepherding it through the Committee. He will correct me, I am sure, if my memory is inaccurate on this. He is a kind man. [Interruption] Well, I did support his bid to become the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and I have seen him then rise rapidly through the ranks. We may differ, though, heavily on our particular view of the world, but I suspect we will both agree that properly regulated markets—though we may disagree on what constitutes a properly regulated market—are important to New Zealand’s future success in the international commercial environment.

The proposal of the Institute of Chartered Accountants has been accepted. Some of its other proposals, which we think could have been—

As my colleague Dr David Clark mentioned, we are supporting the Accounting Infrastructure Amendment Bill. But I do have a couple of questions that perhaps the Minister in the chair, Paul Goldsmith, may want to answer. One thing that we know we need in this country is a high level of confidence by the public in the people who are charged with actually ensuring that our companies are well run, that our level of governance is high, and that the people who are charged with making sure that things work actually are the right people to do it.

First of all, I would like to look at clause 24 in Subpart 2 “Amendments to Charities Act 2005”. What it talks about there is the difference in compliance between large charities and medium and small charities, and what their requirements are in terms of audit. If a charity is a large charity—and the definition of a large charity is if you have revenue of $1 million or more—then it must get its accounts audited, and I have no problem with that. Where I have a little bit of a problem is that what it actually says here is that if you are a medium-sized charity, then you do not have to get your accounts audited. All you have to do is get your accounts reviewed. This is in section 42C(2)(b), in clause 24. It states: “audited or reviewed by a qualified auditor if A is of a medium size”. The concern I have about this, and as mentioned we are supporting this bill, is that there is a significant number of charities in this country, and a significant number of charities actually go out to the public and seek funds to undertake whatever they may be doing, whatever their charitable cause is. And $500,000 to $1 million worth of operating expenditure revenue is the definition here. Sorry, it is not revenue; it is operating expenditure that is the definition. And $1 million worth of operating expenditure, that is a lot. OK, audit them, I agree. But $500,000 worth of operating expenditure, even in this day and age, actually is a lot of money. When we have got a significant number of charities in this country, and the medium ones—$500,000 to $1 million—only have to be reviewed, I just have a little bit of a concern about that, because I am not too sure what “review” actually means from an auditing sense, so please excuse my ignorance from that perspective, and maybe the Minister can talk about that.

We all know what an audit is—that is, when an auditor carries out his task an auditor is a defined person as defined by the legislation. But a review, does that just mean that the auditor has to cast his or her eyes over it, and then sign off and that is fine and then they have undertaken and completed their duties? It just concerns me because I think that this takes away a level of confidence that the public, who give money to these charities, actually deserve. And the thing also is that the cost of a full audit is actually not a substantial amount of money. I mean, you can get an audit for a simple charity actually for, I would say, a couple of thousand dollars, to be honest, and when you consider the fine as set out in clause 24—this is still clause 24 but it is down to section 42E as inserted by clause 24—is $50,000 for not complying with the conditions in the Act, $50,000 is a lot of money. It does not matter whether you are a large charity, i.e., with an operating expenditure of over $1 million, or a medium charity, i.e., with an operating expenditure between $500,000 and $1 million, the fine is still the same, but the conditions that must be met in terms of those audited accounts are different.

The other thing I would like to talk about as well is clause 36I on the Registrar of Companies. This is quite curious: “Registrar of Companies may authorise person to continue to act in respect of audit despite cancellation or suspension under section 36H.” I do not get this. To be quite honest, I do not get this. It says here, in subsection (2): “The Registrar may authorise the person to act, or continue to act, as the auditor in respect of the audit on the terms and conditions that the Registrar thinks fit”. We have just been through this massive financial crisis, and I do not think there would be any doubt in this Committee that the confidence in a lot of our financial managers was at an all-time low, but what this actually says is that the Registrar of Companies may actually allow someone who has been suspended to continue to act as an auditor under certain terms and conditions. Well, the term is actually—[Bell rung] Mr Chair, can I continue this point? It is quite important.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): Stuart Nash.

The thing that concerns me a little bit here is that the test in section 36AA(5) in clause 31 is “conditions that the Registrar thinks fit.” I do not want to call into question the integrity of the registrar because the Registrar of Companies is held in very high standing, but I actually think that the test of “sees fit” is a little bit loose, and I think that just needs to tighten up. What I would have liked to see here, and maybe the Minister can just elaborate on this, is under what conditions the Minister would think that the registrar may continue to authorise a person who has been suspended or struck off to continue to act as an auditor in that role. It just seems a little strange.

But again, if we go down here—and this is where there is a little bit of misunderstanding. I am just a simple man from the bay, so I become a little bit confused every now and again. What it says here is that the registrar “may allow a person”, but then it gets quite strict. We are looking at section 36J inserted by clause 31, which says: “(2) The Institute, any other accredited body, or an approved association must … (b) keep available a record of the persons recognised by it, at all reasonable times, on an Internet site maintained by or on behalf of the Institute, body, or association”, and it talks about keeping a register of people who have had their accreditation cancelled or suspended. So it is quite clear about that. Then we move over here and it says in (5)—it jumps around a little bit: “A record under subsection (2) is required to include information relating to a suspension under section 36G(4) only if the Institute, accredited body, or approved association is aware of the suspension.”

What that says to me is that the test of “is aware”—it does not seem there is a proactive test. So if someone is suspended, is it their duty to then inform their professional body that they have been suspended? The test here is how the institute is made aware that someone has been suspended. We all know that auditors play a very important role in making sure that the accounts of an organisation or an institute or a body corporate or whatever go through everything here are up to scratch—where it goes to court. I can see a case where it goes to court, the auditor has done a bad job, he or she has been suspended, and, actually, the institute puts its hand up and says that it did not know this person had been suspended. So where is the onus on ensuring that this record is kept up to date? It does actually say in section 36J(4)(b): “the record must be reasonably prominent on the Internet site or the Internet site must contain a reasonably prominent link to the record.”

So what the bill says on the one hand is—and I completely agree with this—that we need a level of transparency to allow a level of confidence in the auditors who are undertaking these, especially if you are part of a body corporate or an organisation that has its accounts audited. It is very important. We all get that. But then there are these other tests that do not quite fit in with that level of transparency that I think the bill is trying to bring in. Again, I go back to subsection (5), the onus of proof—if you could just give me a couple of examples, Minister, where you think the Register of Companies may authorise a person to act, if they have been struck off, if the register thinks fit. They are the only questions that I have.

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: Registrar.

Sorry, registrar. What did I say?

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: Register.

Sorry, registrar. I apologise. As we know, I am a simple man from the bay. Could you perhaps give a couple of examples where you think that the Registrar of Companies may allow a struck-off auditor to continue? They are the points I want to make. Thank you very much.

Can I just take this opportunity to congratulate you, Mr Chair, on your appointment as Deputy Speaker. This is my first substantial contribution to this debate tonight. I also congratulate Lindsay Tisch, Trevor Mallard, and the Speaker himself.

I would like to go straight to subpart 2 of Part 1 of the bill, which goes some way to amending the Charities Act 2005. Before I start that, I do want to acknowledge the officials who are in the Chamber tonight, because there is one clause of subpart 3, particularly clause 31, which I think adds new section 36M to the principal Act, which contains an exemption from membership requirements for certain members of religious societies or orders, in having to register under this legislation. This actually did trigger quite a serious debate at the Commerce Committee because the religious group that was looking for an exemption is known to politics in that they were members of the Exclusive Brethren. I thought, as a member of the Commerce Committee in the previous Parliament, that they gave quite an interesting submission to look for exemption from this legislation.

Members of that religious group wanted to not be registered as members of the particular accounting society or organisation that is being given the rights and the responsibilities to police certain parts of this bill that we are debating today. It was for religious reasons that they did not want to be included or registered, but they were quite willing to be, I guess, judged upon their actions as accountants and upon their behaviour under the legislation. So that gave us a bit of a dilemma as to whether or not they could act or transact business as accountants but not do that as registered members of the organisation at hand. We did come up in the select committee with something that is not necessarily done all too often in legislation, and that is that we did exempt people with certain religious beliefs from being party to or members of an organisation—or, in this clause, under section 36M, exempt from membership of accountancy bodies—because of their religious beliefs.

Obviously this created quite a bit of debate as to whether or not we were setting a dangerous precedent, but I understand, and maybe we can get a nod from one of the officials, that there was one other precedent for this—I am getting a nod, so that is good—in legislation where we did give people who held certain religious beliefs an exemption from being members of organisations such as this. But I think in all honesty that we came to a happy arrangement. We had a submission from members of the Exclusive Brethren, where they said that they would act in the spirit of the rules of the organisations that they did not want to be members of, and if they were seen to be breaking any of the rules and regulations that that organisation had, they would be quite happy to, I guess, be ruled by that as well.

There were some conditions upon that. There had to be a written agreement between the parties looking for an exemption and the body they were looking to not become members of, and at any time I believe that body could take away that exemption. If it did that, my understanding is that it would almost be impossible for them to trade as accountants under the new law. I think that this was an issue that the Commerce Committee looked at in great detail, because we did think that there were some concerns around setting a precedent in this way for this type of exemption. It was heated, because the members of the Exclusive Brethren obviously have had a role in politics in the last 10 years, but I believe that the select committee of the last Parliament looked at this in a very constructive way. They were given quite a grilling as to why they wanted to be exempted from this particular part of the bill, but I think we came to what I would call a happy medium.

I think we should watch this very closely. I wonder whether the Minister in the chair, Paul Goldsmith, would be able to suggest how we monitor this over the next 2 or 3 years as this is new ground, not just for the Parliament but also for those people with those particular religious beliefs. I do think, given the heat that could have been in the situation there—

I do want to start by acknowledging the efforts of Jonathan Young as chairman of the Commerce Committee and my predecessor, Craig Foss, in bringing this legislation to the House. I do want to acknowledge the spirit of bipartisanship that we have seen on this issue, which was so evident amongst my supporters in Epsom as well. I would like to carry that on in this area.

I think it would be useful at this stage just to quickly remind the Committee of the four sets of changes that this piece of legislation brings in to improve accounting market performance in financial reporting settings. Subpart 4 deals with changes to the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants Act 1996. The function of that Act is to require the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants to regulate its members, in the public interest, and the non-regulatory functions, including the promotion of quality expertise and integrity in the New Zealand accounting profession. The changes in this bill will permit the institute, which has about 30,000 members, to complete a merger with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia. Subpart 4 deals with those details and enables the benefits of the merger to go ahead.

Subpart 1, which was discussed earlier on, covers the changes to the Auditor Regulation Act. That 2011 Act prohibited bodies corporate from carrying out audits of financial statements prepared by financial markets conduct reporting entities. There was no real clear public policy purpose in that, and so the Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill removes that prohibition, maintaining auditor independence and audit quality but also allowing flexibility around the arrangements. I do want to reassure the previous speaker Mr Nash, who was worried about a review—

💬 Hon Annette King: Faafoi was the last speaker.

—the previous speaker bar one—of the formal assurance process. I can assure the member that review is a formal assurance process that is subject to assurance standards issued by the external reporting board. It is a lower level of assurance than the audit but it still requires the auditor to carry out rigorous assessments.

Subpart 3 deals with the Financial Reporting Act and changes there. Under the old legislation, only members of the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants and certain overseas-qualified persons were able to carry out statutory accounting functions. The Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill broadens that so that all appropriately qualified New Zealand members of an accounting professional body can operate as accountants in New Zealand. That is all about expanding the base of qualified accountants in New Zealand.

Finally, Subpart 2 deals with the Charities Act, which, as has been noted by previous speakers, allows registered charities with an annual operating expenditure of $500,000 or more to have their financial statements audited or reviewed by accountants. We think that is an appropriate measure to be set.

All in all, I think we have got a good start here, and on that basis I am sure that we can iron out any further details as the evening progresses. Thank you.

As others have said, this is a bill with very little controversy that is supported by my Opposition colleagues in line with the Government, and supported by the New Zealand accounting profession and CPA Australia. I do agree with the Minister, the Hon Paul Goldsmith—we all agree—that this will bring the profession closer together, as trans-Tasman regulatory reform and legislative reform have done in other areas of banking and finance. It will create efficiency and some greater transparency. Again, the Minister sort of leapt into the fray and has not answered some of the questions.

I think the previous speaker Mr Faafoi, in all seriousness, raised some issues about the religious exemption. We want to make sure that the context is clear here. We are not going to enter into some religious discussion involving the Deity—I see a former qualified member of it over on the other side—or what people may or may not think. The issues in respect of this bill were in truth centred on whether we were somehow going to have the department or officialdom trying to define outside their brief what was, for instance, a legitimate religion, and trying to be a sort of arbiter or referee of those nefarious forces—there always are in these things—who may try to use this particular clause to get around being members or being subject to the constraints or rules and obligations of the legislation. So it was, as Mr Faafoi said, a serious debate.

I do question—and, I suppose, to my point—that the body itself would have to make judgments. New section 36M(1)(a), inserted by clause 31, states: “the relevant body is satisfied that A is a practising member of a religious society or order whose doctrines or beliefs preclude membership of any organisation or body other than the religious society …”, blah, blah, blah. The question for us was quite simple. No disrespect to our friends in officialdom or to the new entity itself, but how are they qualified to make those judgments? That was our question. How do you stop those folks who just want to pull the wool and walk around the regulations and the strictures? How do you avoid that happening?

My colleague is right. There has been precedent. I believe it was labour relations legislation. I recall this because when we were in Government my colleague Damien O’Connor and myself were approached by members of the Brethren sect, or whatever they call themselves, to approach the then labour relations Minister, Margaret Wilson, to seek a continuation, when we disposed of the Employment Contracts Act and reformed that legislation, of an exemption based on their beliefs. Mr O’Connor and I went to bat for the Brethren out of genuine concern. Little did we know that that would come back to almost knife us in the throat back in, what was it, 2005, as certain members of that sect decided that they would abrogate their own religious beliefs—so-called—and enter the fray under surreptitious means, and they almost bought an election with a million bucks. But putting that aside, I think this is a fair clause that does tread a path to allow people who have religious beliefs to be a part of this legislation but it does not impinge on their own individual religious beliefs and views and values. But I would be interested, if the Minister could perhaps claw back into history and into his own, I think, Anglican upbringing and perhaps reassure us that the entity—

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: Baptist.

—Baptist; my apologies—will not be asked to make arbitrary decisions around what is a genuine religious belief or not, because that would be rather absurd. I doubt whether the Australians would want to enter into that sort of activity themselves.

But this is a good piece of legislation. It will promote efficiency and transparency and a high degree, I think, of quality work within the professions and will allow expansion and amalgamation across the trans-Tasman boundary. We do support it. It is a pity it has been around for so long, and it does worry us—no disrespect to the new Minister, who, I am sure, is diligent in all his work—that the commerce portfolio has slid down the greasy pole from being inside Cabinet to being outside Cabinet and then being at the bottom of the outside of Cabinet, somewhere near the dunny. So we do worry about that, because the commerce portfolio has, I think we would all agree, been through the offices of Simon Power and Lianne Dalziel and a number of Ministers and has been treated very, very seriously.

First of all, I would like to congratulate the new Minister on his role as the Minister of Commerce. I echo my colleague Clayton Cosgrove’s concerns about the place that commerce is now held, viewed by the Government as being outside Cabinet. I would also make the comment that I look forward to the new agenda that the Minister of Commerce is going to announce very soon to the country as to what he has in store in terms of ongoing legislation and the particular stamp that he wants to put on his portfolio. There is particular interest around the necessary reform called for by the chair of the Commerce Commission of section 36 of the Commerce Act and the improvement of competition law—leaving aside the cartels bill that is going to be hitting the House at some point soon—and where he wants to take that evolution of competition law next.

I am very keen to hear the views of the Minister, given that his previous claim to fame has been passing, after many, many months of discussion in this Chamber, the august Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill. It was one of the most, shall we say, meaningless pieces of legislation I have seen come through this House in the 6 years that I have been here, which tidied up a small area of uncertainty in contract law around the timing of when a contract is accepted by electronic means. That summary is basically about all that bill deserved.

Just in relation to this bill and the debate in the Commerce Committee, there is no doubt, first of all, that there was a very cooperative discussion on this bill across all parties in the House and that some useful outcomes came out of the select committee stage in the changes that were made. As colleagues have mentioned, the biggest part of this bill that taxed the discussion in the select committee was the religious exemption. There is no doubt that that created some real challenges for the officials—and I would like to acknowledge their role in the whole of this bill, not just on that particular part—because, leaving aside all hilarity around the particular issue, it actually presented a real moral dilemma for the committee. The officials had to work quite hard to go back and look at precedent around exemption on religious grounds, and I think that at one point we heard about a similar provision in the Valuers Act of 1948, which is really going back quite a long way.

I just want to put on it record in the Committee tonight that I still have reservations about the position that we came to. I think it was a fair outcome, but I still have reservations around the unintended consequences of that religious exemption from belonging to an accredited body and the importance of that—how you can sit outside that body and still perform the functions and how there can be the necessary scrutiny. I would like to hear from the new Minister any views that he would like to share with us around that.

I just want to quickly mention another matter that was brought to us as a result of submissions and that did raise some discussion with the officials, but never actually made it into the bill, and that is around whistleblower provisions. I just want to briefly inform the Committee around that. “BDO New Zealand”—which is the accountants and auditors and advisers—“noted that due to confidentiality rules the auditor cannot share client information unless there is a misstatement resulting from fraud.”, and it recommended “a wider ability for auditors to communicate with the relevant regulator for statutory audits.” This is actually quite important, and the committee went away and looked, and said that “Under the [Financial Markets Conduct Act] auditors must whistle-blow in relation to certain financial products. Auditors of issuers of debt securities and registered schemes … will have an obligation to provide information to supervisors or, in certain cases, to FMA, if there are reasonable grounds to believe that there is a serious problem with the issuer or scheme. Auditors will also need to provide relevant information about issuers to supervisors on request.” So that Act does protect auditors “against civil, criminal, and disciplinary proceedings in relation to the disclosures made.”

There are also similar provisions for auditors for banks and insurers to report to the Reserve Bank and obligations for “auditors of other companies or corporate entities to provide requested information to the Registrar of Companies …”. Although the officials told us that they could “see the value of extending whistle-blowing protection provisions (and protections from liability), these are obligations that need to be considered in relation to particular regimes and regulators.” They said that these obligations have got “significant consequences for auditors, and their imposition has given rise to concern from auditors in the past.” They said that “The International Ethical Standards Board for Accountants’ initial proposals on the appropriate extent of auditor responsibility for whistle-blowing under audit and assurance standards have not been well received, … because ‘one size does not fit all’.” However, they did say to us that “any extension of whistle-blowing obligations would be best considered once the outcome of that analysis is known.”

I would just like the Minister to take note of that. Whistleblowing protections in this country are not that great. They are quite weak, generally. In this particular area of financial markets and the collapse of financial companies, and in all of the areas dealt with by the Commerce Committee—which, with respect, the current Minister has not been party to in the last 6 years—the ability to blow the whistle, so to speak, and the ability to reveal information and to bring stuff to the public attention and get it dealt with has been paramount and has underpinned a lot of the legislative changes that have taken place right across the board.

In this particular piece of legislation, this should not go unnoticed, and it should be considered as an ongoing issue to be watched. Whistleblowing around practices, whether it is through auditors or accountants, whether it is lawyers, whether it is financial advisers, or whether it is anybody else operating in the financial environment where corporate crime, white-collar crime, is rife, is an issue that I think we are only scratching the surface of in this country. It is something that I would hope that the new Minister in the chair will, in this position, be taking serious account of.

There will be further discussion around this bill with the various provisions. I certainly think that there has been a lot of hard work done by the Commerce Committee. I do want to acknowledge the role played by the chair, Jonathan Young, and other members of the select committee, and right across the Chamber. I think this is a good piece of legislation. I think there are some issues that still need to be paid attention to and I do again register some unease around the exemption on the basis of religious affiliation for belonging to and for having to belong to an accredited body.

I call—are you calling? I will just explain to Mr Tabuteau. If the member wants to have a call—and I know that you stood up earlier—you must call out “Mr Chairman”. If you do not call, then the call goes to someone else. I know that you stood before and sat down. You stood again but did not call. So that is the procedure. You must call. All right? If the member wants to call, he needs to stand up and call “Mr Chairman”.

Thank you for your patience, Mr Chair, and thank you to the members this evening. I take this as an opportunity as a member who has come from a tertiary background, who has had the privilege to work as a stakeholder in this environment, to commend the Commerce Committee and the members for what looks like to me to be an amendment to the bill that has obviously been well considered, it has been well-thought-through, and there is clear evidence of bipartisan discussions and relationships. So I think this will be a rare opportunity for me, on behalf of the New Zealand First Party, to stand in support of an amendment to bills being passed through this House.

I spoke of my association with the stakeholders. As the head of a business school I spent the last 2 years working with the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants and was privy to the discussions. I take this opportunity to acknowledge some of the individuals and say to the members here that it was not a straightforward discussion. It was not a straightforward decision for some of these members to amalgamate or merge with their Australian counterpart. I acknowledge the strength of will and the hope that the merger would benefit the New Zealand accounting association. I take this opportunity—thank you.

The first part of this bill’s intent to create efficiency and effectiveness in terms of auditing, an essential part of effective business operation, is to be commended. Initially I was wary of some of the first part that lessened the requirements to be an auditor and lessened some of the regulatory requirements in terms of complying, but I do note and am satisfied that, contrary to this, the stipulations and the requirements in terms of auditing and meetings standards were conversely increased. So on behalf of the New Zealand First Party it is a privilege to stand before you tonight, with a quick word from me. Thank you.

I move, That the question be now put.

Motion agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 471 in the name of the Hon Craig Foss, and the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 2 in the name of the Hon Paul Goldsmith, to Part 1 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Amendments to other Acts