New Zealand Business Number Funding (Validation and Authorisation) Bill

I move, That the New Zealand Business Number Funding (Validation and Authorisation) Bill be now read a second time.

This bill does three things. First, it amends the Companies Act to provide that regulations under that Act can authorise fees collected from companies to be used to fund the New Zealand Business Number Register. Secondly, it amends the New Zealand Business Number Act to insert a regulation-making power to enable fees and levies to begin being charged under that Act. Thirdly, it validates the past use of fees charged under the Companies Act to fund the New Zealand Business Number Register.

Part 1 of the bill amends the Companies Act to expressly provide that the fees collected from companies can be used to fund the New Zealand Business Number Register. The vast majority of entities which have been issued with a New Zealand Business Number are companies. The fees that these businesses are being charged under the Companies Act already factor in an amount for the New Zealand Business Number. These amendments will not lead to any changes to the fees obtained from companies to meet the cost of the New Zealand Business Number; it will simply make transparent to businesses what they are paying for. It will continue to be possible to use the Companies Act fees to fund the New Zealand Business Number through to 30 June 2023.

Part 2 of the bill will amend the New Zealand Business Number Act to insert a regulation-making power to enable fees and levies to begin being charged under that Act. Charging businesses for the New Zealand Business Number in this way will not mean businesses will need to pay more than they otherwise would have, but it allows those charges to be set in a transparent and principled way. Businesses will be able to see what they are charged, and the bill requires that they are consulted before any fees, charges, or levies are set. Fees will need to be set under the Business Number Act by 1 July 2023. After this date, the ability for fees charged under the Companies Act to be used to fund the New Zealand Business Number will fall away.

The bill will also retrospectively validate the historical collection and use of fees set and charged under the Companies Act to fund the New Zealand Business Number Register. Validating the practice of using Companies Act fees in this way avoids the risk of the way the companies’ regulations have been set being challenged, and money used to fund the New Zealand Business Number Register needing to be refunded.

This bill is validating something that was understood and intended to be lawful but was not because of a technical error. If this issue had been identified as part of the development of the New Zealand Business Number Bill, I expect that the same businesses would have ended up being charged roughly the same amount. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise to continue our support of the New Zealand Business Number Funding (Validation and Authorisation) Bill. It would be customary, particularly under an urgency motion, at this time to rail against the lack of a select committee process and the voices of New Zealanders and interested parties not being heard, and we have in fact done this on this Budget day on several occasions. But in this instance, we are firmly of the view that this is a very appropriate measure. In fact, as I said in my first reading speech, this is the first time in this Budget urgency that we have a bill that very legitimately does deserve the treatment of going through all stages under urgency.

It is regrettable that, in good faith, Government and, indeed, Parliament at the time, in the last term, sought to institute the New Zealand Business Number and to fund it through the levies under the Companies Act, believing at the time that that was a completely legitimate way and legal way of going about that. It certainly did reflect the reality and the fact that businesses themselves are the ones who benefit very much most from the efficiencies and gains that come from the implementation of the Business Number. So it is and remains absolutely appropriate that they pay the lion’s share of the cost of the systems in regime.

Regrettably, though, it has been determined—and as the Minister of Revenue said late last year, he received advice that the Companies Act does not actually legally permit the levies that had previously been raised to be used in the way they had been for the New Zealand Business Number. So, particularly in Part 1 of this bill, we will validate the levies that have been charged, and so, with the power of sovereignty of Parliament, we will actually make legal that which technically hasn’t been up until the final passage of this bill. But it is the right thing to do.

I don’t even believe that we will hear much in the way of comment at all from businesses or people in New Zealand. I think they can acknowledge that it was an error—although completely unintentional—that it is the right thing to do to correct it, that it is not harming anyone in the correction. No one is losing anything. No one is being charged more than they would otherwise have been charged. It is, in a sense, in a way, a little bit more than a typographical error but it is still in the nature of a small administrative error that needs to be tidied up, and it is appropriate that we do tidy it up through this urgency process. We continue to commend this bill to the House.

I put it to people who watch the parliamentary debate to listen to the previous contribution given by the Opposition member Brett Hudson, and I put this to the House: all morning we have been regaled with comments about the process of urgency and what a travesty it is and how terrible it is, but when we’re fixing up the mistakes of the previous Government, it’s a case of “It’s not a problem and I think people won’t have an issue with it.” It’s quite an interesting juxtaposition of two lines of thought.

With that, I just need to make mention that whilst this did come in under the previous Government—New Zealand First supported it then—it is a sensible measure that needs fixing, and we continue to support it now. With that, I recommend the bill to the House. Thank you, sir.

Bill read a second time.

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Companies Act 1993