McLean Institute (Trust Variation) Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the McLean Institute (Trust Variation) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill.

It’s a very great pleasure to be here as the member for Christchurch Central to bring this bill before the House. The McLean Institute’s charitable trust is based in the heart of Christchurch, and the institute was set up pursuant to the will of Allan McLean. And here we have it. This is the problem. The will of Allan McLean, which is phrased back in the early 1900s—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Oh come on, Doctor, you’d be able to work that out.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, it tests, Mr Brownlee, even my legal skills. There are sentences in there that I think are over 600 words long, and I simply can’t hold my breath that long.

So this is a challenge. Because, as often happens when people have great intentions, they frame those intentions in the language of the time. Whilst some might be familiar with that language, I am not. So if we look at the will—and I’ve got a copy of it here if anyone’s interested—it does things like bequeath all wines, liquors, and consumable stores and provisions and things like that, and also gold watches, chains, and sleeve links to, I’m imagining, a daughter, to Emily Phillips. That’s not the sort of drafting we see in common wills. But they’re only little points of interest, which kind of sets this will in the time in which it sits.

Mr McLean had some great objectives, and they were to support indigent women in Christchurch. But back in the early 1900s, the framing and value of those intentions wasn’t exactly what we’d expect. Whilst I think we would all agree that the focus of the trust being to provide long-term housing and daily necessities to indigent women was a good thing, I think the wording itself might be a little problematic.

The real crux of the matter, if we go through the will—and I have, in fact, read it—right through to clause 6, is the main bequest to the institute was a large chunk of land and then some residual property as well. The land was called “Holly Lea”, on the corner of Manchester Street and Colombo Street—many will know it. “As to the Holly Lea property and furniture, [that’s for the benefit] only to gentlewomen or women of refinement or education in reduced or straitened circumstances and the children not being over the age of ten years of any such gentlewomen … my special intention being that the Holly Lea property shall be reserved exclusively for the use of gentlewomen or women (including their children as aforesaid) who either by their birth education previous life or manner may be able to live in harmony under the same roof.”

So we can see there’s a fairly antiquated approach to the charitable purpose there. As to the rest of the bequest, which was not so constrained to gentlewomen, that was to be left to people of “the female sex”—interestingly, didn’t use the word “women” there, but—“not being under the age of eighteen years and [their] children…but no person shall be admitted to the Institution but…as are poor and of good character and such as have been resident in the Colony for a period of three years at least prior to the application for admission and who have not been in receipt of a pension under ‘The Old Age Pensions Act 1898’…”. But, of course, one of the challenges here is that the Old Age Pensions Act 1898 is now, essentially, the national super, and everyone of old age receives national super. So it’s a great thing, the national super, but what it means is that the purposes of that will, back from 1906, really don’t work.

So we know that one of the challenges of a bill of this nature is if it can be done another way, it should be done another way. I’ve been in constant communication with the trustees of the trust and, in fact, because they know the law and are well advised, they went to the High Court. So if we want to see that, we can see this decision of the High Court from 30 September 2021, where they went and attempted to amend the trust deed. One of the challenges, of course, is that that will deed—the trust that’s created out of the will—was encapsulated in legislation shortly after Allan McLean died. So the challenge that was posed was that the court was being asked to amend a legislative trust. It’s quite interesting, for those nerds amongst us—Rachel Boyack—you might want to look at this decision because the Cawthron trust is mentioned because it has also been to the court in an attempt to amend its trustee.

So the guts of this decision is that because the 1909 Act and some subsequent Act kind of encapsulated the trust’s powers in legislation, Justice Doogue ultimately concluded that it would be inappropriate for the courts to, essentially, meddle with the legislature—pretty fundamental constitutional principle that perhaps we’d like to see applied a little more often.

But the fact of the matter is that the bill itself takes those rather antiquated terms and has done a number of things—not just in respect of the purposes of the trust, I must say. It also has some very unusual language around who the trustees are, relating to some bodies that no longer exist, and so on. So the appointment of trustees is a lot more flexible. But, really, the fundamental and very laudable purpose of this bill is to take what is a very constraining and antiquated purpose clause and reframe it in this new piece of legislation in a much more broad and encapsulating way, which I think fairly reflects the very good intentions of Allan McLean when he set up this trust. Essentially, the purpose, as set out in clause 5 of the trust deed, which is a schedule to this bill which is now before the House, simply says, “The purpose of the Institute is to provide assistance to and promote the welfare and well-being of disadvantaged women residing or located in the Region (and the children in the care of such women),” and it goes on to talk about what that may mean.

I think it’s very good that they’ve done that. It talks about providing temporary, emergency, or transitional housing, or assisting women with housing needs to find, locate, obtain, and retain secure housing, and providing housing at an affordable cost. Then, a much broader clause in clause 5.2.5: “Providing support to women in distress due to mental health or addiction issues, disability, trauma, violence, homelessness, poverty, or dislocation;”. So there is a significant shift here. It must be said that from the original framing of “gentlewomen of good standing” who had, essentially, fallen on hard times—a very aristocratic approach, if you would—to saying, “Look, we’re actually now going to direct this not to women of the upper class, to be perfectly honest, who have perhaps struggled and aren’t living in the way to which they’re accustomed, but to just disadvantaged women.” A much more modern and appropriate framing of that.

So here we have it. A good piece of legislation, and I congratulate trustees and their advisers on bringing this through the House process. So I’m very happy to have it here. Can I say that this is an institute of some standing in Christchurch. It’s done a lot of good work in difficult circumstances over a long period of time. Like many trusts, it’s faced the challenges of having to manage real property and provide accommodation and the like in a situation where they may not be expert at that particular skillset. This gives them far broader powers not just to own property and accommodate women but also to now bring in the assets of the trust, turn it, essentially, into a cash asset, and be a lot more flexible and strategic about how they assist women and their children.

So this is a really good bill and it will modernise this trust in a way that will bring it into the 21st century. It’s a great thing for the women of Christchurch and that means it’s a great thing for Christchurch more generally. I absolutely commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

That was a speech delivered in the uniquely persuasive style of Dr Webb which, of course, some of us find intriguing, given the way in which it is often pressed without much consideration for anybody else’s views. While I do appreciate the Allan McLean Institute and the need that they have to change their Act, I think it is important that it does go through a select committee, to ensure that the intentions of the settlor are not unduly disrupted in these modern times.

It’s worth noting, I think, that Allan McLean was quite an interesting character, a very upright man who came to New Zealand via Australia in about 1852. A lot of what he has set up here, I’m sure—despite Dr Webb’s concerns about the structure of the will that he left—would have been formed because of the circumstance his own mother found herself in when his father died, leaving her with five relatively young children. He and his two other brothers did very well: runholders in Australia and then coming to the Waimakariri district initially before heading further south in the Canterbury district to acquire the leasehold on very large tracts of land. It was much later in his life, when he was in his late 70s, that the Government bought out those leases—he’d acquired them from his two brothers at that point—and a very high price was paid for those leases in order that some of that land could be made available to successive farmers in the Canterbury district.

When you think about why he built a huge home—the McLean Mansion that still sits in Manchester Street, that’s currently, I understand, undergoing some restoration—why he built such a massive house to move in at the age of 80 and lived there for only five years, what is pretty clear is that he always had the intention that that big facility would be made available to, as he described it, “a home for women of refinement [and] education in … straitened circumstances”. He left a huge bequest, so I’m told: it was around £300,000. If we take the mathematics of Paul Eagle—and I take a risk in suggesting that—that would make that around about some $200 million in today’s money—a very large amount of money. Over the years, the institute has stayed pretty faithful to the intention that he had; nearly 120 years, in fact.

So this change that’s proposed to this bill, on the face of it, looks absolutely the right thing to do to ensure that that work does continue for quite some time to come. I just want to, for a moment, talk about the building itself—his own home that he built, clearly with the intention in mind that it would become a home for women in the circumstances that he suggested. For a while, it was used as a dental clinic, once the institute moved its premises out into the Fendalton area—and the institute still holds a property on Fendalton Road.

It’s not unusual that the will that Dr Duncan Webb was holding up and expressing some difficulty in understanding was ultimately interpreted in an Act of Parliament. There’s quite a lot of that happened in New Zealand; we have these things up and down the country and it would be interesting to see if there was a quicker way in which to deal with some of the needs of those institutions to change. I can think—also in Christchurch—I have a fairly good knowledge of the Riccarton Bush Trust, for example, which was set up largely at the generosity of the Deans family, but also with some Government purchase money involved. So it is not an unusual circumstance that the House is dealing with—we’ve just dealt with the Cawthron Institute. I’m sure that the reason for the Cawthron Act, some time after the “Allan McLean Act”, was to put into a legal framework—a proper framework—the intentions of the executor of the will.

So we will we will be looking at this bill in the select committee to make sure, essentially, that what is being asked is reasonable, that what is being asked will provide a legislative basis for the work of the institute to continue for many, many decades to come, and that the intentions of Allan McLean are not lost inside the new arrangements. I think it would have been very good for us all had we not had to wait until Monday of this week to get a copy of the bill.

I want to thank the previous two speakers for drip-feeding a little bit of the very interesting life of Allan McLean to us. I feel it would be remiss to not add some further dimensions, because he really did have an extraordinary early part of his life that we can see from the previous speakers’ contributions, which shaped his thinking and shaped his generosity and his commitment to looking after women who found themselves in unfortunate situations, as indeed his own mother had during his childhood.

So if we go back further, to prior to when he went to Australia, actually, Allan McLean was a good Scottish boy. I know very well something of the generosity of the Scots, living in Dunedin and seeing the philanthropy there and the hard work and generosity, and it doesn’t surprise me that he is of Scottish heritage. They lived on the Hebridean Islands, and that’s on the western side of Scotland—beautiful remote islands. One of the most well-known is probably the Isle of Skye. The islands are known for their whisky—spelt without an “e”, I believe, in Scotland—but they are very remote, very challenging islands.

His father married a woman there and lived on the Isle of Coll. But there were hard times. This was not an easy place to live. At one point, his father was out on a boat, there was a terrible storm, and although his father survived the storm, he later passed away. So young Allan McLean, the young Scottish lad, was left with his mother in these remote islands—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: What about the bill?

INGRID LEARY: —trying to survive. You ask about the bill, but I’ll just really—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, the member’s very keen on people getting back to the bill.

INGRID LEARY: Absolutely. Gerry Brownlee is asking me to get back to the bill, and I’m just pointing out why this young man was able to appreciate the importance of having the care that he was given by his mother, because one other interesting fact was that when they were there, it was so difficult. They were cooking and eating seaweed, which was known as carrageen, and it was a kind of moss on the island.

Eventually, they went to Australia, which is where the Hon Gerry Brownlee picked up the story. As we’ve heard tonight, they made their fortune in Australia, came to New Zealand, and we’ve heard the rest about what happened. He became a great businessman and he left a legacy to help people that were in circumstances like that of his own mother.

Now, what’s interesting about the bill is that I really like the fact that the will of Allan McLean is enshrined into the legislation. We’ve heard parts of it read by my colleague the Hon Duncan Webb. If we look at the preamble under recital (4)(a) and (b), it says, “As to the Holly Lea property and furniture only to gentlewomen or women of refinement or education in reduced or straitened circumstances and the children not being over the age of ten years”, and so on. I have to admit, I had to look up what the word “straitened” means, and, for the benefit of this House, straitened means impoverished or in circumstances of poverty. Clearly, that kind of language is just very difficult to navigate in this day and age.

So what the bill does is it sets out the intention of young Allan McLean, who later bequeathed that money, but it very clearly broadens the intention so that it is not just for people of the upper classes, Duncan Webb has said, but for access to all. That’s probably a good thing, because it would be quite difficult to pass assessment these days to ensure that there was that kind of judgment around that, if the previous provisions had applied. It also means that the people who receive the benefit of the endowment can stay in the accommodation, either temporary or long term, whereas previously it was only for a much shorter amount of time.

So the other interesting fact about the institute is that, clearly, there were very dedicated people in the story, apart from Allan McLean. There were four staff who, by 2012, had already served 20 years each, working in the institution. That, to me, speaks of the dedication to the kaupapa of the institution but also the fact that they must have enjoyed working there. They must have had a great deal of satisfaction from helping women in need. So there’s very little to say apart from the fact that I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to support this bill. It makes perfectly good sense to pass this legislation. This trust, unlike charities—well, charities themselves have a lot of autonomy and a lot of flexibility. In this case, they don’t, because it relies on quite antiquated legislation. We do need to modernise its language, as others have spoken about, talking about “gentlewomen” or “women of refinement or education”. The risk with this is that if it’s not updated, then it’s going to actually—the number of people that this can benefit will decrease over time. So it needs to be brought into the 21st century, to ensure that women can access things like temporary emergency housing, accommodation support, and mental health support; to ensure that these programmes continue and access is not restricted; and, as I say, to modernise it. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on the McLean Institute (Trust Variation) Bill. We’ve already heard a lot of history in the House tonight, and that’s really important. It’s a wonderful way to mark history, to bring evidence and put it in front of the House. We’ve heard about the need—and the agreement across the House about the need—to enable the McLean Institute to move with the times, allowing them to support women and children in need of welfare assistance in a way that accommodates today’s social challenges.

And—usual story—I always look for a teachable moment. This legacy that has come from—we heard from the other side of the House—someone who truly understands that any one of us could fall on hard times and that we must do all that we can to look after each other. We heard about the definition of “straitened circumstances”, which we know that we have plenty in our community today that live in straitened circumstances. It is interesting comparing the wording that we had brought to us that is in the preamble to the bill—we’ve had a couple of members discussing this tonight—and comparing that to clause 5, which modernises the purposes.

I think there’s a really interesting question to ask ourselves as we reflect on how we used to describe each other and how we used to look upon who was worthy of support—the idea that you had to be 18 to be considered an adult in the eyes of the boundaries that were put in and that you didn’t need help if you were over 10, and the idea about what we do with those between 10 and 18. We all know that they are some of our most vulnerable young people that really need looking after. So that gap is a really fascinating insight into the way that society looked upon itself. What do you do at 10? I don’t know, go out and get a job in a coal mine on the West Coast. I don’t know. The idea that you have to have lived in the colony for three years was interesting, and so was the idea that so many of us back then were immigrants. So it makes an interesting observation about who should and shouldn’t be included in this assistance.

We’ve also heard about the old-age pension. Well, I’m quite sure that there are many I know—maybe even a few in the House—that would consider that if you’re on the super, you’re not necessarily old.

So these were some interesting observations about how we take note of our social identity and the fabric of modern society, and we see that reflected in the purposes when we’ve stretched the idea for women and children who are in need—no age limits and no requirements.

In the original preamble, they talk about people who are able to live in harmony under the same roof. Yet in the purpose of the new bill, we talk about those who are in distress due to mental health or addiction issues, disability, trauma, violence, homelessness, poverty, or dislocation—possibly the polar opposite of how society looked upon those in need and what they needed. Obviously, they needed a roof over their heads, and we’ve heard about the beautiful home that was built in order to provide that roof but also to provide a home, a place where people could feel safe. That’s what we need today: a place where people can feel safe or a place where they can be supported in their straitened circumstances. We see that the people who might need help—and what they need help with—may have changed over time, and we’ve seen that reflected in the change from the preamble to the purpose in clause 5.

What we do know is that the original intent of supporting those in straitened times hasn’t changed. So I think there is a really interesting history lesson. It’s really good, for those of us in this House who are constantly trying to do our best to support the most vulnerable in our community, to be constantly checking whether we are actually considering the people that we need to consider. I think it’s a really interesting lesson. I’m looking forward to seeing this go through the rest of the process. It’s an important piece of work to make sure that they can continue to do this really important work for their community. And it’s because of that that I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take what will be a short call on the McLean Institute (Trust Variation) Bill. Firstly, I acknowledge the Minister Dr Duncan Webb for bringing this bill to the House on behalf of the McLean Institute. What this does is it enables the institute—which was established in 1907, after the death of Allan McLean—to be able to vary their charitable objects and the powers of the board, to update them for this modern age. If anybody’s interested in the intricacies of the McLean family, Allan McLean himself, or the position in Christchurch, I suggest they listen to some of the other speeches that have covered that quite well. The Greens are happy to see this progress and get sorted.

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill. I’d like to kind of take up from where Angela Roberts left off, because I think it was an interesting point—that this is a bill that is about really trying to honour somebody from another time and honour their intentions, but actually make those relevant now. So it’s going to be an interesting balance that has to happen.

I was looking at the intentions as they were set out by Mr McLean and thinking about his heritage and the fact that he had come from a solo mother in a situation of deep poverty and how courageous it was for her to come out, first to Australia and then to New Zealand, and to actually do that journey, but there were so many women like that, at that time, who did that journey. There’s an interesting book—I think it’s called One World, and it’s by Stephanie Johnson—which follows one of those women, who actually is the author’s grandmother, coming out with her two boys to New Zealand, and the kind of opportunity that that provided to escape that poverty, but also the harsh world that they entered when they came here and they established themselves and sought a new life.

This man has made a fortune and then tried to apply it to honour the people around him who, obviously, he saw and empathised with, and so it’s important we continue to honour that. But if we look at the words of the original intention, we can see that it is very much steeped in its own time. It’s actually incredibly sweet. It says that the money is to be able to allow these women to “live in harmony under the same roof.” It’s quite a utopian vision. Again, that is a sign of the times that he was living in, where there was that kind of optimism about what to do. But, in fact, what he sets up is a structure where women who have absolutely nothing will be able to live there with their children, but only until they’re 10.

Here I go back to my own heritage, where I have a relative who wrote a book called Tooth and Nail. She was my mother’s cousin, and she was one of the girls in the Depression who went out to work in order to earn the money for the matriculation exam so that she could keep going through the education system, and that’s in the period in between. So this sort of opportunity for shelter would not have been available to her because she would have been over 10 and under 18.

We have at least made that progress. We are now in a situation where we have free education. We really need to sort out making sure that everybody has a roof over their head—that does need to become something absolutely fundamental in a society. I think we’re making great strides in that area, because, I think, actually, right around this House, we would now agree that that was a settled principle. Actually, it’s only a decade ago that we didn’t agree that that was a settled principle. It’s only a decade ago, because I remember when we had such a housing crisis in this country and we had people actually living in cars and suddenly sleeping on the street, and no one—

Nicola Grigg: What’s changed?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: It’s all sorted now!

Nicola Grigg: There’s more in cars now.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: It’s gotten worse.

HELEN WHITE: No one from the National Party—who were then the Government—would acknowledge that there was a crisis whatsoever. And there’s no point cackling. It’s absolutely the case at the time, and there has to be a reckoning about that. There has to be a memory of that, because that’s something that actually is reflected here. The objects of this legislation will be to establish warm, dry housing for those women and children, and so this will be in line with that principle and that’s a very important thing, and I think we all agree that the spirit of this man’s dream and vision for New Zealand was that—despite the fact that we may have changed the way we interpret that.

The member’s time has completed.

This debate is an important debate, and the work that we are doing here is important. I did a little bit of background research to find out a little bit more about Mr McLean and where the family came from and where they’d spent their time before arriving in New Zealand. I learnt that Allan McLean was the son of Alexander McLean on the Isle of Coll, one of the Scottish Western Isles. His father was a farmer and a fisherman, and then he, like many Scots lads at the time, learnt the trade of a cooper.

I had to look up what a cooper was, and I don’t know—there’ll be experts here in the House who can tell us about the trade of a cooper. I suspect Mr Brownlee probably can. A cooper is a person trained to make wooden casks, barrels, vats, buckets, tubs, troughs, and many similar containers from timber staves that were usually heated or steamed to make them pliable.

So we have here a family with a traditional trade. There was then a death in the family. The father died in a boat accident. He died as a result of the injuries he received in that accident and didn’t drown at the time, but he left a widow and five children—namely, John, Allan, Robertson, Alexandrina, and Mary. John was just 18 when he took his father’s place on the farm.

Mary, their mother, realised through the dark years that followed, where there was disease and crops that failed and so forth, that their plight might be much better if they left—basically, they might avoid starvation. They left their beloved homeland in 1840, that family—and it was really under the threat of dying of starvation—and then they came here via Australia. This story is available on the internet for all to see, but you can see the deprived and challenging background that may well have inspired the subsequent generosity.

The assets that were in the institute to carry on Allan McLean’s legacy to support women into long-term housing, along with their children, and to provide the daily necessities for beneficiaries were there for a purpose. When one considers the background, one can understand how the trust came to be set up and how the will that preceded the trust came to be written, and we can also understand how good it would be—and will be, when we as a Parliament pass this bill—to have a situation where the original purpose of that trust is able to be met fully again. We’re told that the board of the institute observed that the charitable purpose of the institute had been eroded over time since the passing of Allan McLean in 1907, and really, because of the circumstances and the way in which society expresses itself, the changes in societal norms and language—all of those things have made it more difficult to give effect to the original charitable objectives that the trust was set up for.

Of course, the Parliament has revisited, we know, this legislation over time—I think in 1957, from memory—and today we have this bill, which aims again to empower and enable women to live independently, as was the original purpose behind the gift that the institute supports. That, we know, involves ensuring that women have warm, dry housing and that women who find themselves with mental health or addiction issues, a disability or trauma, homelessness, poverty, terminal illness, or long-term or permanent disabilities can gather the support that they need through the support of the institute.

So I’m very proud to support this bill in the House. I think this is the kind of thing that the Parliament can do which does support the good works that are already happening in our community and which come out of a long and difficult past, which I think—I hope—I have alluded to in my initial comments. We can see why this trust was set up, and we know—all of us here in this House—people who have fallen on hard times and we’d want to support the purposes of this institute. So I’m very pleased to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I, like my colleagues, rise in support of the McLean Institute (Trust Variation) Bill. It’s very evident from the submissions given to the House tonight that we’ve all had a quick brief history lesson into the founding families of the mighty Canterbury from where I hail. I just want to put on the record that, despite assertions that the Hon Gerry Brownlee might make, I’m not related to the McLean family in question.

We’ve certainly heard a lot about the family, and I think their story speaks volumes about the legacy left by so many of those very early pioneering families and those founding families of Canterbury. It’s a legacy and history of philanthropy; so often we see around the region evidence of people who had foresight and a desire to ensure the protection and preservation of the lives and livelihoods of future generations that would follow them.

It is indeed a pleasure to see this bill before the House, giving us, as legislators, an opportunity to modernise it and bring it forward a century, from whence it was first passed, to modern-day New Zealand—and, indeed, modern-day Canterbury—where the need is still there but in much differing circumstances.

We’ve discussed—well, I think, members of the House have discussed—at length that the original intention of this piece of legislation and, of course, of the institute is to protect those women of refined upbringings and education, but those who’ve fallen on hard times. But now, of course, “modern-day” has changed, pressures have changed, and with that, the institution must change—hence the need to modernise and adapt the legislation that indeed governs the board.

So the bill, just to look at the technicalities of it, updates and varies the terms set out in the trust deed, such as the charitable objectives and the powers of the board. This would be to enable the assets of the institute to continue to be used to provide systems to and promote the wellbeing of disadvantaged women. The bill also simplifies the original trust board of 13 people. We note already that the board has modernised and evolved itself. It’s certainly investing in other institutions and other businesses around the Canterbury district, but all, I think, with the intention of looking after those who need it.

Some other people have mentioned the investment and development of the retirement village called Holly Lea, which takes its name, obviously, from the original Allan McLean homestead that he left as the McLean house. My own grandparents spent their last days in that property, so it does have a place in my heart, which is very much why we would like to see the future success of the institute and of the board. We do look forward to this being passed to the Social Services and Community Committee for further scrutiny and rigour. We offer the board our very best wishes for the future.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise with pleasure this evening to take a call on the McLean Institute (Trust Variation) Bill. We’ve heard from many members this evening a little bit about the McLean family history, and I’m going to talk a little tiny bit about that myself, because I find people’s motivation really interesting. I think, when we’re looking at the reasons why people do things, and particularly when we’re looking at—we’ve heard about the Cawthron Institute and about the extraordinary bequest that gave rise to that institution and the amazing amount of good that it’s done. A very similar sort of situation here, where Allan McLean bequeathed what would now be an absolutely colossal amount of money—I think we’re looking at $200 million to $300 million in equivalent funds—with some exceptionally good intentions. The wording, of course, as we’ve heard, is not really quite meeting today’s brief.

But looking back at Allan McLean, we’ve heard that he was born in the islands of the Inner Hebrides, on the island of Coll, which is actually where a branch of my family comes from, so that’s quite interesting. His father was a fisherman and he drowned when Allan was at the very impressionable age of 14. I know that the Hebrides are absolutely beautiful. However, you can just imagine, a hundred and umpteen or so years ago, they might have been beautiful but they’d be an extraordinarily difficult place for a solo mother to raise eight children or the five or six—depending on which source you read—that survived, because, of course, infant mortality wasn’t what it is today. Fortunately, we’ve managed to drastically improve those statistics, so we don’t have an expectation of only five of our eight children surviving.

But you can imagine that Allan McLean was probably an extremely, as I said, impressionable 14-year-old. Having that experience of a mother who couldn’t make a living on the land that she inherited, being left in penury after multiple crop failures, and emigrating to Australia with her remaining children, you can imagine that that probably had a really big impression on him. So the McLean Institute arose out of this bequest—for reasons that we’ve probably explored in detail—because Mr McLean wished to provide financial assistance to women and children who were in destitute circumstances, by creating a public institution for their benefit.

But the language used at the time has had the inadvertent effect of limiting potential beneficiaries of the institute’s support. We’ve heard members refer to “gentlewomen” or “women of refinement or education in [reduced or] straitened circumstances, along with their children.” The board of the institute has observed that it’s become almost impossible to give effect to the original charitable purpose over time, meaning it’s now rare for somebody to qualify for that support. I think, from memory, from my research, there are four people who are currently benefiting from this trust, but there won’t be any further beneficiaries until this bill passes through Parliament—assuming it does.

The institute’s key objectives in amending the trust are—as we have potentially heard, but just to just to clarify—to confirm that any woman or child can be assisted by the trust, and to remove any notion or perception of exclusivity and to broaden the purpose of the trust, which, for over 100 years, has been primarily the provision of housing and full-time care in an institution, to instead set a number of charitable purposes intended to empower and support women and children.

The updated purposes are set out in clause 5 of the amended deed, and examples include providing or facilitating emergency housing for women or children, providing support for women experiencing mental health issues, addiction, disability, trauma, violence, homelessness, poverty, or dislocation, and funding programmes that empower women and that work to counter violence and abuse against women. The trustees of the institute remain committed to the original intentions of Mr McLean, and I think that everybody in the House would agree that they are honourable and worthy intentions.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The question is, That the McLean Institute (Trust Variation) Bill be considered by the Social Services and Community Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.