Commerce Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: I move, That the Commerce Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The passage of the Commerce Amendment Bill is part of the Government’s agenda to build a productive, sustainable, and inclusive economy. This bill will support increased competition and better performing markets for goods and services. Healthy competition promotes affordable goods and services for consumers and encourages innovation and productivity by businesses.

A key measure in this bill is the new market studies function for the Commerce Commission. The Government is committed to encouraging an honest business environment. We want the commission to have the tools it needs to promote competition and protect consumers. Market studies will shine a light into poor performing markets so we can better understand why markets are not working effectively. As a Government we can then make an informed decision as to whether intervention is desirable and, if so, what form that intervention may take. The Commerce Commission has been allocated $1.5 million per annum to carry out this new market studies function. This is in addition to the $5.7 million over four years the Government committed to ensure the commission is adequately resourced to use the tools it has to protect consumers and honest businesses.

There have been a number of Ministers who have raised concerns about certain markets that are not performing effectively and delivering the best outcome for consumers. Once the bill receives the Royal assent, Minister Faafoi will be writing to Ministers asking them to nominate poor performing markets for consideration. The intention is to make an announcement on the first market study in December.

The bill also makes amendments to strengthen the regulatory regime for the three major international airports. These amendments do not impose new regulation on these airports. Rather, they provide a regulatory backstop in the event that the Commerce Commission finds that the current information disclosure regime for airports is not working effectively. Following the passage of this bill, if the Commerce Commission considers that the airport companies are acting contrary to the interests of users of airport services, the bill makes clear that it may inquire into whether further regulation is desirable and make recommendations accordingly.

Finally, the bill improves the Commerce Commission’s tools to resolve enforcement cases in a cost-effective and timely manner. It repeals the current regime for cease and desist orders in the Act. This regime has not worked as intended. However, I want to thank the current and past statutory officers that have held the position of Cease and Desist Commissioner under the Act. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the inaugural commissioner, Terence Stapleton QC, who issued the only cease and desist order under the regime, and the two current commissioners the Hon Sir Bruce Robertson and Michael Behrens QC.

In conclusion, I would like to thank all those people who have contributed to this bill. This includes those parties that made submissions as part of the policy and legislative processes, the officials who have provided advice, and the Transport and Infrastructure Committee members that considered the bill. I commend the Commerce Amendment Bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Well, that was a brilliantly read speech by the Minister who’s just resumed her seat. It was stunning really, wasn’t it?

💬 Hon Carmel Sepuloni: I like your cardigan too.

Oh, she likes my jacket. Isn’t that sweet? You see, I can do green.

💬 Clayton Mitchell: You could do anything, Ms Collins.

Clayton Mitchell, you are such a charmer. Can I just say, though—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: But she wouldn’t throw dwarfs around.

Oh, I think we’re getting all a bit—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: She wouldn’t engage in dwarf-throwing competitions.

💬 Clayton Mitchell: You’d love to be one of the ones that’d be sliding down all oiled up, wouldn’t you?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No, you don’t know that.

Right, coming back to the bill, I did, however, think that there was an opportunity there for the Hon Carmel Sepuloni to acknowledge the very good hard work of our dear colleague, the Hon Jacqui Dean, who was the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, who started this process when we were in Government last year, when the world was a better place, actually, to be frank—and the sun shone more and everything was wonderful.

So Jacqui Dean worked very hard on this, and I know because I also worked with her. I undertook the first of the studies into the fuel market prices last year. It’s taken this Government a year to sit on it; Cabinet last year approved—I think it was August, actually, last year—giving the Commerce Commission extra powers around market studies. But we did impose a caveat to that and that was to have a Minister decide whether or not there was a particular industry or area that needed to be looked at and studied. That was because we were very aware of the cost to business and therefore the cost to employees and therefore the cost to consumers of any overdoing of any market study powers, because of the fact that an open-ended power can be incredibly expensive for an industry.

What some people don’t seem to understand is that the cost always ends up being paid by the consumer, and that means that people who don’t get choices about where they spend their money end up paying the most.

So I think the Government has got very frightened and concerned about what’s been happening with fuel prices around New Zealand. We’ve seen some incredibly interesting captain’s calls today from the Prime Minister around fuel prices. That is very much around the fact that people are hurting when they are going to buy their petrol. And why is that important for this bill? It is because, actually, the work was started last year to deal with this very issue, particularly around the domestic fuel market in New Zealand. There are basically four big players in it. There’s Gull, which is an independent. Their fuel is brought in already refined out of Singapore, from memory. The other ones are Mobil, BP, and Z Energy, and they all own the refinery at Marsden Point. They, therefore, have control of most of the domestic fuel in New Zealand—domestic and aviation fuel, I should say, as well—and they sell on to some of the independents like Waitomo Group and some of those very small players.

I was always fascinated, as the Minister of Energy and Resources, and never really got a straight answer, about why it is that companies like Waitomo could buy their fuel from the big three and still sell it cheaper. I did not understand that, and I never got a satisfactory answer. I had some very interesting answers, but they weren’t satisfactory. Some of those answers were around—and I really love this one; this is one of my favourites, which was “Well, Minister”—as I was then—“we sell coffee as well.” Well, I don’t know where that one came from. And I said to that particular company—and I won’t name them; some people might guess—“And you sell, by the way, very good coffee, but if you can’t make money on coffee and you’re telling me that fuel is cross-subsidising your coffee, then you’re doing something wrong, because I think I could make money on coffee.”

So we had an interesting discussion. The reality is that we have a market where we don’t have as many big players, where even though there is no cartel, as such, and the fact that three of the big players own the refinery and are shareholders and have information from that refinery about how much fuel is being refined quite clearly shows there are issues there around our market and the lack of competitiveness.

We saw before we even undertook the study—but the study from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment clearly showed it as well—the thing called the Gull effect. One of the reasons that people in Wellington wonder why the fuel prices are higher even than other parts of the North Island is actually that Gull hasn’t set up shop here. And I asked them that too, and I know that the House will want to know, and the answer was that Gull imports their fuel through Tauranga ports, and that their model works on the basis of one day’s tanker trip, basically—they don’t want to overnight. They don’t want to have anything else. They have issues, I think, accessing storage facilities in Wellington at the ports, and they’ve had issues trying to even sell into other parts of the country.

So these are all things that I think can be looked at, and I think it’s a worthwhile thing to do—to find out about any issues around competition or lack of competition around access to storage at ports, access to ports generally, and also to understand why it is that people can bring fuel into New Zealand fully refined and sell it cheaper than anywhere else.

One particular part of the country that seemed to have some of the best prices for fuel, and still has, is Levin, primarily because it’s one of the last places with all the big fuel players in it, in quite a small area, and therefore people can shop around.

I don’t think it’s good enough to be able to say that if you’ve got a competitor like Gull or even some of the very small players, like Waitomo, who as I’ve said buy their fuel from the big three, in your town that therefore all of the other prices are cheaper than they are in the town next door where there is no Gull effect. It’s simply not good enough, and it’s not credible for the industry to say, “Oh well, there’s more cost.” I know that some of the service stations provide more service than others. There’s not that much service, to be frank, on the forecourt of any service station in New Zealand unless it’s privately owned or there’s a particularly good—let’s say, there’s a lot of competition from other service stations.

I think the situation has become one where over the years Governments have found it very difficult to deal with because we are only small players in the fuel market as a country. There is nothing to stop the big players like, for instance, Mobil, or others, saying that they’ll just exit our market, and that certainly has happened—Shell has exited the market. But that doesn’t mean, I believe, that that wouldn’t open up opportunities for others as well. So we’ve just always got to remember the fact that we have a population smaller than Melbourne. We have a physical size and, therefore, all of those issues around transporting fuel, storage and everything else—we’re bigger than the United Kingdom physically—and so obviously we do end up paying more.

But one of the big issues that the Prime Minister hasn’t dealt with is the issue about all of the excise taxes on fuel. It is not fair, I believe, going into the future, with more people using electric vehicles and more people with hybrids, for the only people who contribute towards our roads through the fuel taxes being petrol users and, through the road-user charges, diesel users. It is simply not fair. There would not be many electric vehicles in my electorate, in Papakura. There are not that many people who could afford them, because they are significantly more expensive than the combustion engine.

So I think there need to be ways of looking at this, and just adding cost on cost on cost, as this Government has been doing for the last year, is not satisfactory. This is a sop at the moment because they could actually fix quite a lot of the problem right now by taking off that tax. Axe the tax.

I’m very happy to speak in favour of the Commerce Amendment Bill. I’ll start by acknowledging the previous speaker, the Hon Judith Collins. She was actually quite a good Minister of Energy and Resources, after years of lethargy from the previous Government. In the final year she did initiate a fuel market study—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Was she a predecessor or a successor?

—to look—well, she was certainly better than her predecessor. I don’t think she’s quite as good as her successor, but she did a good job for a National Party Minister in that role, and I want to acknowledge her for that.

She also gave a pretty good and measured speech in which she spoke about many of her experiences and gave some insights. The last minute or two got a little bit ungracious, and it was a little bit lacking in terms of some of the facts, but there was one important thing that she missed in the course of the whole entire 10-minute speech—and it’s important to check this—and that is to confirm what the National Party’s position on this bill is.

It’s a little bit of a mystery to many of us. I have in my notes here, and from my time on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, the minority view from the National Party which said that they oppose the bill. I listened to the National Party speeches for most of the second reading and most of them spoke as though they opposed the bill, but at least one of their senior members said that they were in favour of it. I missed the way that the actual vote went at that stage. From the Hon Judith Collins’ speech today, we’re actually none the wiser. So we’ll look on with great interest to see which way the National Party actually chooses to vote at the end of this. It will be an interesting observation to make if they do vote in favour of this bill, having written a minority view against it at the select committee stage. One can speculate on what the reasons for that might be.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: We’re too subtle for you.

Certainly too something, Mr Finlayson. I’m, obviously, speaking in favour of this bill, and that is because the coalition Government stands in favour of fair competition, fair rights, a fair go for Kiwi consumers, and a level playing field for good businesses, and that, ultimately, is what this bill is about, because abuse of market position undercuts all of those things. This is an excellent bill. The changes that it makes to market studies, forceful undertakings, and specified airport services will serve those ends. I commend it to the House. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

I just want briefly to take a call to talk about the cease and desist provisions, because when I was in private practice I remember doing some work on those provisions. Everyone hoped that they would be a very effective jurisdiction, but as the Minister, Carmel Sepuloni, said in her third reading speech, on behalf of Mr Faafoi, they have largely been useless, and, indeed, she rightly pointed out that Mr Stapleton, the first Cease and Desist Commissioner, only issued one such order. So it hasn’t been a jurisdiction that’s been particularly successful, and I think that parties that have been desirous of urgent injunctive relief have found it more effective to go straight to the courts for interim relief. That is why, on that aspect at least, the National Party supports the removal of the cease and desist provisions, because they are of very little practical effect at all.

The other aspects of the bill—and this will be for the benefit of the member for Mt Roskill, who was speaking immediately before me, and will be a reasonably subtle speech—is that we need to look very closely at the market studies regime. The point of difference between the National Party and the Labour-led Government was that there was some concern about who would initiate the market studies. But there’s no doubt at all that some kind of market studies power is necessary and that the Commerce Commission, properly advised, would be able to undertake a very careful study of a particular market like the petroleum market.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I apologise for interrupting the member but it has come time for me to leave the chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Before the break, I had the great pleasure of listening to two whole minutes of what I considered to be a ballerina dancing around the head of a pin, trying not to give any credit where credit was due on a bill, the Commerce Amendment Bill. Because, of course, giving credit to this Government, which is now 12 months in and going so well, couldn’t possibly be done. So it was quite a nice little wee Twinkletoes around the subject without actually getting into the nuts and bolts of it.

I’m going to be taking a relatively short call this evening on this bill, but I was in the Chamber yesterday through the committee of the whole House stage, when I had the pleasure—or, some may say, displeasure—of listening to some of the comments that were made from the other side. And anyone listening might have actually thought that these people were going to be opposing this bill tonight, but no, alas, they are in full support of it but they were loving the throwing of the stones and the muck. So we’ll just hit it back to you guys. But great stuff—it is fantastic. This bill does do everything it’s designed to do. It is great that the Opposition are in support of this bill, despite some of the comments that were coming out yesterday.

Look, you don’t have to be a politician or a rocket scientist to work out the many things that have been going wrong in this country, and going wrong for a very long time in relation to the cost pressures around the cost of living particularly. In fact, it was Judith Collins who spoke quite considerably and specifically on the petrol pricing in this country. In fact—just to segue way for a second—the cheapest petrol price we’ve got at the moment is in the Waikato in this tiny little town. I think it’s Apirinui? Somewhere like that. I’m not sure. Anyway, it’s like $2.07 a litre, and they’re the only petrol station in town. They’ve got no competition—

💬 Hon Andrew Little: Ātiamuri.

Ātiamuri? It is Ātiamuri. Thank you, Minister. Ātiamuri have the cheapest petrol in the country. Now, they’ve got no pressures of other petrol stations around them to get that, but they are delivering the cheapest petrol in the country. And when you compare that to the prices that we are paying now in and around our large centres and cities, even in Tauranga—I mean, I drive a diesel. It’s a very good diesel, not one of those dodgy ones. And the price of diesel’s doubled. In fact, it’s not doubled; it’s gone up by 50c. This time last year it was $1 a litre. Now it’s $1.50, or just under. And petrol has gone up astronomically, despite a 3.5c increase with excise, which some people are suggesting is the reason for the rapid increase. The cost pressures and the way that some of these fuel companies are behaving is exactly what this bill will go and address.

But it’s not just the fuel companies. We’ve had discussions around the issues specifically to do with supermarkets and the costs around the supermarkets—the price of living—and the monopolies and duopolies that are operating in this country, and giving the power of the Commerce Commission to go in and have a look at some of those things. I’ve got a list here. Apart from the supermarkets and the fuel prices, we’ve got energy and gas pricing—we pay over the odds for our gas and our energy in this country—and the building and construction sector. With costs just going up through the roof, there’s no such thing as an affordable home. I’ve built recently a very small, modest 118 square metre home with my wife, and the cost was over $500,000 for the build—and we’ve just got chipboard floors.

💬 Jenny Marcroft: Chipboard floors?

Chipboard floors. We don’t even have a garage. But the costs going through these building companies are just out of control. And these are the sorts of things that we could get our Commerce Commission to take a serious look at. The scope of work that they’ve got and the ability to check that out with the airlines, the bank charges—when you compare the charges and the credit card charges that we pay in New Zealand versus what they’re paying in Australia, remembering that most of our banks are owned by those foreign monopolies and duopolies in Australia. So, to hold them to account and hold their hands to the fire is exactly what this bill will enable the Commerce Commission to do.

Something that’s quite dear to my heart, and something that we’ve talked about as a party quite considerably—in fact, it came up as a remit at our recent convention in Tauranga—was the costs of retirement villages and the disparities and differences between one retirement village and another. I think those are the sorts of areas that we could be spending some time, some effort, and some energy making sure that we get those settings right. Enabling the Commerce Commission with the right tools to deal to these sorts of situations, I think, will go a long way for all New Zealanders.

We are a very expensive place to live, when you look around the world. In fact, I’ve got family in the UK that pop down and get £20 worth of groceries and they’ve got four bag-loads of groceries, whereas here you go and spend $40 on groceries and you won’t even have enough to feed your kids for the night. You’d be better to go down to McDonald’s or get some fried rice from your local Chinese takeaways because it’s just so expensive to buy groceries in this country.

The airport regulations are another great opportunity. There are three main parts to this bill, and giving the Commerce Commission the tools, enabling them to have reviews, and looking at the way the airport regulations and airport services can behave, I think, is a great thing. And it’s very, very pleasing to see the House, as a whole, come together to support this bill as we steward it through the House. And tonight, it’s the third and final reading, so look out New Zealand. We’ve got some good things on its way—another great thing that this Government has achieved in a very short amount of time. It looks like they’re all ready to take a call. So on behalf of New Zealand First, we commend the bill to the House, and I’ll take a seat. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, for this opportunity to speak in the third reading of this bill, the Commerce Amendment Bill. I’d first like to acknowledge and congratulate Jacqui Dean on the work that she did as Minister in the initial stages of this bill. This is essentially a National Government bill, which is the reason why we’re supporting it. There was excellent work, I say to the committee and to the submitters who brought this bill to its current state.

Now, competition is a good thing. Healthy competition is essential to drive economies efficiently and effectively, to allocate resources appropriately, and to ensure that the inefficient die and the efficient and effective businesses survive. But there are situations where there could be duopolies or people who have very strong market influence, where they’re not doing anything illegally, but there is a need from time to time to investigate and to test that competition as anticipated—as expected—is being carried on in that particular market place. And that’s why Jacqui Dean, as commerce Minister, initiated this piece of work.

So let’s turn to the idea of having competition studies. Now, competition studies, according to the bill, can be initiated by the Commerce Commission or the Minister. We say that the Minister should have the final decision on whether there should be a particular study, and there are some very good reasons for that. There are very good reasons why the Minister—or at least the Government; the Minister, let’s say—has the final veto, the decision, about whether a market study should take place.

For a start, when you’ve got two people throwing up ideas on what should be investigated, you know, it’s all about prioritising. It would be tough enough for the Commerce Commission on their own to decide what is the most important in their view. In fact, they are guided by the view that it must be in the public interest, and I’ll come to the problem with that in a moment. But, you know, they’ve only got limited resources, and we know that it costs probably a million dollars or more, and might take up to a year or more, to do a proper study. There’s no point doing a shallow, short-cut, flippant inquiry. If you’re going to do something, do it well. So there’s an issue of what determines the priority that the Commerce Commission might put on their favoured list of inquiries.

Then you’ve got the Minister. The Minister can initiate competition studies as well. That’s a good thing. He or she will also have priorities. It’s not clear to me how either of those two initiators prioritise. There’s no criteria other than that everyone, both of those people, both of those entities, the Minister and the Commerce Commission, must have the public interest at heart.

So what does that mean? What is in the public interest? I say that the Minister understands what the public interest is about, because we here are involved with the communities every day. We hear and listen to people’s concerns, whether it’s a problem that they’re having with their council’s consenting issues, for example, and I’ll come to that more than a minute; whether they feel they’re being ripped off at the petrol pump—I don’t hear that other than the problem with the excess taxes that we know about—or whether it be supermarkets, as suggested by Minister Jones, but, again I don’t hear that from my constituents. There’s lots of places in the Wairarapa that people can buy their goods and produce other than supermarkets, so there’s lots of competition out there in that regard. But at least the Minister can make that decision in the best interests of the public, because the Minister and the politicians here are very connected to the community and the public interest.

The Commerce Commission is a bureaucracy. The Commerce Commission does not necessarily have the public interest at heart. It would be difficult—and this was in submissions made in the select committee process—if challenged, for the Commerce Commission to justify that study A has a greater level of public interest than study B, whereas a politician can easily and justifiably say, “Well, I’m going to make that decision in the public interest, and if I’m wrong I will get voted out—I will get voted out.” So it’s all about the governance that we’re talking about here—the governance of, and accountability for, those decisions as to which study should be initiated first.

So we talked a lot about the fuel and the need to investigate fuel suppliers, the suppliers of fuel, refined oil, into this country. But from where I sit as a constituent MP, I hear of other issues, other competitive issues or other markets that don’t appear to be working as well as they could be. I know Minister Jones has his favourites. It’s the supermarkets and real estate sector. Well, I would disagree on the real estate sector. There’s lots of and lots of competition there. No problem with having a healthy, active, competitive market. But we have an issue around the supply of building materials in New Zealand. Why not look at the problems and the bottlenecks and the competitive market that is or is not occurring in the building sector? We know New Zealand is an expensive place to build a house, and we’re short of them, and I suggest to the Minister: get an inquiry, get another working party, if you like, Minister, to kick off and direct the Commerce Commission into understanding the market forces that are or are not at play in the building supply industry.

Then, touching on that similar industry, is the consenting. Who provides consent to the building sector? The councils. Do they have competition? No, they don’t. So there’s another example of a very tough bottleneck, a bottleneck issue, a monopoly situation in a local area, an authority, a business, if you like, or an entity for sure, that has a monopoly situation, which has a massive influence on the pace that building and homes are constructed in New Zealand. So let’s direct the Commerce Commission to do that, and I suggest the Minister does that. If you left it to the Commerce Commission, I really don’t expect them to take that initiative.

💬 Water: where is the efficient and competitive tension around the allocation—allocation, I’m talking about—of water? Why not initiate an inquiry into the competitive nature of the labour market? The labour market is an extremely important resource to the well-being and productivity of this country, but the labour market is not as flexible. It is less mobile than it could be. So I’m talking about the mobility and flexibility and competitive marketplace for labour and why we are not as flexible and mobile as we should be to increase productivity in this country.

So if the Commerce Commission decided to initiate any of those topics, there’s really no accountability if it’s the wrong topic, if it’s the wrong subject, if people think it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money doing this or that. They’ve still got their job tomorrow. That’s why it’s important that the Minister decides. The Minister must be held accountable for the use of taxpayers’ money to decide, because all these initiatives and studies do cost money, and that is why a Minister should be in charge and should decide on the competitive market study that needs to occur, and if he gets it wrong and people don’t like the way that the study is conducted or the choice of study or the cost of the study, the accountability is that that Minister gets voted out. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. Thank you. What is not to like about this bill? The fact that this Government is interested in protecting consumers, and we’ve just had Alastair Scott again—Mr Mitchell talked about dancing on the head of a pin. National seems to be reluctantly supporting this bill, giving all the reasons why it doesn’t really want to support it, giving all the reasons why it doesn’t trust the Commerce Commission, but this bill is about ensuring that markets operate well by giving the Commerce Commission and the Minister the ability to conduct market studies. This Government is interested in ensuring that consumers are protected and that we have some checks and balances on the way in which the market operates. So there is a test of whether or not it’s in the public interest.

I have a great deal more confidence than the previous speaker that the Commerce Commission will be able to determine whether a market study is in the public interest or not. It is also ensuring that New Zealand catches up with the rest of the OECD and with around 40 other countries internationally which have a similar power of doing market investigations. But, oh no. The National Party only wants these to happen if the Minister decides. It doesn’t trust the Commerce Commission. So when we want to ensure that New Zealanders get really fair and appropriate treatment, as the Minister said in his first reading speech, by delivering competitive markets and supporting honest business, this is one bill that will help make that happen.

My colleague, our commerce spokesperson Gareth Hughes, has suggested that one of the first times this market investigation should be used when the bill is passed is to look at the duopoly around supermarkets and to do a market study there, because we’ve seen in the submissions that have been done by organisations like the Food and Grocery Council, and some of the concerns that they have raised about the duopoly powers, that this is right for a proper study. So that’s what this bill is intended to do.

The National Party seems to want to protect its ideological base of markets working virtually untrammelled. On this side of the House, we want to ensure that markets work well, and that we protect consumers. So, yes, the National Party when it was in Government did set about doing the targeted review of the Commerce Act which developed some of the proposals that are in this bill, but it failed to actually proceed to introduce legislation to the House and that’s what this Government and the Minister, the Hon Kris Faafoi, has done.

So when we’ve got a tourism industry, which is so important to our economy, where we’ve got 3.7 million arrivals in 2017, and that’s expected to increase to over 5 million by 2025, most of those international arrivals come in via our airports. This is another area where it would be entirely suitable for the Commerce Commission to undertake a market study because of the concerns that have been raised by the Board of Airline Representatives of New Zealand and others about the potentially excessive profits that some airport companies have, and the fact that they are targeting that.

They’re charging users highly, and they’re not recognising that, if we’re going to have a successful tourism industry, we need to ensure that airports are operating so that we get the regional benefits of distributed tourism, that we get an ability for airlines to negotiate effectively with those airports, and that they don't abuse the power that they have of being the sole operator in our major metropolitan areas. And so this is another example of why we need this bill and why it should also be possible for the Commerce Commission and not just the Minister to initiate these market studies.

I would have thought, Mr Scott, that the National Party would recognise that good decisions are well-informed decisions—that if the Government is going to intervene with more regulation in, for example, the supermarket sector or with airports, that you would want that to have been preceded by a market study to see how that market is operating, to see what regulatory interventions are needed, and to see whether there are other levers that the Government should be pulling. So this bill is a very sensible bill because it enables that to happen and gives the Commerce Commission more teeth. If you're going to have an effective market regime, you need that regulator to have a variety of levers available to it. So the Green Party commends this bill and hopes that it passes promptly. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Speaking to the Commerce Amendment Bill, and the last speech that has just been given has illustrated very neatly and very clearly why business confidence is tanking in New Zealand. Absolutely, undeniably when you have a Minister inside of Cabinet who says that the purpose of the market studies power is not to increase competition, it’s not to be to the benefit of consumers with prices and services—that Minister said the Commerce Commission’s market studies power will be a tool so that Government can intervene with more regulation. You just heard that from the Minister’s mouth herself: so that the Government can intervene with more regulation. So that is why this Government—this Labour-led coalition Government—has removed ministerial controls over the initiation of a market or competition study.

That might be fair enough—and National acknowledges that, yes, this was our bill and absolutely we support the market studies ability for the Commerce Commission, but there must be a control on that because of the impact on business in New Zealand. So I go back to my first point: no wonder business confidence is daily, weekly, monthly taking a hit under the uncertainty provided by this Government over a whole range of signals that it is sending the New Zealand business community, least of which is that a market study by the Commerce Commission may be initiated by the commission itself but under the direction of this Government. And the previous two speakers—a New Zealand First member and a Green Minister—spent quite a bit of their time in this debate this evening telling us just what parts of the economy are going to be subject to a market study. Isn’t that extraordinary given that we are now legislating a provision where the Commerce Commission itself initiates a study—no, no, it will be under the direction of an anti-business, interventionist Government. You heard it. You heard it from their mouths. They don’t like it, but the House heard it from the mouths of the New Zealand First member and the Greens Minister.

So I just want to go through, in the under 25 minutes since the House has resumed since the dinner break, the strong suggestions that have come from the coalition partners around what will be a market study in the future. And if you think about the fact that a market study will take up to a year—in fact, you’d really want to have a look at a time frame of 18 months because you’ve got to initiate the study and then the Commerce Commission has to get out and do it—

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: Consult.

—consult and talk; to require information—

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: Then put out a draft.

—and then go through the whole draft—quite right—go through the whole stage and then present the market study. It seems like there’s a decade of market studies; so I do hope the Commerce Commission are girding their loins, because they’ve got an awful lot of work to do. And one wonders, under this pressure, what other activities are going to have to be forgone because they’re going to be totally, in my view, and I want to tell you why in a minute, taken up by conducting market studies, which on the one hand this Government says they will initiate because they need to be independent, but on the other hand they are only too happy to give direction in this House and in the media about just which market studies should take place.

I’m going to run through some of them. Twice tonight we’ve heard about market studies into the duopolies of New Zealand supermarkets. We’ve even had the unedifying view of shopping bags full of groceries which are so much cheaper in the UK than they are in New Zealand. That member clearly doesn’t understand that Great Britain, or the United Kingdom, is almost completely surrounded by the European Union and is not an island floating at the bottom of the Pacific. That little piece of policy mistake aside, the supermarkets beware. Beware supermarkets, the Government is coming for you. Beware Commerce Commission, because the Government is going to give you subtle and unsubtle messages about what kinds of market studies it just wants to be initiated so that it can, subsequent to that market study—and I quote the Minister Eugenie Sage—interfere with more regulation. Well, that’s marvellous. That’s just what New Zealand business does not need—

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: What did she say? Say that again.

Intervene with more regulation. I have it here, and exactly what New Zealand business does not need is more regulation. Well, I can tell you something: over this side of the House, we are firmly committed to less regulation, less intervention so that New Zealand business can get on with doing what it does best, and that is providing goods and services for the New Zealand public.

But wait, there’s more—there’s more. There is quite a bit more. So we’ve ticked off supermarkets. There is a fuel study. Now, the Prime Minister herself several weeks ago contended that New Zealanders are being fleeced at the pumps. Well, they’re being fleeced all right. They’re being fleeced by the Government’s own taxation regime—the Auckland fuel tax—which I am paying for in the rural South Island as I drive around, as that tax gets spread across New Zealand.

There’s more. Tonight, we heard about an energy and gas market study. Well, that will be interesting—an energy and gas market study—particularly in the uncertainty that is now pervading the energy and gas sector with the Government’s signal to shut down further exploration, which is collapsing not only support for Labour in New Plymouth but is actually collapsing New Plymouth. No wonder there is a lack of business confidence with that kind of signal coming from the Labour-led coalition Government, enabled, of course, by the Green Party, who have now had a road to Damascus moment and are now supporting market studies, whereas in the last Government they were implacably opposed to them. Never mind.

We also have tonight on the table a market study of the building sector, OK? We also had a member in the House saying housing is unaffordable. They’ve had a year. They had a previous nine years of talking about housing affordability. What have they done? Not much, but what they are doing tonight, because they announced it tonight, is they will lean on the Commerce Commission to undertake a market study into the building sector. Well, that’s excellent! I think we’re up to about three.

💬 Fourth: airlines—airlines. We’re going to have a market study on airlines for no better reason—

💬 Chris Penk: That’s going to take off!

—than in the view of the Minister in the Green Party—my colleague just said a joke and I’m trying hard not to laugh but it really was rather funny. Yes, it’s going to take off. Sorry about that.

Here we go. That’s five market studies that have been talked about tonight. What is the Commerce Commission to do with this kind of direction from the Government? It happened in the debating chamber by members of the Government. Well, if I were the Commerce Commission, I would know what my riding instructions were very clearly: they are to drop everything else. All the work that the Commerce Commission commonly do and are funded for—they would drop all that because they have at least five market studies which have been announced tonight by the Government, from the Prime Minister several weeks ago, the Hon Shane Jones, and now other members across this coalition Government. We’re in a bidding war for just how many market studies. What’s that going to do for business confidence in New Zealand? It is going to continue to tank, and they don’t even know why.

I understand this is a split call. I call the Hon Meka Whaitiri. You have five minutes.

E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Otirā, ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. After that last speaker, Jacqui Dean, what can I say? We are a coalition Government wanting to get on and do the hard yards. We had a speaker who talked about apparently being the party of the free market and who had every opportunity to usher this bill through, but I want to commend my colleague the Hon Kris Faafoi for bringing in a well-considered bill, a bill that actually gives the tools necessary to the Commerce Commission.

As the Commerce Act says—and I quote—“The [main aim] of this Act is to promote competition … for the long-term benefit of consumers [and markets] within New Zealand.” How can the Commerce Act be achieved if the tools are not readily available to the commission? So what this bill does is enable the Commerce Commission, in their wise judgment, to initiate market studies, and, of course, the Minister himself can also initiate market studies—and that’s all. On this side, we want to be informed when we make decisions, and we want to do it on good evidence, and that’s what the market studies are about.

I am a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, and I’m somewhat confused because, in the report back to the House from the select committee, we have got this piece that says “National Party members do not support the bill in its current form. The amendments proposed in the departmental report do not address the issues we have with the bill. We recommend that the bill not proceed.” So I’m somewhat confused. Are the Opposition supporting this bill or are they not supporting the bill?

I’ve been listening quite carefully to the contributions on that side of the House in terms of their concerns for not supporting it—or now are they supporting it? I would like one of the members—we’ve had Alastair Scott from the select committee, and hopefully we’ve got another member from that side—to get up and actually make it clear to this House whether they are supporting a very sensible bill, a sensible bill that gives the Commerce Commission the right to undertake market studies and, yes, of course, address the issues around certain airports around our country. That’s really critical, particularly for people like myself—a rurally based MP—and, of course, tourism is a big economic opportunity for the areas I come from; so making sure that we’ve got the right tools to ensure that we are enabling more tourism to come into some of our regional parts of Aotearoa New Zealand.

This is a really, really important bill that does, like I said, enable the Commerce Commission to do the market studies. Yes, people are going to share what those market studies would be, but, ultimately, the test of public interest—and I trust the Commerce Commission. Like my colleague the Hon Eugenie Sage said, they will make the right call, and, obviously, discuss with and be led by the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs himself, the Hon Kris Faafoi. It is a common-sense bill. It is something that, unfortunately, that side didn’t enable us to get through the House. I absolutely commend it to the House in ensuring that it gets through so that we can start doing the things that New Zealanders want from this Government and expect from this Government—one of action and one prepared to do the mahi. I commend this bill to the House.

It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Commerce Amendment Bill.

💬 Hon Meka Whaitiri: Are you on the select committee?

I wasn’t on the select committee, but I do have some knowledge in this area. For the Hon Meka Whaitiri, who spoke before, I want to make it very clear, from my humble position on the backbenches, that the National Party is supporting this bill but is raising some concerns about the oversight that is portrayed in this bill. We do so with sort of an interesting background, because today, for the second time in this parliamentary term, we have seen yet another announcement on the hoof. The first was the announcement by the Prime Minister before she went off to Paris, about the oil and gas ban, and we now know there was no analysis done, no Cabinet paper, and the subsequent information that has been provided by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is somewhat damning about that decision.

We remember what happened to the Hon Shane Jones that day: the picture of his hand over his face when all of that was decided, because he knew very little about it until the night before. But that was actually an advantage compared with what happened today. What happened today was that the Prime Minister, in the light of some pretty intense political heat from the Leader of the Opposition, unilaterally announced that a new provision under the regional fuel tax legislation won’t be used on her watch.

💬 Chris Penk: Cabinet of one.

Cabinet of one—no advice, no Cabinet decision, announced in this House. We then asked the Minister responding on behalf of the Minister of Transport when he knew. He said, “When the Prime Minister announced it.” To me, this is what is damaging business confidence in New Zealand. There is no proper analysis. There are flip-flops, U-turns, whatever you want to call them, being done on pretty much a weekly basis. It’s actually because there is pressure to bear and the work hasn’t been done.

So this side of the House—and I want to congratulate the Hon Jacqui Dean on bringing this material to the House—believes that proper studies should be done and that policy and decisions should be made based on evidence. That’s why we support this bill. The Hon Jacqui Dean just spoke previously to me about all the new announcements that have, sort of, been made by members on the other side—a study on energy and gas. Mr Clayton Mitchell talked about building costs, talked about how hard it is to buy a house, how hard it is to build a house. If that was such a concern, why isn’t there a study already enacted on the costs of building materials? We’ve heard high-profile announcements on supermarkets—the supposed duopoly effect.

I want to refer this House and remind this House that there is already a very good model that could be used in a similar way to the Commerce Commission, and that’s the Productivity Commission. The Productivity Commission assesses, on behalf of the people of New Zealand and taxpayers, a whole lot of things that go on in the New Zealand economy. They are asked to do that by a Minister, usually the Minister of Finance but other Ministers are involved. An independent group of people—it’s the same situation in Australia, but it’s been done in New Zealand in the last three years—assess a whole lot of topics and provide independent advice to the Government. All we’re saying on this side of the House is that you’ve got to be careful who is in charge. In our view, Governments should be in charge—Ministers should be in charge—of what the Commerce Commission actually looks at and studies in a market study.

The Government is the place, this Parliament is the place, that resolves issues of the day and it’s actually their responsibility to set the terms of reference and the workload of the Commerce Commission. It’s glaringly obvious—to me, anyway—that one of the most urgent studies will be on looking at the price of petrol, and I think every side of the House would agree with that, but it’s also important, if this Government wants to deliver the savings and the number of houses it wants, that it undertakes a study on the costs of building materials. If this was such a big issue and we left it to the current model, then it may be that the Commerce Commission didn’t get to these things in a timely manner. So all we’re saying is that we support this legislation, but we think this House, through its representatives and Ministers, should determine what studies.

I understand this is a split call. Tamati Coffey, you have five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. This is the third reading, obviously, so now we just get to reflect on the wholeness of the Commerce Amendment Bill. There are lots of clauses in there. I think, as many of the previous speakers have alluded to, the big conversation is around market studies. I have a lot of faith that, actually, through these market studies, through the Commerce Commission, by us actually delegating that power to the Commerce Commission to be able to do their market studies, we’ll actually be able to get a few answers. These are answers to questions that New Zealanders are asking us out on the street.

The Opposition, throughout question time, was for the whole time talking about these questions that real New Zealanders are asking—things like petrol prices. As I’ve travelled around my electorate, I’ve been very interested to see just the range when it comes to petrol prices: everything from $2.10 at my local gas station, which is quite fortunate as I understand, to somewhere up in the late $2.40—something like that. It makes a big difference, of course, if you are not on a healthy income. If you are just struggling to make ends meet, then, actually, we as a Government need to make sure that we’re doing everything possible to be able to use the levers of Government to be able to make life better for our people, for the people that we represent out there in the community.

So getting the Commerce Commission to be able to undertake these market studies in the public interest is a great thing. Some people may be uncertain about the term “public interest” and whether or not it’s a wee bit vague and whether or not we need a better definition of it. To that I would respond that, actually, there are plenty of examples in law at the moment where we talk about things like the public interest of New Zealand, and I point to the Official Information Act, which is one of those levers of Parliament where we think that if something is in the public interest, then, actually, that information needs to be divulged. Similarly, in these market studies, we are all quite certain that somewhere along the line, petrol prices are going to be in that line for a market study.

I heard what my colleague was saying earlier in terms of supermarkets—I hear that. I heard the member opposite, Lawrence Yule, talk about the “apparent duopoly” in supermarkets. It’s not really apparent; it’s very real. In fact, I would be looking forward to seeing how a market study might be able to dig a little bit deeper to be able to ask the questions that, I guess, regular New Zealanders would like to know about when it comes to how their supermarkets operate and, obviously, the bottom lines, really.

This is a fixed amount of money, as well. Some people had some concerns, I know, about how many market studies might be able to be performed in a set year. At the end of the day, the Minister has indicated that the actual funding appropriation is $1.5 million per annum. That, the Commerce Commission estimates, would enable them to undertake one medium-sized market study per year. So you can be thankful that we’re not going to be inundated with market studies about anything and everything, and that actually the budget will dictate just how many market studies we do. Hopefully, that will be able to deliver those benefits back to New Zealanders, whether or not we’re talking about petrol prices, whether or not we’re talking about supermarkets, or even if we’re talking about airports. Airports make quite a prominent feature in this regulation, as well.

It has been talked through quite considerably, even in the House tonight, so I won’t go too far into that, suffice to say that this is a piece of legislation that we, obviously, as the Government, are supporting. It sounds like the Opposition is supporting it too. This is in the interests of the people. This is in the public interest of New Zealanders, so that we can actually dig down into whether or not the competition that’s occurring is fair and whether or not we’re delivering the best outcomes that we can to New Zealanders. So with that said, I absolutely commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. I was sitting in my office, working away for the constituents of the Epsom electorate, and I caught in the background Meka Whaitiri asking the question: “What does the National Party think about this bill? Are they in favour of the bill, and are they in favour of competition studies, or are they opposed to it?” And then I listened to Jacqui Dean speak, and I got even more confused, because she said, “This is the worst thing ever. It’s going to destroy business confidence. It amounts to a choice of socialism over free markets and private property rights, but I thought of it and I’m going to vote for it.” Well, I want to tell my friend Meka Whaitiri and you, Madam Assistant Speaker, that the Opposition is opposed to this legislation.

Then I want to tell you why. It comes down to a very simple choice. The choice is this: do we believe in a society with free markets and private property, or do we believe in a society where a bureaucracy attempts to answer questions that it cannot possibly answer? Questions like: how many competitors should be selling fuel in a unique island nation in the middle of nowhere, on a rocky outcrop 1,500 kilometres long, mountainous, and with fewer people than Sydney? How many petrol retailers should be competing in a market in a country like that? Who will the Commerce Commission compare New Zealand with?

You see, there are already lots of rules in the Commerce Act that prevent people from abusing market power. There are already rules against withholding trade simply to prevent a new entrant coming into the market, and they can already be enforced if there is a complaint. But that’s not what this bill is about. This bill is about the Commerce Commission being able to—off its own bat, or with the instruction of a Minister—go into an industry with greater powers than the police to request information and basically poke around and try to come up with questions of what the market structure should be and how much money people should make, even though they have no way of knowing the answer to that whatsoever.

It is a simple choice: we either believe in free markets and private property rights and competition under well-understood rules, or we believe in another layer bureaucracy and bureaucrats poking around. But there’s another issue here. F A Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom to the socialists of all parties, and tonight I know how he feels, because there’s another issue. The National Party say, “Well, we don’t think that bureaucrats should be able to initiate these studies, because that is an invitation to corruption. We don’t trust bureaucrats to decide which industry to target, but we trust a politician—a Minister seeking re-election—to initiate such a study.” Well, where’s the logic in that?

The fact is you can imagine the scene: a Minister or a Commerce Commission bureaucrat on the canapé circuit here in downtown Wellington on a windy winter’s evening, and he’s got everybody around him terrified that their industry will be next if they don’t do the right favours. That’s why it’s an invitation to corruption. The Commerce Commission—whether it’s at the behest of a Minister, or the head of the Commerce Commission—will use these powers to request information or potentially intervene in a market, adding another layer of bureaucracy that won’t make anything cheaper or better for consumers, but it will make New Zealand an even more bureaucratic place. The fact that the Prime Minister has already told us what the outcome of the first study is going to be, when she said that consumers were being fleeced, just confirms all the worst fears that people have about this particular bill.

I stand proudly in opposition to this bill, because it’s not going to solve the problem of petrol prices. The problem with petrol prices, by the way, is the price of oil’s gone up 6 percent in the last year in New Zealand dollars—both things that the Commerce Commission has no way of controlling whatsoever. This bill is not going to control that, but it will make life in New Zealand just a little bit more bureaucratic at best, and a little bit more corrupt at worst. So I’m proud to tell Meka Whaitiri that the Opposition will be opposing this bill.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow my friend, the good MP for Epsom. He always gives a certain perspective that is an interesting one in the House because it’s more diverse than some others. And, in that light, it's always nice to follow him. So just to be clear, the National Party believes in competition, believes that consumers should have the right to go and buy goods and services at the right price and not pay too much for them. I heard the Minister during the course of the debate as the bill progressed through the House talk only about the rights of consumers. Well, I actually think he, as the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, should also have regard for commerce in New Zealand and protecting the rights of commerce both large and small.

Clearly this bill is about enhancing the powers of the Commerce Commission, and generally my view is that they do a pretty good job. But this bill actually takes it a little bit further because, whilst large parts of this bill—actually a National Party bill. It was actually promoted under my colleagues when we were in power. So Labour and New Zealand First have literally picked up most of it. The large departure is around the issue of the additional powers we're going to give to the Commerce Commission, and of course we all know that it's been politically driven.

It’s been driven by the fuel price issue, and we’ve heard about that today, and then we’ve heard the off-the-hoof change in policy by the Prime Minister in question time—unilaterally and without notice to, clearly, anyone else in her party or New Zealand First or the Greens—unilaterally deciding that there’s going to be no further regional taxes. Of course, that is bad policy. That is bad policy. That should be done in a considered manner, particularly when you’re looking at large industries like the fuel industry or the airports or whatever. It shouldn’t be a game and it shouldn’t be something that occurs on a random basis. We should have good policy in New Zealand, well-thought-through, and I’m not sure that that is where we’ve landed with this bill as we currently work our way through.

I think that the Minister has been a soft touch. I’ve said this before, because the reason for that is many of the reasons for promoting the changes to this bill weren’t actually supported in the statement in the background papers provided by the ministry. But the Minister has decided to pick up the cudgel, where former Ministers and particularly National Party members have feared to tread—have feared to tread.

So I think the biggest issue is the oversight of the Commerce Commission, if it is to have these additional powers. We believe that there should be the right to undertake market studies. We don’t disagree with that concept, but the difference—and this is where I differ from the previous speaker—is how you provide an effective oversight of that. And that is the question of balance. That’s a question of making sure that if we provide enhanced powers—and as the previous speaker noted, they are significant. How do you provide a framework where those are only used in proper circumstances, and have proper regard to the impact on both the businesses and also consumers?

I think we’ve talked at length about the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the ACCC, and of course we’ve highlighted—and it is highlighted in the report by the officials—that this entity is empowered to undertake market studies, but where they want to use these additional powers that are proposed in this bill, that those powers are subject to ministerial oversight. So they are the best example and the closest example of those types of powers and how they may be exercised. But I’ve also highlighted the UK Competition and Markets Authority—the equivalent to the Commerce Commission. I met with them a year ago, and they also have the right to undertake market inquiries as such, but they also have an override—that balancing tension. In that case, there is a clear separation between the management of the UK Competition and Markets Authority and the board.

That’s another option. So the management propose; the board decides. As proposed in this bill, what would happen is the management of the Commerce Commission would propose and decide in one body. Right, it could be a Minister, it could be a board structure—if we had one on the Commerce Commission—but there is an element of an independent check before these comprehensive powers can be deployed.

Moving on, just the implication for commerce—and this is what I think the Minister is missing in his role—is that these are incredibly invasive, they are time-consuming, they are costly, and they also besmirch the reputation of the industries when these take place. They have a chilling effect on those industries, and even though they may prove to be innocent, the whole thought of these inquiries are significant. Everyone in the market gets to know that the Commerce Commission are undertaking these studies. They are not done confidentially. It just seeps out in the market, and the impact, particularly if you’re a listed company, and the implication of what it might mean to your share price, the disclosure regimes that you may have to meet to meet the takeovers or the market listing requirements—all those implications are significant, and before you pull the trigger you need to make sure that the Commerce Commission is doing it properly and with the right reason.

That’s why I think the Prime Minister’s comments were injudicious—saying that she wanted to undertake a review of the fuel companies, and, obviously, one of the reasons why this bill is going through is to enable that to occur. But even worse, in my view, it was actually irresponsible for the Prime Minister to call to other Ministers to almost nominate—if I can use the term “turkey shoot”—on which industries the Commerce Commission might also undertake market studies of. I think that’s irresponsible. That’s like having a trap shoot, and that’s not the way that this legislation, which is incredibly empowering, should be in use and even talked about by the Prime Minister. As I said, I think it’s terribly, terribly irresponsible. For the Labour - New Zealand First Government to allow these unfettered powers to be conducted, I just think strikes an issue in terms of what it means for corporate New Zealand. And I don’t think it’s been properly thought through.

The other thing is—I don’t think I’ve heard anyone talking about—does the Commerce Commission, under the current construct, have the necessary competency and expertise to undertake or to decide these types of issues? For instance, I think if you looked at the Commerce Commission, they certainly have very strong economic ability, they have very strong technical skills around analytical competition issues and I think also around assessing the issue of efficiency. But the issue that the Commerce Commission has no expertise in and the one that this power actually gives them the right to undertake is the ability to broadly consider public interest.

I don’t think we should be asking a technical body to stray into the area of public interest. I just think that is striking a chord that is too far for what is basically a body that has quite a constrained expertise. I know there’s a requirement to publish terms of reference, but there’s no guarantee in the legislation under what—or guidelines as to the nature and scope of their terms of reference. And again, I think if you were going to introduce these broad powers, these mitigating aspects that put some form of limit on them in how they’re deployed should have been captured in this bill, and I think it’s remiss of the Minister not to have done that.

The last thing I want to talk about is the issue of the cost of undertaking these market studies. I know the Government broadly talks about the $1.5 million they put up. The Minister ill-advisedly talked about these things costing $400,000. That figure is so far removed from reality it’s unbelievable, and I think, again, it’s showing a Minister who’s been a soft touch, who’s out of touch with the technical aspects of this bill, and does not properly understand the practical elements of what’s proposed and incorporated in this bill. And I think it’s a disappointment on that issue.

It’s a real delight to be able to speak in the third reading of this legislation, although I must say that watching the response of the member for Epsom to Andrew Bayly, the previous speaker, I was very tempted to see if he wanted to have another go, because I would have been prepared to split my 10 minutes in order to listen to his contribution to this debate once more.

The three—

💬 David Seymour: Please tell us the member’s not going to use 10 minutes.

I was thinking of going for longer, if it’s possible. I was—

💬 David Seymour: Thank God for the Standing Orders!

Ha, ha! Thank you for your contribution, Mr Seymour. It’s always appreciated. It adds life to the House.

So there are three parts to this bill. The first is, as has been the focus of the third reading debate, the market studies issue—or, as they’re referred to in the bill, competition studies—the second one is the regulation of specified airport services, and the third one is enforceable undertakings, so alternative enforcement mechanisms.

I want to commend the former Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, the Hon Jacqui Dean, for her work in this area, and I want to commend the current Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, the Hon Kris Faafoi, for his continuation of that work. It’s interesting when we have an area where there seems to be such hot debate between National and Labour on these issues, that you’ve had two Ministers both working on the same areas and there seem to be very little points of difference.

It was confusing, listening to the National Party members’ contributions. They were all over the place, desperate to find something to pick holes in in the Government, and actually making fools of themselves by attacking legislation that they are then going to vote for. So they need to get a little bit more of a grip on the issues that are before the House.

It is our view on this side of the House that consumers should be at the heart of competition and consumer policy. This bill progresses that ambition. It does give us the security that we need. There will be parts of it that will need to be refined in the future, and I hope we see the continued efforts, such as were demonstrated at the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, to make New Zealand a better place for all consumers. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.