COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill, COVID-19 Response (Requirements for Entities—Modifications and Exemptions) Bill

I move, That the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill be now read a third time.

I’d like to acknowledge the contributions of members across the House and the cooperation of the Opposition in ensuring the smooth passage of this bill through its remaining stages. There’s been an extraordinary amount of work that’s been done by officials behind the scenes to put this bill together and to put together the amendments that the committee has just agreed to. It’s involved a large number of agencies, coordinated by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and I thank them all. It’s a significant achievement to get a bill of this size and detail together in such a short time frame to amend 45 different pieces of legislation, and, as I’ve said earlier, that illustrates the wide-ranging impact that COVID-19 has had.

I won’t, at this third reading, reiterate all of the changes that the bill’s made, as these have been heard by the House only just recently and they have been well canvassed. Some of the changes are aimed at making it easier for businesses to survive in the current crisis, including changes affecting insolvency, corporate law, and commercial property, and it will, in combination with other action taken by the Government, help to save businesses and save jobs.

Some of the provisions recognise that COVID-19 has meant that some processes that would normally be routine haven’t been able to take place, such as those that would require a person to be physically present and mean that there’ll be no penalty or disadvantage from that situation. Some regulatory requirements have been delayed—others accelerated as appropriate.

Some of the changes made in the bill are sensible and overdue, particularly those that incorporate the use of digital technology into Government business and processes. Many of these amendments may lead to a permanent change, even if the bill does not make them so, because they’re sensible new ways of working. I think we’ve learnt across the House, actually, we’ve got some new ways of working that have actually been very useful, and I hope that when the Standing Orders are reviewed, some of those things may well be able to be adopted in the long term. It’ll make a lot of difference to many processes and make people’s lives a little easier and a little more straightforward at a very, very challenging time. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just a short intervention to endorse the comments of the Minister responsible for this bill, particularly his mention that, you know, this was an enormous task but it’s one that we’re up to. I’m pleased to be able to move from where I was yesterday, from commendation to condemnation but back to commendation for the Government, actually, but also for those officials that work so hard—

💬 Hon Member: We live in interesting times.

—for us. We certainly do live in interesting times. I feel like I’m two people at the moment: one, the tub-thumping right-winger, and the other, the very reasonable centrist that I usually portray myself as.

I want to support Mr Faafoi’s comments about, in particular, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment officials. They all work tremendously hard. But I think the most complicated part of this process was in the safe harbour and debt hibernation framework. I really hope it works—I really do—because we’ve got an enormous task to maintain and rebuild our economy over the next days, weeks, and months. The Government’s done what it can, I think, to enable that to occur, but I would encourage it to be nimble, to continue to find ways to assist the recovery. I do believe that at least the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and his business colleagues will have that in mind as they go forward.

The last thing that I want to say is, actually, there are a couple of officials that we haven’t specifically mentioned, and that is from the Office of the Clerk. James and Jo did an amazing job actually bringing all of this together, and we see Zoom as a kind of a pretty easy thing that you click and play, but I can imagine there’s a great deal more going on behind the scenes, particularly in the liaising with officials and witnesses and submitters. I think it should be noted that the Office of the Clerk through this period has done a tremendous job.

With that, I’m very pleased to support this bill.

Mr Speaker, just a very short speech to back up the two speeches that have already been made in this third reading. I think it’s Grant Robertson who said an hour is a day, a day is a week, and a week is a year in the current times that we’re in, and again I just want to thank all parts of the operation that allowed this piece of legislation to get to the point where we’re at third reading today. As Mr Woodhouse said, it’s by the power of Zoom that we’re able to do this swift and effective work under current conditions, and if I think back to late March and early April in a very small office at my place and thinking that we’d have to change this legislation or get through the policy process very quickly and then get the legislation passed within a week, I was a little bit exercised about how we were going to do that. But, with the cooperation of the House, the Epidemic Response Committee, the Leader of the House, and officials, we’ve managed to get here. So can I thank Parliament for that, because I think it will give a great sense of peace of mind for a lot of directors of companies who are facing very difficult times over the next six months. So, with that, I thank the House for getting this third reading through.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I too rise in support of this bill and add my acknowledgment to all of the officials, including the officials of the Office of the Clerk. The way I would characterise those meetings in the way they’re run is those officials were like ducks on a pond: they looked very calm and collected and able to give all the advice we needed, but clearly there was a whole lot of work going on in the background that we didn’t see.

In my second reading speech I said—particularly, around the safe harbour provisions but they apply to all the Insolvency Act and Company Act pieces—that the maxim is: first do no harm. What I’ve realised is that actually there was an implicit addition in that it’s actually: first do no further harm, because, without doubt, COVID-19 and the lockdown have caused damage to businesses, the loss of jobs, and the predictions are that far worse is still to come. So first do no further harm.

I remain convinced that the work that we’ve done on that has delivered that, but equally, as I said in my second reading speech, and the question I asked in the committee of the whole, there’s been some necessary tension introduced, because there were certain things we realised we had to do which could undermine, to some extent, the successful scale of the adoption of safe harbour and business debt hibernation in particular, but, like colleagues across the House, I really do hope that businesses and directors that are able to take these measures up do. It will help to save businesses and save jobs, and I commend this bill to the House.

E tū tautoko tēnei. I stand also to support the passage of the bill. I acknowledge the efforts across the House, and the various industrious officials. During an earlier speech, I made the point that this is an extraordinary situation where we are definitely changing the principles that ordinarily guide directorial behaviour. We’ve had strong entreaties that the governance bodies of many of our enterprises need some protection, but also they need to exercise a tremendous amount of judgment so we don’t inherit a situation that they end up facing charges of recklessness. We want to see the economy recover. The economy has the basis, I think, to cure itself, with appropriate intervention and support from the political estate. This bill is reflective of us all being joined together to ensure that we can aid the cause, post-COVID, of people rejuvenating, strengthening, and getting our enterprises fit for the post-COVID environment. We support the bill.

Kia ora koutou, Mr Speaker. The Green Party is, as has been previously indicated in earlier debates, pleased to support the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill, and I, like other speakers, will be very brief.

I think when the Parliament comes together, as it did after the Christchurch earthquakes, the Hurunui/Kaikōura earthquakes, and now in the COVID situation, to look at what are the sensible issues that have to be dealt with in a common-sense way, there is unity across the Parliament. I am grateful to the enormous effort that is being put in by public servants in all manner of departments, coming together in the all-of-Government response and then looking through the legislation, working out what are the obstacles when people are working remotely, what can be changed so that it makes normal practices able to continue, things like health practitioners enabling people to come back from retirement to be able to practise again to assist our health work force—all sorts of changes. I think it’s 45 different pieces of legislation that are being amended here. The changes are relatively small in scale but they allow for things to work more effectively as we move now to focusing on the economic reset and recovery. So I commend the bill to the House.

Sorry, members, I understand we’ve got a potential issue with the motion that was put. We’re just trying to sort that out.

When I moved the beginning of the third reading for this bill, I, of course, moved the original bill but not the divided bill. So therefore, I seek leave to amend that motion to be I move, That the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill and the COVID-19 Response (Requirements for Entities—Modifications and Exemptions) Bill be now read a third time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Bills read a third time.