Fuel Industry Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Energy and Resources: I present a legislative statement on the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: I move, That the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee to consider the bill.

In December 2019, the Commerce Commission released its final report on the retail fuel market study. The commission’s report indicated that fuel companies had been making persistently higher profits over the previous decade than would be expected in a competitive market—that there is limited competition in wholesale markets and that this flows through to the retail market.

One of the commission’s key recommendations in that report was to create greater transparency by requiring fuel companies to publish wholesale spot prices at fuel terminals. This Government implemented that recommendation. The passing of the Fuel Industry Bill in 2020 saw the introduction of the terminal gate pricing (TGP) regime for wholesale suppliers, to make entry easier at the wholesale level. However, the commission also recommended that a regulatory backstop be introduced to deal with the risk that fuel companies used the terminal gate pricing regime to coordinate prices. The backstop could also address situations where a fuel company could exert market power at a terminal—for example, where that terminal was isolated.

There are some design complexities in developing an effective backstop, and the Government did not want to hold up the introduction of the other fuel industry reforms that were implemented through the Fuel Industry Act 2020. So the development of the backstop was put on a slower track. However, now is the right time to introduce this important feature, to give consumers confidence during a time of high pricing volatility that increases in fuel prices are not being driven by unreasonably high margins.

The Fuel Industry Act has already contributed to more competition in New Zealand. The terminal gate pricing regime has supported expansion into new areas by low price retailers such as Gull, NPD, and Waitomo. Gull has publicly stated that without the Act, it would not be able to competitively source fuel to operate its South Island outlets and provide competitive tension. In its first quarterly report under the Act, the Commerce Commission noted that importer margins in the June 2022 quarter were lower than observed during the market study. This bill supports these trends by providing strong incentives for fuel companies to ensure that TGPs are competitive.

The bill provides for price regulation of wholesale spot prices by the commission, if a wholesale supplier or suppliers set terminal gate prices that are not consistent with what would be expected in a competitive market. The commission can, on its own initiative, or at the request of the Minister, hold an inquiry into terminal gate prices. Once the commission has held the inquiry, it then makes a recommendation to the Minister responsible for the administration of the Act on whether to price-regulate the terminal gate price of a wholesale supplier. The price regulation could apply to a single supplier or many suppliers—to one or many types of fuel—and it could apply to one, some, or all terminals operated by a supplier.

The Commerce Commission can recommend that price regulation should be imposed on terminal gate prices only if it is satisfied that the relevant wholesale supplier has posted terminal gate prices for a grade of engine fuel, and at a bulk storage facility that was not consistent with what would have been expected in a competitive market. If the Minister considers that regulation is required, the Minister then recommends that the Governor-General make an Order in Council to that effect. The commission would then make a determination setting a pricing principle or methodology that the wholesale supplier, or suppliers, would be required to follow when setting terminal gate prices. The commission must consult with interested parties before making this determination. If the commission finds that the requirements of a determination have been breached, it may apply to the court for an order imposing a pecuniary penalty on the relevant wholesale supplier.

This is a well-calibrated process, and I want to stress that it’s not a return to the price regulation that was seen in days past. This is a new power for the Commerce Commission, and if the market works as it should, and in line with what we expect, then fuel companies should have every incentive to compete hard and avoid being regulated.

Fuel markets have recently been volatile, and factors beyond our control like the Russia-Ukraine conflict have led to uncomfortable price spikes for consumers. These are factors beyond our control, but we can do more to promote competition. I expect that the change proposed in this bill will provide insurance against commercial behaviour which chills competition and contributes to higher fuel prices. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak on this bill. The National Party will not be supporting this bill. This is a Rob Muldoon attempt to try and fix prices. Price control, we know, doesn’t work. In fact, when price controls have been used before, the moment they are lifted, prices drop. It’s well-known economics that this has happened all around the world.

There are five importers: BP; Mobil; Z; Timaru Oil Services Ltd., which is a small company quite new to the market; and, of course, Gull. But BP, Mobil, and Z are the majors.

We have to start with what the problem is here, because the Minister said in her speech that the use of terminal gate prices to coordinate—they were concerned about that, but she went on to say that, actually, since the new 2020 Act came into force, prices had dropped. In fact, it says that in the supplementary analysis report, on page 12, “The full impact of the Fuel Industry Act 2020 will not be felt for some time”. It goes on to say, further down in paragraph 60, “However, the fixed wholesale contractual term interventions have not applied in full to existing contacts [since] 11 August 2022.”

So there is no time to find out whether the actual interventions in the Act in 2020 have had effect yet or not, and yet they want to come in and give this power to the Commerce Commission to control prices, when, in fact, in this actual report, it says quite clearly that the Commerce Act sections 30 and 36 could well have the powers to cover this anyway. Section 30—I know you’re wondering what that is, Mr Speaker—is the cartel provisions in the Commerce Act: a “Prohibition on entering into or giving effect to cartel provisions.” So this could cover this very issue off very well.

However, the other section I referred to, section 36 of the Commerce Act, which is “Taking advantage of market power”—so that is exactly what we’re talking about here, yet they want to bring in another law. That doesn’t make any sense at all, because the terminal gate pricing, which means they have to publish the price at which they are dispatching fuel from the terminal gate, and other would-be retailers can buy the fuel at that price—they have to supply it at that price; that is exactly what we were talking about in the grocery bill just completed, and yet they’re not talking about controlling prices there.

As I said, there are five operators in New Zealand. In the supermarket space, it’s a duopoly. So how can we have one rule for a duopoly which doesn’t go anywhere near as far as this, when we’ve got five operators? It’s outrageous. It doesn’t make sense. It’s quite a sort of schizophrenic approach, if that’s politically correct to say these days. I’m getting frowns—perhaps it’s not—but it’s certainly very odd that the logic that is used in one is not being used in the other. I can see Rachel Brooking over there is nodding her head. She’s a very experienced legal professional. I know she can see the gaps in this and agrees with me.

We can see from—actually, in the UK—the dangers of price caps. Mr Speaker, I’m sure that you’re aware of what’s going on over there at the moment. They’ve got themselves in all sorts of a mess now with electricity price and gas price caps. They can’t get out of it now. They’ve, effectively, ended up nationalising all their gas companies because they’ve got them into such a strife where they’ve regulated the price that they can sell it at, which is actually below cost. Those companies are losing money and have had to be nationalised as a result of that—or almost, effectively, that’s what’s happened.

So the commissioner in the groceries—they’re going to bring a commissioner in, they’re going to allow access—effectively, like the terminal gate price, which is already available for petrol—but they, in this case, want to control the price as well. This is the road to hell, economically speaking.

But it’s worse. In this report, the supplementary analysis report, it recommends a number of various options for a trigger to bring in this backstop provision. So there are three options here. Option 2A is “A recommendation to the Minister based on whether [terminal gate prices] exceed a benchmark wholesale price at the terminal”. That would be one option. Option 2B is “A recommendation to the Minister based on whether [terminal gate prices] exceed a benchmark built up using publicly available cost data (such as Mean of Platts Singapore)” (MoPS)—and that’s a huge refinery and all their sale data is actually publicly available. Or the preferred option is “A recommendation to the Minister after considering whether [terminal gate prices] are persistently higher than would be expected in a workably competitive market.” Which one of those options does the House think is contained in this bill? Anyone care to guess? There isn’t one. They didn’t put anything in there. So there’s nothing in the bill that says or guides the Commerce Commission to say, “Actually, we’ve got a problem.” That’s what you would expect. Mr Speaker, I know you’re an experienced Minister—a member, at least—you’d know very well that that’s what you’d expect. I know as a former member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, you cover that sort of stuff all the time. We would expect that. It’s just outrageous.

And then regarding the pricing principle, there were three options for that. Option A was benchmark pricing principle prescribed, or the MoPS—which is the Singapore pricing model I just mentioned before—a regulated margin principle prescribed, or no pricing principle prescribed. But there’s nothing referred to in the legislation at all.

This is a shoddy, shonky piece of legislation. We deserve better—actually, New Zealand deserves better than this. If we’re going to bring in really perverse things like price control and controlling prices, there has to be a good rationale. They haven’t proved the case; if they do prove the case, then you’d want the mechanism all clearly laid out in the legislation. They haven’t done that. It’s very, very poor. We will fight this all the way in the select committee and expose yet more of this shonky process, and, no doubt, we will try to improve it as much as possible, but I think that’s a very difficult task that should really go to the rubbish bin. So I condemn this to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to talk on the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill, which gives the ability to make regulations. The aim is to keep profit margins under control, and it’s one of the many, many things that this Labour Government is doing to get cost of living under control. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Gee, I thought we were going to have a decent contribution from that member, but obviously she didn’t have much to say, which is pretty disappointing.

Look, it’s an interesting bill, this Fuel Industry Amendment Bill, and I listened to my colleague Mr Stuart Smith give a good explanation as to why we’re opposing it. Of course we do want to make sure that New Zealanders get access to fuel at competitive prices, but, as he noted, there are five competitors and there is evidence of quite significant competition in certain areas. One area where there should be actually more availability and more competition is Tauranga, and, actually, it might be helpful if the Government used some of its powers to actually help facilitate that, because having another operator with a terminal gate and operating out of Tauranga would be helpful in terms of the supply in the upper North Island, but, unfortunately, they weren’t able to get a consent, which is a bit of a shame.

I think the big thing is—obviously, this bill enables a Minister to set a terminal gate fee or price for specified engine fuels, wholesale suppliers, and bulk storage facilities. So the big issue is—and this is the big thing for us—this now takes what should be a competition issue managed by the Commerce Commission and now translates that and gives a Minister the power to determine stuff. We think, in competition, this is not a good practice to go down. If we have a Commerce Commission—and I know Labour put more money into funding the Commerce Commission—if you’re going to have a Commerce Commission, let it do its job, let it operate, and let it be the one that undertakes these types of inquiries and actually looks at how it’s going to manage the market. Once you start getting Ministers involved in political decision-making, it is a stretch that actually politicises this type of issue, and we think, from a policy perspective, that’s the wrong thing.

The other thing is that it’s actually very concerning that there’s no criteria for a recommendation to be made to the Minister, which seems absurd. There should be good reasons why the Commerce Commission would go to the Minister and make a recommendation that he or she should control the terminal gate price. I think that is something that no doubt the select committee will be looking at, but to have no framework around that seems rather odd.

The final point I’m going to say is I think this bill assumes that we’ve got a steady state, fuel prices don’t move, and so you’ll have a Minister one day say, “This is the terminal gate price for these airline fuels.”, or whatever it might be—diesel, whatever—“This is the fuel price.” Well, actually, the spot price out of Singapore or wherever it is—and, you know, there are many suppliers of fuel around the world—changes not only daily but almost by minute. So you could almost imagine that as soon as the Minister made a determination, it’d be out of date within an hour. And so what do you do? You have a Minister’s office running a website, putting up every five minutes what the new price should be. That’d be a good job. That’s another job for a bureaucrat, I would imagine. I think the Minister who put this bill up hasn’t taken that consideration into account, and I think that’s a fatal flaw in the approach to what’s being suggested here. Anyway, we will be opposing the bill.

We’ll be supporting the bill over on this side of the House. I commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Really, this debate, and many other debates that we have right now in this House, are about two different versions of the world—one where we create an economy that works for everyone, especially the planet, which ultimately we all need to survive and thrive; or one in which we say “hands off” but that just allows entrenched interests that already have power and wealth to continue concentrating more of that. That is the great battle, really, that is happening right now in the 21st century. It’s happened before—this is the first time, I guess, that we’ve seen such concentrated wealth in quite a long time. In previous times, it didn’t end well—it ended in very violent conflict, so now we have democracy and it’s time for us to take control and to make sure that we’re ensuring that the economy works for us and works for the planet. Because without a planet, we have no economy.

So this bill is actually quite interesting and I have to commend the Labour Government for bringing it to the House. It is really obvious that, in New Zealand, we have problems in key sectors getting actual competition. The dominant economic ideology since the 1980s has been, “Competition’s going to solve all our problems.” Well, we now have several decades of evidence that it’s not solving our problems here in New Zealand, it’s not serving New Zealanders, and it’s resulting in higher prices.

One of the key drivers of inflation is the fact that we have concentrated market power, which is enabling some big corporates to have super profits in certain sectors, including—there’s evidence of extra high margins in petrol. So in economics, we know what price controls are—they’re used to create a fair market that is accessible to all; they’re used to make goods and services affordable, and curb inflation. So this is a perfect tool at this time. We’d like to see this tool used in other areas.

I will mention to my colleagues in the National Party who say, “Oh, but there’s five players in the industry; therefore there’s competition,”: oligopoly—that there can be concentrated market power when five companies control more than 50 percent of the market. We know that there’s evidence of that happening, so these are well-known concepts in economics. And the reality is, on the right side of the House, they’re trapped in a kind of ideology that isn’t supported by evidence. They want to say, “Oh, yeah, petrol should be affordable to everyone, but we’re not going to do anything about it.”

But I do want to say, obviously, that with climate change, we have to be investing in alternatives, and if, as the Green Party had argued 20 years ago, we had invested in an electrified transport system that was less reliant on private vehicles and we’d done more to phase out coal from Huntly, then we wouldn’t be as susceptible to rises in petrol prices because our transport system wouldn’t be so reliant on it. So that’s another thing we can do to protect people from high petrol prices and price gouging, but also help us respond to the climate crisis. The Green Party supports this bill.

We really empathise with those New Zealanders who are facing a cost of living crisis, because it’s true that fuel is expensive. And we are actually really worried about what might happen next year in 2023, when the provisions of the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill come into effect, when potentially—according to the Reserve Bank Governor, that big tree Adrian Orr—we may be in a recession. And if Tāne Mahuta—the head of the Reserve Bank—says we’re heading for a recession, New Zealanders should be worried because, if you walk in the forest and you hear trees talking, you know something’s really, really wrong.

Now, I want to offer a perspective that the ACT Party has about this particular policy. This Fuel Industry Amendment Bill sounds so innocuous, like so much of the awful legislation that’s been passed by this Labour Government—supported by the velvet-gloved hand of the Green Party—in the last two years. And I want to offer a perspective. The Minister claimed that this would help reduce fuel prices because there would be a published price at the terminal—that’s the big tank farm where all the trucks come to pick up petrol and diesel and other liquid fuels, and transport them to the retail service stations or, potentially, to their big industrial customers. And I know when I worked in construction, we would have our own on-site storage tank, typically 30,000 litres, and a big tanker would come every few days to fill it up. We would use that diesel and petrol to fill up our big Tonka toys, our big Caterpillar and Komatsu diggers, and our big Volvo all-terrain vehicles. Because that’s how you build things in New Zealand, with really, really big construction equipment that uses a lot of diesel.

Now, that’s changing because in fact all of that equipment is far more efficient now, using European technology to reduce the amount of diesel that these machines use to produce an equivalent amount of power so they can dig dirt and push rocks and build roads. But I want to offer you a perspective. This piece of legislation the Government’s brought to the House will not reduce the cost of fuel at all.

But this approach reminds me of a Greek myth, the myth of Sisyphus. That poor soul, forever condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a mountain, to push it up a mountain only to see it roll down again—only to see it roll down again. And that’s what it must be like for this Government. They keep bringing legislation to the House, they say they’re helping New Zealanders, you open the newspaper the next day, even the Dominion Post, and they’ll tell you that Wellington’s not getting moving or that the cost of living is going up. Of course, that great French philosopher Albert Camus observed about Sisyphus: the struggle itself appears to fill a man’s heart with pleasure. Sisyphus appears to be happy, just like those Labour MPs and their Green cohort. That’s how it must feel for them; they continue to push this boulder of terrible legislation that doesn’t make any difference in the life of everyday New Zealanders; they push this boulder up the hill, they see it roll past them.

Sooner or later, in 2023, this boulder’s going to flatten most of them, and the ACT Party will be here to help restore New Zealand: our economic prosperity, the dignity of our communities in places like Northland, which have been so severely neglected by successive Governments over decades. Places like where my mother’s been an early childhood literacy teacher, where their literacy outcomes are even poorer, she tells me, than children in a similar cohort in outback New South Wales, where she also taught. So it’s not just fuel prices that this Government hasn’t had any influence on; it’s literacy, it’s numeracy, it’s violent crime—the list could go on. This Sisyphean boulder is coming to crush this Labour Government and its Green cohort, and ACT will be there with the sucker truck to suck up and clean all the pieces up and restore New Zealand to the place it needs to be.

But I just want to comment on the effect this Government’s actually having on fuel prices—I want to comment on that. I use this tool: it’s on the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) website, and it’s the weekly fuel price report. Now, most New Zealanders who work in any kind of business or who study at university or who run a family budget—which is a bit more complicated—can use Microsoft Excel or some other form of spreadsheet. You can go on the MBIE website, you can download the weekly fuel price monitor, and this is what it will tell you—this is going to be a shock to Labour MPs who either don’t know how to use Excel, don’t know what MBIE is, or didn’t realise how much influence Government has on fuel prices. I’m going to tell you about diesel. The diesel importer cost was $1.46 last week—$1.46. The price, excluding tax, if you just went to the petrol station and you went to buy diesel, the price would be $1.90. But, actually, it’s well over $3 at times. It’s been up to $3.15 a litre recently. Can you imagine, you pay your road-user charges, you think you’re paying for the use of the roads—actually, what we expect to be good quality roads, free of potholes, free of congestion. I mean, if you drive a big rig, your customers and your boss expect you to deliver your load on time. That’s become unfeasible under this Government and successive Governments which have failed to invest in infrastructure.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Back to the bill.

SIMON COURT: So the diesel importer cost is $1.46. The importer’s margin is 43c, but the Government takes more than twice that in tax—92c in tax. If this Minister who brought this bill to the House today really believed that New Zealanders need a better deal from fuel, what the Government could do is remove the tax on fuel and actually reduce the cost of fuel by, in this case, it would be 37c a litre. But the Government wants to keep its margin of 37c a litre while denying the importers their right for all of the effort it takes to actually organise a ship, arrange a cargo, pay for it in advance, ship it to New Zealand, offload it, store it, and transport it to customers. They get 43c. The Government makes nearly the same amount just for holding out their hand and passing laws—37c.

And then we come to petrol. Petrol importer cost: $1.13. That’s this week on the MBIE website—$1.13. Now, the price at the pump, if you’ve gone and filled up, could be up to $3, you know, somewhere between $2.80 and $3. It’s horrific. If you’re a family, if you’ve got a people mover or you need to make trips to different places every day because your kids go to different schools and they do sports or they go to after-school numeracy and literacy classes because the education system is failing there too and you need to take them places then, you know, if you just had to pay for the cost of fuel, excluding tax, that would be a $1.32—$1.32, imagine that. But once the Government adds its 86c tax, its 31c GST, and, of course, we do pay for our emissions under the emissions trading scheme—its 20c a litre—so for people who drive petrol and diesel vehicles, and diggers and trucks, they’re paying for their emissions. The ACT Party doesn’t have a problem with that. But all of these other taxes add up to a difference in price between $1.32, excluding tax, and about $3 at the pump.

So, again, completely disingenuous approach from this Government to claim that by forcing companies to publish the price at the terminal and then establishing a commissar commissioner to investigate them if they think that they’re colluding or that the price hasn’t come down enough—it’s really the most nonsensical approach. What they could do is what the fuel companies have suggested to me, because I meet with all of the stakeholders in my policy areas: in energy, transport, environment, climate, resources—that’s mining, that’s where you dig stuff out of the ground so you can make things like phones, although it’s a mystery to people in the Green Party and the Labour Party where that comes from. I meet with the stakeholders, and what they tell me: we’d love to build more storage, particularly in places around New Zealand where they have issues with climate resilience. You can imagine the South Island, the West Coast of the South Island, all kinds of minor ports, and places like Whanganui. But it’s next to impossible to get consents, because either we run up against local council or there’s a cultural veto from some iwi who say, “We believe that climate change is more important”. Or you’ve got this argument from this current Government which is that anything to do with fossil fuels is evil and wrong. So why on earth would you invest in storage, building infrastructure, and so on, in New Zealand?

The ACT Party says: reform the Resource Management Act, reform the way we fund and deliver infrastructure—this bill is not necessary.

We found the last National Government, supported by ACT, asleep at the bowser for nine years. We are taking a balanced approach. I commend the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill to the House.

Sam Uffindell—a five-minute call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to oppose this bill, the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill. I’m not convinced that what we need are price controls. This is not the sort of way that you make the market work, and, if anything, if you look over at what they’ve done in the UK, it’s looking like it’s going to be a complete disaster. They’re on the brink of having to nationalise their energy just to do this, which is a massive problem. Look, we agree that prices are too high; that much is evident. When I returned to New Zealand, I think I was paying 83c or 84c occasionally for diesel, and, recently, I think, it got pretty close to $3. It’s subsided in the last couple of months, but it’s still far too much. And a lot of New Zealanders are feeling the cost of living crisis brought on predominantly by this Labour Government. [Bell rings] Now, we’ve got a number of major—what happened there, Madam Speaker? I didn’t realise I’d gone through three minutes so quickly.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): It was great—no, it was great.

SAM UFFINDELL: Now, we’ve got a number of major fuel companies in New Zealand. Competition is not the problem. We’ve got five major ones, and we note that where Gull is in place, fuel prices are generally 10c to 30c a litre cheaper. Now, I use Gull pretty frequently. We’ve got them on Hewletts Road in Tauranga and also just up the road in Te Puke. And that is what we do. We get on Gaspy and we see when Gull is offering us the good deal, and then we go. So bringing that competition into the market is very important.

I’d also like to reference Timaru Oil Services Ltd., who wanted to set up an import terminal hub in my electorate of Tauranga but were not able to get that over the line due to resource consent—just like we’re not able to get the Port of Tauranga third berth over the line due to resource consent, at an enormous detriment to this country. We hide behind little concerns and put that in the way of actually getting things done. So we don’t need price controls. We have a proper functioning market. We have competitors in the market. We have an additional oil service terminal that we can bring into the market in Tauranga. And those are the things that we need to be focused on, and those are the things that will make a real difference to the price of petrol for New Zealanders.

Jamie Strange—five minute call.

I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to take a short call on the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill. The bill introduces the prospect of price regulation, more competition, and it’s better for consumers. Kiwis want to pay a fair price at the pump. I commend this bill to the House.

My ears are hurting from the length of the speeches from the Government members—oh my gosh! If ever there was a need for fewer words, it wasn’t on this piece of legislation, and the reason for that is that if members opposite were allowed to take more time to talk about this important issue, what we would hear from them is that it’s all someone else’s fault and this legislation is going to fix the problem. Actually, it’s really, really not.

If we cast our minds back to when the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, on one of the few times she was in New Zealand, said that—

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Oh, that’s really ridiculous, Todd.

Hon TODD McCLAY: Well, that intervention from the Minister was longer than any speech we’ve had previously on this bill. I mean, if we’re holding the good stuff back for interventions, then surely what we can do is have a little bit more from them about how they’re going to help the problem for New Zealanders. I’d love to come back to the bill—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I would, too.

Hon TODD McCLAY: —just as I’d love members opposite to speak more about the bill, Madam Speaker. But on one of the few occasions that the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, was in New Zealand, she said, “We have a huge problem with what the fuel companies are doing in New Zealand. We have a huge problem and we need to create an inquiry, and we’re instructing the Commerce Commission to do that.” It was a week before or a week afterwards that Jacinda Ardern had also put the price of petrol up by imposing more tax upon New Zealanders.

So it’s a great, great shame that this piece of legislation doesn’t talk about the amount of tax the Government collects and whether they’re using it for what it is meant to be used for, which is—I don’t know—building a road of their own, or announcing a road of their own, that helps the economy go faster and increases productivity. What we’re hearing about is that this interventionist Government has decided that it knows best when it comes to setting fuel prices, and what is happening is that, at the same time, it does nothing about its part of why fuel is so expensive.

The last speaker in the debate from ACT, Simon Court, who was talking about how much ACT is going to have to suck up all of the problems—sorry, I stuttered—the problems from this legislation. But, actually, what he said was that the cost of importing fuel at the port is $1.13, or $2.50 to $3 a litre—gee, Jacinda Ardern remains “Fleecer-in-Chief”. She’s getting more than anybody else when it comes to this, and it’s not going to roads. All it’s doing is sucking money out of the pockets of New Zealanders, who, next year, won’t have anywhere near enough money to pay their rent or to pay record high interest rates on their mortgages.

This is not a good piece of legislation. It’s more intervention from a Government to put a sticking plaster on a problem so that they can say to New Zealanders, “We have solved the problem.” It won’t solve it. They are a larger part of the problem than anything else here, and I say to every New Zealander who is worried about how they’re going to fill up their car that, at the moment, more of the cost of the petrol in your tank is going to Jacinda Ardern and her Government than it is to the fuel companies.

We do need more competition. We do need to hold these companies to account, but this Government is saying, “We’re going to do an inquiry when the Prime Minister is back.”, and then, a year and a half or two—in fact, it’s a different term of Parliament; two years later: “Here’s a small piece of legislation. We’ll set a bit of the price.”—they’ll do nothing at all. It’s not good legislation, just as this is not a good Government.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise as the final speaker on this bill, the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill, which is an important step to increase fuel market competition, and, at the end of the day, that will benefit consumers at the pump and at the bowser. So, on that basis, I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.