Charities Amendment Bill

I move, That the Charities Amendment Bill be now read a third time. The Charities Amendment Bill makes three small but important technical amendments to the Charities Act 2005. It was divided from the current Statutes Amendment Bill to give the public a further opportunity to make submissions.

I would like to commend and thank members of the Government Administration Committee for their work on the bill. It ended up not being as simple as we started out thinking it would be. The committee received 32 written submissions and heard six oral submissions. The committee recommended one amendment not proceed and the insertion of one additional amendment. Although the bill makes only a small number of changes to the Charities Act, they are important for reinforcing the public’s trust and confidence in the system, and I would like to highlight those changes to the bill.

Briefly, the introduction of a 20-working-day time frame to respond to a notice to provide further information as a part of a registration application process that is, and will remain, an iterative process will provide greater certainty for all concerned. It will reduce the time and cost to process registration applications and remove the reputational risk to an entity that can arise if its application is formally declined. It is better, as this bill provides, for the application to be deemed withdrawn if the entity does not respond within that request time frame.

Likewise, it makes sense to include tax evasion and similar offences under section 143B of the Tax Administration Act 1994 in the list of offences that disqualify someone from being an officer of a registered charity. I am sure every member of this House would agree that financial prudence is an important aspect in promoting the public’s trust and confidence in charities.

The remaining amendment, which was inserted with the unanimous support of the Government Administration Committee, corrects a two-word drafting error that arose in 2012. This amendment does not have any impact on a charity’s ability to seek justice, merely providing clarity for the High Court when making interim orders.

As I have outlined, this bill makes three small but important technical changes that will improve the coherence of the Charities Act 2005. It will provide greater clarity around the registration application process and contribute to public trust and confidence in charities by strengthening protections against the risk of financial mismanagement. I would like to again thank the committee for its careful consideration of the bill and, thus far, the unanimous support of this House. I commend the bill to the House.

I rise to take a call on the third reading of this bill. I just want to pick up where Minister Goodhew left off in terms of her raising the issue of the trust and confidence of the community sector in the charities registration process. What I want to say about that is, actually, it is my understanding and my belief that it was the eagle eyes of certain community organisations that saw within the Statutes Amendment Bill a possibility that rights of charitable organisations could be somewhat diminished should the Statutes Amendment Bill go through as it was originally drafted. So they actually presented to the Government Administration Committee and were very vocal about this particular section. Following briefings with the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Internal Affairs, that section was actually carved out and became the Charities Amendment Bill.

The organisations that submitted to this particular piece of legislation were doing so because they wanted to get a sense of confidence that their rights to appeal decisions made by the Charities Registration Board would still continue. Despite the various pieces of work done by officials and evidence presented by officials, that particular sector was not actually feeling a sense of confidence that that would occur. Despite the assurances of the Minister that the bill was to ensure that their rights of appeal would remain in place, the sector was not entirely comfortable with it. That led us to, on the committee itself, wanting to ensure that one particular section was withdrawn, which we were able to do.

What I want to do is also just reiterate something that the Minister said at the Committee stage, because I challenged an issue that had been raised with me. I challenged the Minister on her ability to actually have a robust relationship with the sector. The Minister did say in respect of the comment on the last 8 years that “I have been the Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector now for 5 of them, and I have seen a distinct change in terms of confidence and, also, the working relationship between the Government and this sector. I have to say that they know my number and I know theirs, and we have a full and frank exchange of ideas and views.”

I thought that that was a very bold statement, so I decided to actually ask members of the community and voluntary sector whether they agreed with that statement, and I got a range of responses back from the sector. Here is one such response: “Absolutely not. There is no increase in confidence—in fact, the opposite is true. The Minister should stop listening to the sycophants, mainly the preferred providers run by large corporates and much loved by this Government, and start looking at the lived reality of too many of its citizens.”

Another response that I think is very telling: “Even if we have a full and frank exchange of ideas and views, it is a question of whether our perspective is given any credence. Often a Minister is so wedded to the party line that everything is wonderful and they just don’t take us seriously. If we persist in pushing a view that there are problems with any particular Government policy, then we can face retaliation through media and through subsequent funding decisions.” This was a concern that has been raised with us by many community organisations over the last 5 or 6 years.

This is the last comment I want to make, and I think it is very telling as to the lack of confidence that the sector has in the Minister: “The other aspect is that the community organisations generally take into account in their dealings with Ministers as well as officials that no matter how inept or lacking in insight they are, we still have to work with them, so there is no gain in antagonising them needlessly. We put up with their wilful ignorant positions because we have no choice.” That does not sound like a resounding vote of confidence in the Minister and her robust—

I am sorry to interrupt the member, but the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day, and the House is suspended. I will resume the Chair at 9 a.m. tomorrow for the extended sitting. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)