Companies Office Registers Funding Validation Bill

I move, That the Companies Office Registers Funding Validation Bill be now read a third time.

The bill, as outlined in the various stages in the debate so far, is the Government’s first step in the implementation of a better and more fit for purpose model for funding the New Zealand Companies Office. The model will reflect the modern realities of running the corporate registry system. It’ll allow the Companies Office to leverage information technology developments and realise efficiencies.

The bill that we are passing now through the House validates the past collection and use of fees collected by the Companies Office across all of its 16 registers it maintains, and also expressly allows existing surpluses within the Companies Office to be used to meet funding deficiencies on some of its registers while the new funding model is implemented.

I do want to thank the members across the House for their cooperation and thoughtful comments through the passage of this bill. I have appreciated the quality of the debate. I mean that quite earnestly, Mr Penk, because the contributions, certainly the early ones, canvassed the issues involved, I thought, quite thoroughly, including the speech by Mr Bayly. And I have also appreciated the brevity of the latter speeches.

So the bill forms a package with the Companies (Levies) Amendment Bill, which lays out the legislative framework for the new Companies Office funding regime. That’s a bill that I will introduce to the House before too long and refer to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. But, for now, I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be speaking on this third reading. Yes, I do acknowledge the Minister. It’s important that we do proceed with this bill quickly, and shortly it’ll be an Act, which is better. I think the one thing we haven’t had a debate on—it didn’t come up—was the operative clauses around how this comes to pass. There’s a new section, new section 84A, which provides that “a fee to which the section applies is and always has been validly imposed.”—that’s the validation of fees component. “Money received by a Registrar of any register maintained by the Companies Office”—and we know there’s 16 of them—“in payment of the fee is declared to be, and always to have been lawfully collected and applied.”

And so the other, second component of that is it defines the Companies Office as the “division or part of each of the following departments” or agencies. As I alluded to in my first reading speech, the amendments are to the Building Societies Act 1965, the Companies Act 1993, the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013, the Financial Services Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Act 2008, the Friendly Societies and Credit Unions Act 1982, the Incorporated Societies Act 1908, the Insolvency Practitioners Regulation Act 2019, the Limited Partnerships Act 2008, the Personal Property Securities Act 1999, and the Retirement Villages Act 2003.

So just for completeness, for people listening—if they were, on a Friday afternoon—but they are the operative elements, and, of course, that’s the reason this bill is broken up into the components—because each of those 13 pieces of legislation will have the same clauses inserted in them. So, on that note, I certainly commend this bill to the House.

Oh, for the sake of good virtue in this final reading, and I think we’ve canvassed it well in the House, I congratulate the bipartisan nature of the support for the Companies Office Registers Funding Validation Bill. It is a shame that we are having a very truncated process under urgency, and, you know, as legislators, I think it’s incumbent upon all of us to have proper and honest scrutiny about legislation. This withstanding, this is a good piece of legislation. It mitigates the problems that we have all canvassed through the various speeches today, and the ACT Party supports it in this third and final reading.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.