Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill

Members, we now move to Part 2. This is debate on clause 52 and includes schedule 2.

Can I just talk on Part 2 please?

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): You may.

Thank you very much. There are just a couple of questions here. Part 2 is one of those parts that talks about all the Acts that have been amended due to this legislation going through, and there are a whole number of them in schedule 2.

💬 Hon Annette King: Read them out.

Well, there are a whole lot of them. There are a couple, actually, and because I have not got those Acts in front of me, perhaps the Minister in the chair, Paul Goldsmith, could just answer a couple of questions. We talk about the Education Act and in schedule 2 we talk about—there is a whole lot of this—“chartered accountant” being replaced with “qualified auditor” within the meaning of the Act. And we know what this means. The concern I have is whether any of these sections here relate to boards of trustees or anything like this? Or is it simply replacing something of the old with the new? The reason I ask is that if you have to have a qualified auditor when a chartered accountant might do in some of these bodies, then you are taking it up another level, because all qualified auditors are chartered accountants but not all chartered accountants are qualified auditors, if you know what I mean. I am talking about the schedule 2 changes to the Education Act. There are a whole lot of these where all we are doing is replacing “an independent chartered accountant” with “a qualified auditor”, but the onus on a lot of this may be quite substantial because there are not actually that many qualified auditors around, to be honest, whereas there are quite a few chartered accountants.

One question—does a registered audit firm have to be a partnership? Can a registered audit firm not be a company? We are talking here about the schedule 2 changes to section 461E(3) of the Financial Markets Conduct Act: “after ‘registered audit firm’, insert ‘that is a partnership’.” That is just a question. I thought that audit firms could actually be companies, but maybe I was wrong there. But the thing I really want to talk about—Mr O’Connor might know—is whether audited firms have to be partnerships? Can they not be registered companies?

💬 Simon O’Connor: I’ll leave that to the Minister.

Yes, well the Minister might know. The thing I want to talk about here is the schedule 2 changes to the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006. It adds quite a bit to that Act. I am not too sure where this came from, and maybe one of my colleagues who sat on the Commerce Committee may be able to fill us in.

There is a whole lot here in schedule 2, where it is talking about replacing clause 8 of schedule 2 with: “Restrictions on publication by Council of New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants or other accredited body”. What it says under subclause (1) is: “If any disclosure is made under clause 6(d), the Council or governing body referred to in that paragraph must consider the information given in private and not otherwise.” Does that mean it must only consider the information given in private and it cannot consider any other information? Is that what it says? I am not 100 percent sure there, so maybe it should say “must only consider information given in private and not otherwise.” I am not too sure what this is about. I am wondering whether it means that the process has now been formalised to such an extent that the evidence is presented—like in a court, for example—in a formal process where the person who is under scrutiny has the ability to have someone representing them beside them and that it is actually not open to abuse in any way, shape, or form. In a way, I suppose, what I am talking about is natural justice—the ability of a person who is being tried to have a fair trial. I do not mean tried in a legal sense; I mean by the rules and procedures governing the Council of New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Then it says in subclause (2): “It is not lawful for any member of the Council or governing body or for any officer of the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants or the accredited body to publish to publish to any person any information so disclosed except in evidence in disciplinary proceedings”, blah-blah-blah. I am wondering here what the purpose of that subclause is. The reason I ask that is to find out whether there have been instances where people from the governing body, the Council of New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants, have gone out and actually published material that they have heard as part of a disciplinary hearing. Has that been a problem and is this trying to remedy that problem? Or is it simply because it did not exist and the Institute of Chartered Accountants thought: “Hey, this is our chance. We have got one of these amendment reform bills. Let’s just whack it in there, just to mitigate the risk of this sort of thing happening.” That is where I am a little bit confused.

The other thing that strikes me as slightly unusual is that I would have thought that at some point the Council of the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants would need to publish these proceedings, because what I am seeing with this Accounting Infrastructure Reform Bill is transparency, and this is what this bill brings. I would have thought that at some point publishing them brings that transparency.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule 1AA agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule1A agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2