Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill

Third Reading Hon CAMERON BREWER (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs) (17:48): I move, That the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. Over its passage through the House, the purpose of this bill has been clear and consistent: to strengthen oversight of financial dispute resolution schemes and to ensure these schemes are governed and operated in an effective and independent manner, on behalf of New Zealand consumers and for the benefit of them. I want to acknowledge the many people who have contributed to the development of this legislation. I want to thank my good friends on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, ably chaired by Ryan Hamilton, for their careful scrutiny of the bill and for the constructive way they engaged with a wide range of views. I also thank all those who made submissions, including consumer advocates, financial mentors, community organisations, iwi, industry bodies, dispute resolution schemes, and individual New Zealanders, for sharing their perspectives and experience. Their contributions have helped ensure this bill is well tested and balanced. As the House is aware, the committee recommended one amendment, which clarifies that the regulation-making power relating to scheme governance is focused on ensuring the independence of boards as a whole. That amendment strengthens the bill by providing greater clarity, which clarifies that the regulation-making power relating to the scheme governance is focused on ensuring the independence of boards as a whole. More broadly, the bill demonstrates a considered approach to reform. It improves transparency and comparability through more consistent independent reviews. It safeguards independence and good governance through proportionate regulatory tools, and it does so without disrupting access to dispute resolution, undermining scheme independence, or imposing unnecessary compliance costs. Many submitters raised wider issues about the financial dispute resolution system including calls for structural reform. While these matters sit outside the scope of this bill, the strengthened oversight and reporting framework it introduces will provide better information and a firmer foundation for any future policy work. This change is about strengthening trust, accountability, and confidence in a system that New Zealanders rely on when things go wrong. I am confident this bill achieves that. Finally, this bill is part of the Government’s package of financial services reforms, which streamlines regulatory requirements and improves enforcement. I’ve been pleased that the House has unanimously supported the bill at first and second readings, and I hope to see that continue throughout the debate. I commend this bill. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The question is that the motion be agreed to. ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) (17:51): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Here we are on Saturday night of Budget urgency, debating a bill that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs has claimed was introduced by the Helen Clark Government. It must be urgent if it’s been on the Order Paper for most of my lifetime. Actually, the bill was sent back to the House on 20 October 2025. It has been on the Order Paper for some time, and the Government did not see fit to introduce it to the House above any of the other legislation that they have brought. So it is quite difficult for me to accept the advice of the chair—that I very much respect—of this committee, when she says that we should think carefully about the time of this House as we spend it. This is a bill which has languished on the Government’s own Order Paper because of their own mismanagement of the House’s time. This is a bill that is meant to help consumers, and yet, where is it on the Government’s priorities? Absolutely scraping the bottom of the barrel. We find ourselves here on a Saturday night debating it because this is the only time that the Leader of the House is willing to give it. This is something we should have spent our time on. This is something that we should have responded to. It is a bill that misses the point. When a Minister wants to make a big announcement about how he is advancing the interests of consumers, he should do that in his bill. When consumer advocates are saying consistently to Governments, since 2016, that the current structure is not working and that it should be streamlined, we should give some thought to that—or not. If this was a bill that wasn’t about consumers and was about helping the banks and was about maintaining the status quo and was about making it easier for loan sharks to peddle expensive loans on street corners in our town centres or in our regional communities where that is the only kind of loan you can get, then we should have been clear that this was a bill that was about the interests of lenders rather than consumers. But instead, the Government somewhat brought it on themselves when they went out and told consumers that this was a pro-consumer bill. It seems fair that we will interrogate, at every opportunity, whether, in fact, the interests of consumers are being advanced here. Then the Minister has the gall to say—again, after he took it back in the committee stage—that that is outside the scope of this bill. Scope has a meaning in Parliament. It means within the scope of a bill that is amending that the piece of primary legislation that we are talking about. It is absolutely within the scope of this bill to make the kinds of amendments, that Opposition members have questioned the Minister on, whether he was prepared to make. It is outside the scope of his Cabinet decisions. That’s something that he should own. He went to Cabinet and decided not to progress an option which would have made this better for consumers. Own your record, Minister. The record on this is that the National Government is not progressing consumer reform in this way, and they should at least be clear in a committee stage that that is the choice that they have made. But what does it do that is positive? It will make governance arrangements simpler and clearer. What the committee considered around making sure that appointments were people who had the right kind of expertise and also acknowledge that they might have overlapping interests with others on the boards is a useful thing to understand. But as I pointed out to the Minister, and he was unable to give a clear answer on, it has become industry practice under the watch of both kinds of Government—red and blue—that the people who review these schemes are people who are also members of other schemes on their boards. They’re either commissioners of other boards or they are people who hold the same sorts of roles as the people they are meant to be reviewing but on other kinds of scheme’s providers. “Peer review” is the phrase that Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan used, and I would say that is a fair assessment. I put it to him, whether it is his intention to continue that practice. It is a different kind of authority that he has given these sorts of reviews because he has made them ministerial reviews. No longer are they completely outside the realm of political interference. No longer are they completely outside the realm of question from the public in a public accountability mechanism by which the reviewers are appointed. They are now the purview of a Minister, and I would invite everyone in this House to reflect on how much it is necessary to demonstrate to consumers that the people who are reviewing these schemes are not also financially benefiting from the fact that they are the reviewers or are involved in appointments that somehow also benefit from them being able to be appointed as reviewers. There is a problem there. It was unclear at the committee stage, and this remains a possible thing that we need to continue to watch. And it was right for the Finance and Expenditure Committee, a hard-working committee, ably chaired now by Ryan Hamilton—who does want to see one scheme and I commend him on his bravery for admitting that when it is not his Government’s position—but it is a committee that asked the Minister to continue to monitor these issues and that is important. At no point did that committee hear one submission or the advice of officials, which made a strong case for why there should be four. It’s important that we take that into account when we are designing the kind of review provisions and extra powers that the Minister will have to oversee these things. Because at the point at which no single participant thinks that the status quo is working, shouldn’t you fix the status quo? Yet, lots of scheme participants—the people who ring up on the phone and say, “Look, I think I’ve been charged much more interest than I agreed to.” or “Look, this loan, I thought this was on a 12 percent interest arrangement, and I was coming to the end of those payments, but, actually, I found out that I have four months left of payments. I don’t think that’s correct. Can you help me resolve that?”—those are the people who, in 2025, when FinCap ran a study and a survey of people up and down the country, they were saying that none of these schemes were making the mark; that only one of the four was a positive net promoter score. It was a great deal of improvement once the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) opened the lid and asked for public submissions on these issues and presented the Government with a number of possible changes to improve this. Even shining sunlight on the present situation has improved things for consumers. But that won’t go the whole distance. We know that people out there are getting a rough deal. We know that consumers who are entering into these sorts of credit contracts, whether it’s with the banks, whether it’s for car lenders, whether it’s phone lending, whether it’s for personal loans that can have rates of up to 25 percent interest plus the fees. We know that people are getting themselves into situations which is very, very hard to get out of. And now, when they’re raising disputes, there is a heavy burden of administration and bureaucracy to navigate through. Those are serious questions about what the Government’s commitment is to its public statements that it is doing this for the benefit of consumers. These are serious questions that the Opposition should continue to ask. And they are serious questions which should occupy the minds of everyone in this House because we will all have constituents who come to our electorate offices with these issues. We will all have whānau and friends who are caught up in credit contracts which are unfair and which they find it difficult to get out of either because the point of sale is a rushed and stressful sort of a transaction where they are not reading the fine print; or where it’s not like that, and they are reading the fine print but they don’t feel like they have any other options. That’s why disputes is important. We should continue to monitor them, but it’s not just monitoring them: it’s also making sure that the whole system works as it is intended to work. I also asked for a provision to make sure that in the annual reports of these organisations, consumer trends continue to be monitored. That is not unusual in legislation—that is an expectation of our electricity retailers—and that they also report against their compliance with consumer conduct codes. Consumer care codes are something which is used in industries like this, in places like Australia. They are an important way of benchmarking what is industry fair practice. That sort of industry fair practice within, say, the banking and finance industry is an important tool and doesn’t actually seem to apply to these sorts of dispute resolution schemes. They should also be subject to a high standard of professional conduct when, say, financial advisers are also required in their annual reports to point to their levels of consumer care and to monitor that not only as a trend but as actual numbers and actual cases that are made available at the board level and then publicly. That is an important part of this. Sunlight changed the behaviour of the four scheme providers between 2025 and 2026 when MBIE had a close look. Sunlight will continue to change these providers’ behaviour if we continue to make the requirements stringent. Hon Cameron Brewer: Here comes the sun. ARENA WILLIAMS: I can hear the Minister saying that he has made the requirements more stringent, but he hasn’t included some key consumer provisions which were available to him in two pieces of legislation that he is responsible for and he could have used as models. Finally, I want to consider the work of the select committee on this. There was a number of submissions to work our way through. I think we have heard people on this; that they want a more ambitious consumer programme, not just in this but right through the financial services sector. I’m proud of the work that the committee has done, but we want to see more, and so, the Minister should take an invitation to come back to the Finance and Expenditure Committee and report to us on that. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 p.m. Sitting suspended from 6.02 p.m. to 7 p.m. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Good evening, members. When we broke for the dinner break, we were up to the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill. We were up to call No. 3, which is a Green Party call. RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) (19:00): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I will keep this call short. I want to acknowledge that, ideally, we would not be doing this bill under urgency, but here we are. I want to commend the organisations that have supported calling for better access to financial dispute services. I want to commend FinCap in particular for their submission, which I know has been referenced by several people here. What I really, really urge the Minister is to use the powers in this bill as soon as they come into effect to ensure that we improve the services that people have access to. Ultimately, I really urge the Minister to do additional work to actually consolidate the current four institutions that exist to deal with these matters. With the bills that we have had on issues such as this one, I find this to be one of the least problematic ones that the Minister has brought forward, and so we’re quite happy to commend it to the House. TODD STEPHENSON (ACT) (19:01): Good evening, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill. We’re very pleased in ACT to be supporting this bill. It’s one of three very important bills in the financial services area that are modernising some of the rules and regulations and, then, obviously some of the entities, like the dispute resolution entities. I commend this bill to the House. Dr DAVID WILSON (NZ First) (19:01): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill’s third reading. I feel like the process we’ve been through tonight have left no stone unturned. In fact, even some of the stones in the other paddocks have been turned over as well. With that forensic examination that we’ve had, I commend this bill to the House. Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai) (19:02): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I rise to take our second call on the third reading of the financial service (dispute resolution) bill. I don’t think that’s the exact title, but it’s about giving the Minister the power to do more regular reviews of the four entities that are currently available and responsible for free dispute resolution with respect to banks, insurance companies, financial services providers. I was actually quite interested to read about all that because I haven’t—in my time, in my 20 years in New Zealand—had occasion to use any of those, and I wasn’t aware of those free services. Probably my message tonight for anyone who is watching Parliament TV on a Saturday at 7 p.m. is that there are these amazing free services for dispute resolution if you have issues with a bank or financial services provider or an insurance company. People should look into that. Hopefully, at some point in the future, the reviews will result in some improvements to that system. RYAN HAMILTON (National—Hamilton East) (19:03): I’d just like to say, “Go, the Chiefs!”, tonight. I’d also like to say I commend this bill to the House. Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin) (19:04): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to change the pace of the speeches that we’ve just had since dinner. Sorry about that. I’m not so sure about the Chiefs, but as long as they’re not the Crusaders, that’s the main thing—always, always, always. Apparently East Coast did win, so Cushla Tangaere-Manuel is happy about that. Coming to the bill now, the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill, it’s great to be able to speak on this third reading of the bill. What the bill does is it’s got three components to it, as I heard in the committee stage. One is review, another one is the regulation settings, and then the third point is what’s required in the annual reports. We have—I’ll go through those in a minute—as the Hon Julie Anne Genter just noted, these four dispute resolution schemes These already exist, but what this bill is doing is changing some of the review provisions and regulations and annual reporting requirements of those four dispute resolution schemes. They are the Banking Ombudsman Scheme, the Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman, the Financial Services Complaints Ltd and the Financial Dispute Resolution Service. These are existing schemes. What this bill does is say that the Minister is able to, on their own motion really, require that there’s a review of any one of those schemes and that those reviews will be independent and, then, that there will be a report on the review and that the person who’s responsible for the scheme must respond to the report. One of the other changes is in relation to annual reports, and so there are some requirements there about what the report must include. Now, my colleague Arena Williams in her contributions—some of her amendments and questions to the Minister in the House—and in her involvement in the select committee process talked about the missed opportunity to do more for consumers in these reporting requirements. In some other jurisdictions, there are consumer care provisions. The question to the Minister was: why not include reporting against those consumer care provisions or against various different codes that exist? It seems like a missed opportunity, and this bill could be a whole lot stronger for consumers, and that has been missed. That’s the annual report and the review, and then the Minister can make regulations. I note that the select committee made a change. This is their most substantive change that was made at select committee, and that was around the level of independence of the board, rather than the members of the various different schemes. Now, the select committee also looked at whether or not those four schemes should be combined into one. I heard from members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, which I used to chair, that some of the Government members have different views about whether or not the four should be combined into one or not. They are not being combined into one. But I do note that the select committee report says, right at the end, in “Other matters considered”, “We intend to monitor the effects of the legislation and any policy work in the scheme consolidation area in 12 months.” This is interesting because this select committee report that we’re talking to was reported back in October 2025, so “within 12 months” could be in October 2026. It will be interesting to see if it makes it on to the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s work plan then. Obviously, there’s an election shortly after. I do want to commend the Finance and Expenditure Committee for coming to that view and I do hope that they do follow up on that issue. Now, why is this important? Why do we care about these different dispute resolution schemes? Well, it is because many consumers find themselves in difficult situations. In my constituency office, in Dunedin, I speak with the Community Law Centre budgeting advising person and other services, and they tell me about the amount of disputes that they help with. These are for people who might have got into different financial arrangements because they were in a stressful situation, and then they are having some ridiculous charges imposed on them, and it is not until they get the help from the budget services, which are very important, that then they can resolve the dispute—they can fix things up. I know that there’s some great work that is done in Dunedin with various different dispute resolution schemes resolving issues for consumers. These are people who are not flush with cash, so that’s a very important role. Arena Williams is our lead spokesperson on this and I had a very interesting meeting with her in or around her electorate with the Christians Against Poverty, and they spoke to us with some passion about the additional insurances that people were getting when they were buying cars. These are people who need a car to be able to do their various different jobs or to transport their children, and they feel, when they go to purchase the cars, that they need to get these insurances that the vendor tells them are important—but these are insurances that are not needed. An example might be an insurance for if you lose your job, and when you’re in a high-paying job, you might have that insurance because you need to pay off your mortgage; but if you are not in employment at all, then of course, there is no point having that insurance. The issue here is that these people are thinking—that these consumers—who do not have very much money, are being told that they need to get this insurance. They sign up for that insurance that is actually worthless to them, and then, if they don’t pay everything back, they get hit with very high interest rates, and these are compounding interest rates. Christians Against Poverty had examples that they showed Arena Williams and I whereby the initial debt was an amount—say it was $2,000—and then with all these extra insurances and fees that weren’t initially paid back on time, the debt had grown to well beyond what the original debt was, despite well over $2,000 being paid back. That is the mischief that these dispute resolution schemes are trying to address, and that is why they’re so important, because I don’t think anybody here thinks it’s acceptable for somebody with means to dupe somebody else who’s in a difficult, stressful situation into buying products that they do not need and they will never be able to repay. That is the issue and we think that there is the missed opportunity here; that it could have been stronger in terms of referring back to those consumer care provisions and codes that Arena Williams was speaking of. Now, I realise that we are here on a Saturday evening and that we have had the officials in the room up until just before dinner time when the committee stage ended, and that we have many people in Parliament now and I want to thank them for all of their work. DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote) (19:14): Madam Speaker, this is a good bill. Go the Chiefs, up the Wahs. I commend it to the House. Hon KIERAN McANULTY (Labour) (19:14): That speech and the contributions from this Government make a mockery of this entire process. Why are we here? Why are we here on a Saturday night? [Interruption] I think I’ve hit a nerve here, and the reason I think I’ve hit a nerve is I look over there in the seats and I see MPs in marginal seats, and here they are on a Saturday night when the Labour candidate is out and about in their communities, or indeed their counterpart in the House is out and about in their communities, and they’re stuck in their seats. No wonder they were a bit wound up about it. Hon Member: They’re lazy! Hon KIERAN McANULTY: But this bill, the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill—that’s particularly why Tim Costley’s so wound up; I’ve really hit a nerve here. But the reason that this bill is being debated tonight under urgency is not because it’s urgent. It’s because the Government wants to make it look like they have a lot on the books, and if they really want to argue that we have to be here at third reading arguing about this at third reading, why has this been on the Order Paper since October? It’s a fair question. Now, we do support this bill, and as my colleague, Rachel Brooking, has pointed out, we do think that whilst on the whole we’re going to support it through, it is a missed opportunity, particularly from the consumer protection perspective, which I’ll touch on in a moment. It is a legitimate question to ask why we are here on a Saturday evening debating this at third reading under urgency when it has been sitting on the Order Paper since October. I’m not at all surprised that the Government members are wound up about this because the Leader of the House has made the decision to have this under urgency to make it look like there’s a lot to discuss. It’s got nothing to do with the Budget, but here we are anyway. Why would we want to rush this through when it has been on the Order Paper since October, without having the opportunity to improve it properly, without a rush around, as my colleague pointed out, the missed opportunities around consumer protection? What is the point in having a dispute resolution scheme if the consumer is not at the forefront of the purpose of that? I was particularly intrigued by the example that Rachel Brooking did use in that those that are informed that they have to take out insurance, and then it turns out that they don’t need that insurance and they’ve fallen behind, what are the provisions around that? This bill does improve that. It does improve the processes by which they can pursue that. But as we know, there are communities that aren’t able to access those provisions as easily as others. I’m talking about rural communities, older people—particularly older people in rural areas that don’t have access to broadband as easily as others do—but it’s also Māori, Pacific, migrants, etc. Now, I’m not convinced that the way that this bill has gone through that it has actually taken every opportunity to take on board the proposals that were put forward by my colleague, Arena Williams. Objective observers of Parliament will know that Arena Williams is an extremely diligent member of Parliament and takes her role incredibly seriously and reads every single word of almost every single bill, and she’s gone through this and put forward some— Todd Stephenson: This is proof she doesn’t. Hon KIERAN McANULTY: You all right there, Todd? You’re waving a piece of paper. What’s up? Todd Stephenson: Yeah, I’m just proving that she doesn’t take it seriously. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Excuse me, guys. We’re not having a debate across the House. We’ve got one speaker speaking. Thank you. Hon KIERAN McANULTY: Thanks very much. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): You’re welcome. Hon KIERAN McANULTY: The proposals that Arena put forward were put in good faith to improve the bill. Now, I would like to think that if the committee of the whole House stage was happening under normal circumstances, then those proposals would have actually been taken a little bit more seriously by this House and potentially taken on board by the Government. But as soon as something gets included into an urgency motion, you’ve seen from Government contributions in this bill and other bills that are talking about sports teams, etc.—making a mockery of the whole process—it is quite clear that they are not in the frame of mind to consider good-faith amendments to improve things. Now, a range of contributions and proposals put forward by my colleagues—in particular, Arena Williams—if taken on board, would have improved the consumer protections, and certainly had shown that every avenue had been pursued to make sure that the consumers were at the forefront of Parliament’s mind at the time. Instead, we’re here under a fake urgency, all for a PR show, all to save face, because there’s actually nothing that we’ve been debating over the last three years that’s relevant to the Budget, and this bill is a perfect example. TOM RUTHERFORD (National—Bay of Plenty) (19:19): The previous speaker talks about the urgency and the process and calling all of this a farce. Yet, his own party has put up hundreds of amendments over the last couple of days that have wasted the time of this House. They should hang their head in shame. Let’s commend this bill to the House and get it done. Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour) (19:19): Before I turn my attention to the bill, I do want to address the matter of urgency and when it is used, and why we have put so many amendments in. That is a Government that has abused urgency; that have used it excessively; that it has decided it can just put the House into urgency for no reason whatsoever; that has, on this Budget emergency move, included bills that have been sitting on the agenda for months since the last Budget. They’ve been sitting on the Order Paper since last Budget; how can they possibly be urgent now? Then, of course, they complain because we have fought back against their abuse of urgency, and we have fought back to prevent them from putting their absolutely outrageous legislation through. We fought hard on the education bill— Tom Rutherford: It’s getting it across the line. Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: —and their Minister caved, and we have fought hard on all sorts of egregiously awful legislation, like the awful legislation using AI to decide benefits. We have fought because we have fought for our people, and we have fought with the tools we have available to us; that is why we have done that. [Interruption] So, talk all you like, bleat all you like, Tom Rutherford, about all those amendments that have been put in on the bill. That is the weapon we have available to us and we have used it. Back to the bill—back to the bill. You see, this bill is about the methods which the ordinary people—the small people, the people who don’t often get talked about in this House—have to fight back against the institutions of power. This bill is about the way that ordinary people can have justice. This bill is about the way that ordinary people can get a fair deal, and when an institution of power abuses its power, then what do you expect the ordinary people to do? Well, they need the mechanisms to fight back and that is what this bill is about. The ordinary people have been fighting back today. It’s been a beautiful day out there in Wellington; good blue skies, sunshine, a bit chilly in the air. It’s been a lovely day in Auckland and I’ve enjoyed seeing the photos from Hannah Baral out campaigning in Upper Harbour. I’ve loved seeing the photos from Sophie Handford campaigning in Ōtaki. It’s been wonderful seeing the photos of Karl Severinson campaigning in Rangitīkei, and as for the photos of Shanan Halbert campaigning in Northcote, Dan Bidois won’t be back here. It is the ordinary people fighting back and fighting for the voices of ordinary New Zealanders. That is what we do on this side of the House— Tom Rutherford: Why are you over there then? Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: —and the young fellas over there can bleat about all they like; we are proud of our Labour tradition, working for the ordinary people of New Zealand. You know, it’s interesting just how out of touch they are. When I asked the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs during the committee stage of this bill—I said to the Minister, could he actually tell me the differences between the four entities that this bill concerns? Could he tell me what the Banking Ombudsman Scheme does, what the Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman does, what the Financial Services Complaints Ltd does, what Financial Dispute Resolution Service does? He said, well, the Banking Ombudsman deals with banking issues, the Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman deals with insurance and financial services issues, Financial Services Complaints deal with financial complaints, and Financial Dispute Resolution Service deals with financial disputes. What a total lack of information and a vacuous answer; a vacuous answer from a vacuous Minister. It would be interesting to see—as was seen by the way he chaired the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Frankly, if you attack us— ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Dr Russell, it’s getting too personal— Hon Cameron Brewer: It’s getting very personal. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): —and I’ll ask you. Hon Member: Very nasty. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): Excuse me! Excuse me, all of you. And what have you eaten for tea? No more Coke. Deborah Russell, can I please ask you to return to the bill. Hon Member: Coca-Cola, she meant. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I meant Coca-Cola, by the way. Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Thank you for that intervention, Madam Speaker. It was a kindly reminder. Back to the bill. The reason that this bill is important is because it is there to help the small people. When I spoke in my second reading speech on this bill, I talked about a young Pasifika man who had been caught up in terrible trouble in New Lynn. He’s not the only person that my office helped in the years that I was the electorate MP for New Lynn, and I know that Paulo Garcia continues this help now. The saddest one that we dealt with and continue to deal with, actually, is a man who has fetal alcohol syndrome. Actually, initially Carmel Sepuloni’s office helped him and then my office helped him. Interesting, a staffer of mine, Amanda Snow—for whom I have the greatest affection and greatest regard—got to the stage where she helped him continuously with issues. One of the biggest ones she dealt with was where some pretty predatory loan sharks found him in his boarding house, sold them all bangs and whistles, a huge TV on credit. He ended up in the most terrible financial strife. It took months of work to unpick that, particularly for a man who has fetal alcohol syndrome and couldn’t necessarily understand what was going on. That is why these particular schemes are very, very important, but we know that they have been failing in many ways. We know that those competing jurisdictions actually confuse people, so we are pleased to see this legislation going through because we do think that there needs to be some ongoing review of these schemes. We do think that the process of kicking off a ministerial review of the schemes on a regular basis is a good idea. We do think that the changes that the Finance and Expenditure Committee put through in terms of independence for those reviewers are very, very useful. So, reviewing those schemes is actually a very important thing to do. We do know, however, from the money managers—I spent time in Tangi Utikere’s electorate recently; we visited Moneywise and they talked about sometimes the amount of time it takes just to sort out some of the issues. I’ve visited budget advisers in West Auckland and their stories are the same. It takes time and effort to sort out some of the difficulties of the people that are coming to them. These are people who are on wages. They’re not necessarily people on benefit; they’re people in jobs who need assistance. Those money managers, the money counsellors, the budget advisers do a great job, but they had to negotiate their way through these different schemes and they don’t always find them helpful. So this process of review is very helpful, but this is a bill of lost opportunities. It is a bill where we should have been looking at some way of amalgamating those schemes. It’s a shame we haven’t done that. However, I trust that the Minister will, as soon as possible, kick off some of these reviews. I would hope the Minister would get that under way before the election so that we have some work that would carry on from him as a legacy once he departs this Parliament, to ensure that we have a way of continuing the work that has actually been done by successive Governments on these schemes. So I’d hope the Minister would kick those reviews off soon to ensure that we actually get some fairly independent advice as to how they are working or not working, and perhaps get some suggestions from independent reviewers as to how it might be the case that we could actually amalgamate them. Where are they seeing the duplications? Where are they seeing the efforts that could be combined? This Government seems to be fond of combining entities. This is perhaps a set of entities that could also be combined. So in short, despite what we regard as some of the gaps in this bill—as some of the things that could have been done and weren’t done—on the whole, this is a good bill. On the whole, this is a bill we can support. On the whole, we want this bill to go through because it continues the work that has been done by Government after Government after Government, trying to make credit contracts fairer for the small people. I am going to leave you with a small vignette of someone who has had an interesting history in this House, but whose company I’ve always enjoyed, and that is of Andrew Bayly, a National MP. Andrew, as an electorate MP, said that he hated the shop trucks and he would chase them out of his electorate. I think that’s a great attitude to have. Thank you, Andrew. We commend this bill to the House. NANCY LU (National) (19:30): I am very glad that the Opposition is joining us to support the bill to fix the basics for New Zealanders, in making sure that we are building the future. Hon Members: Madam Speaker. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I did see Katie Nimon first. KATIE NIMON (National—Napier) (19:30): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Can I just say, after all of the absolute rapturous and hubbub from across the aisles, it’s really nice to hear them also commend this bill to the House. Motion agreed to. Bill read a third time.