Customer and Product Data Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Customer and Product Data Bill.

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

I move, That the Customer and Product Data Bill be now read a third time.

This is an important bill. It’s a crucial piece of legislation that will help improve competition in New Zealand and help Kiwi consumers get a better deal—quite literally a better deal.

I want to start by thanking members of this House, particularly those members who sit on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, for their collaborative consideration of the bill. In particular, I want to thank committee chair Dr Parmjeet Parmar. I also want to thank all the New Zealanders who submitted on the bill and those I have spoken to about it, and your experiences of the potential that it has for trying to access better data.

Put simply, this bill will enable easier and more efficient sharing of customer and product data. It will give people more choice and more power in a range of settings—for example, when shopping for a mortgage, and that’s an example that we used during the committee of the whole House stage.

This legislation will also support innovation and competition across key sectors, encouraging businesses to offer new products and services using the data they already hold. Better choice and competition, of course, leads to higher productivity and, ultimately, to economic growth.

The third reading of this bill could not have been more timely, and I would point to a couple of news stories from just the past week that illustrate why we need this bill and why we need it now. Radio New Zealand did a report on the Commerce Commission’s study from last week, and it found that nearly one-third of mobile and broadband consumers have not switched providers because, simply, it’s too hard. In a National Business Review article earlier this week, Powerswitch said that because not all retailers are playing ball and sharing information, it’s difficult to support people wanting to switch.

Until now, businesses holding customer and product data had little or no incentive to invest in better data-sharing technology and/or agreements, and this has stifled innovation and consumers have suffered as a result. This bill sets up the framework to change that and puts power back in the hands of those who own the data: consumers.

So what does this bill all mean? Well, how does it help the average Kiwi—fed up, for instance, with their power plan or wanting to switch to a new bank? Well, it means easier, more efficient access to, and sharing of, their own data—saving them, ultimately, time and money. And it means the obvious potential for no more manually comparing different providers to find the best deal, the potential for no more downloading and sending statements to accountants manually, the potential for no more imbalance in negotiating power for companies that hold mass data on your behalf. Instead, this bill means that more time and money for what matters to most people, their families, their businesses, and their personal enjoyment can be freed up.

Recently, I had the privilege of speaking at a fintech industry event in Auckland where I met Dr Bill Roberts, a UK expert in open banking, and he told me about an app in the UK called Snoop, that links to the major banks and, among other things, helps consumers avoid the loyalty premium. And you might ask, “What’s the loyalty premium?” Well, that means alerting users to hikes, for instance, in subscription or other regular charges that they might not otherwise notice. I think that’s going to be enormously beneficial, should something like Snoop be available in New Zealand.

But I want to make it clear that this bill doesn’t just benefit consumers. When they gain access to new products and services, businesses also can increase productivity and concentrate on innovating and growing. Easier and more efficient data-sharing means businesses—not just customers—can also reap the time- and cost-saving benefits that I’m sure will accrue as a result of this piece of legislation. Going back to the UK, just as an example, businesses there have saved, on average, 150 hours a year thanks to a simple open banking application. That’s a case of, literally, where time is money.

So what does this bill do? Well, as I’ve outlined, the bill establishes a flexible framework that can be applied to different sectors of our economy, like banking or electricity. This will be introduced gradually through the regulations that the legislation provides for, sector by sector.

Let me give you a few examples of how it will work in practice. For banking and electricity, people may no longer need to sift through months of bank statements when they want to get a mortgage, or months of statements and payment bills or invoices when they want to compare electricity plans that sometimes can be confusing, to say the least. If a fintech provider can amalgamate that information in an easy-to-use application, in a format that is customer- and user-friendly, then all power to them.

People may no longer need to give away their online banking details to use cheaper payment options when they’re, for instance, booking or wanting to book an airline flight. That’s another simple potential application for this piece of legislation. Budgeting and saving applications will be significantly optimised to help customers make the most of their hard-earned money.

The bill provides a safe environment in which customers, including individuals and businesses, can get the most out of their data. The speedy roll-out of open banking is a big priority for me and my ministerial team, and that’s why I’ve committed to have open banking fully operational by the end of this calendar year. I will be seeking Cabinet approval on an open banking designation very shortly, and I look forward to announcing more details about that very soon.

In conclusion, I want to close once again by thanking everyone who’s had their say in shaping this important legislation, to the many Kiwis who have shared their experiences, and I recognise the difficulties that some of them have faced. I’m pleased today that this Government will be passing this bill that addresses these problems by enabling better access to data. I want to also note that the support of cross-party consensus around this legislation, I think, is welcomed and is an example of this Parliament working at its best.

I’m excited to see the opportunities that the bill unlocks for banking and other sectors, and the part that that will play in people’s everyday lives. I commend it most excitedly to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call in this third reading of the Customer and Product Data Bill, that I’m told should be called the Consumer Data Bill—but, look, missed opportunities. There is no desire from Labour members to slow this down. We’re happy to see the progress of this bill and we welcome the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs’ enthusiasm to announce an—

💬 Hon Rachel Brooking: Excitement, even.

—open banking designation. My colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking is excited about it. We’ve got some laughs and good cheer on this side of the House. We are happy to be seeing this through.

There are things that we would have changed. In the time that Labour members have shepherded this piece of legislation through, Ministers have been working very closely with the sector, not only the fintechs but also in electricity and other sectors like telecommunications. There is a lot of enthusiasm out there, and goodwill from the industry, to work with Government and to get these systems right so that customers and consumers in New Zealand can use the products and the innovation that this bill promises.

But, yeah, there is a bit of an irony in the Government using the urgency process to do this when it is non-contentious legislation and when we could have given this a really good going over and made sure that not only our select committee process but our committee of the whole House stages were used in a way to really iron out some of these details. Because, let’s be honest, there are going to be parts of this legislation which don’t work as intended. There are going to be parts of the regulation, which are not drafted yet and are not finalised yet, that we are going to need to revisit. And it brings me back to the need for this process to be robust and for people to have faith and confidence in the system to be not only taking the needs of industry into account but the needs of consumers.

I reflect on the opportunity of the Minister to speak at a recent fintech conference. The fintechs have been very, very, very helpful to members of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, and members around this House, in understanding how this will roll out for open banking. I really want to thank them, especially those smaller players who are taking time off work, they’re coming along to the select committee, and they’re submitting to a group of parliamentarians when they have put not only their own money into developing these systems but a huge amount of voluntary time and effort, as well as the voluntary time of others—a huge amount of mentoring goes into this.

Then, there’s also the voice of consumers. We have many New Zealanders who absolutely do not know what’s coming with this. It is, hopefully, going to massively improve their experience of using not only banking services but other services, so we need New Zealanders to know and appreciate and understand this. We have an advantage, here, in being able to use the existing privacy provisions in New Zealand—they’re great; they should be respected and be better known by people, but they are a great starting point that is well established in New Zealand, which other jurisdictions didn’t have. But it still doesn’t mean that New Zealanders are going to warm up to the system quickly. We know that for the industry to be able to be scalable and to be able to take advantage of a great, empowering piece of legislation like this, we’re going to need customers to understand these rules widely and have faith in it.

I want to make sure that everyone will be able to use this. It’s not going to do everything, because people won’t be able to use it, won’t be able to understand it, in some segments of the market. There are people like—I held a clinic for pensioners recently at Glenveagh Park Drive and I spoke to a chap there who would have been in his 80s and he walked down to the corner to see us. His big concern was his electricity bill. He’s seeing another $10 being added on from 1 April, which he is already planning for. As a person on a fixed income, that’s something which will affect him—it might not seem like a lot. But for him, there is no solution to his worries, in having a more open and enabling system of consumer data rights. It’s all well and good for the Government to point to choice and power being the intervention that it would choose in these industries that are very uncompetitive, but there are going to be these consumers who are not helped by this at all.

When we talk about competition, we want competition that benefits everyone. Not all competition is good. We want competition which actually delivers price benefits to people and price transparency over not only the short term but the long term. So with an open banking regime, we absolutely expect that to drive efficiencies and pricing in certain products. But we need to make sure that our banking system, supermarkets, air fares, and the price of getting around and living is something which remains a focus for this Government—this Government which campaigned on the cost of living. It was the number one issue in New Zealanders’ minds then; it is the number one issue in New Zealanders’ minds now. If customer data rights is the Government’s way of changing the playing field for customers, then we need to make sure it works for everyone, because it won’t make a difference in those industries where we know there are huge competition barriers still. We know we need to do more in that, and I look forward to the Government really tackling that, because that is what it promised New Zealanders it would do and it would focus on. We cannot afford distractions from that project of making sure that Government power is being used for the little guy, that the little guy is getting the best deal possible here in all of these sectors. These consumer data rights are only a part of that—they’re enabling, and that’s why we are so keen on them.

I’m thinking about how consumers being in the driver’s seat in how their data is used is going to make a difference in the long term. The way this is used in the UK, and in those jurisdictions where there’s been a proliferation of different sorts of apps, is there’s not only a comparison of product in between players in the sector, like home loans across different banks, but products within a certain provider, like within a certain electricity provider that offers a range of products based on usage. Those are products which are going to be incredibly helpful for New Zealanders. Currently, there are different sorts of providers that offer different sorts of products and compete in different sorts of ways, but if you’re not someone who has access to, as the Minister put it, your own little spreadsheet or grid where you’re comparing these things, you just don’t have access to that in a way which is digestible. So being able to use that data, not only your own data but being able to compare it to other people’s rates and uses, is really important and will be very useful.

I also want to acknowledge the work that’s gone into this over many years. The need to design a system that is both industry led and industry responsive has been huge here. It has created, I guess, real enthusiasm from people to be involved with the Government officials that have been working on this. The way that people, from my experience, have been engaging with it has been really hands-on. In the committee stage, we were able to traverse some of the issues—around the way that Payments NZ have nobly stepped up to the plate here and led a process around open banking that has not only involved the big banks but also some of the smaller players.

The way that Labour was approaching this was different with the smaller players. We were making sure they had other ways to feed into the system. But this has the benefit of having been quick, being really efficient, and we all acknowledge that we need something in the legislation that enables this work to happen and happen now. So I hope that we get this right. But we do want to keep the door open to those smaller players. We need to be saying and, all around this House, agreeing that the small fintechs that do this off their own bat, that maybe mortgage the house—that they’ve put their own savings into this—all need a fair shake on this. So if the system isn’t working for those players, that is the canary in the goldmine that says it’s not working. So we want to hear from those players, as soon as the open banking designation is announced, whether it’s going to work for them, because we cannot afford a system where smaller players are either left behind or can only succeed when they are partnered with a bigger bank. This applies to many, many different sectors, but I’m thinking about banking particularly because that is the one that the Minister is concerned with now, and that is the one that the Government is pointing to as the industry that it is interested in the competition effect of opening banking in, now.

The policy intent of this has to be that you do not need to succeed, if you are the Doshs of this world, by partnering with a bigger bank like Westpac, which was announced recently. You must be able to succeed on your own two feet, under this kind of regulation, because, otherwise, we are not enjoying the benefits of competition, where lots of little players are nipping at the heels of the big guys; we are in fact incentivising the big guys to eat them right up. That is not a system that anyone around the House was agreeing to when this legislation was passing. It is a system which is anti-competitive, in which we’ll see anti-competitive effects in New Zealand’s market going forward. So we want to hear about that; we want to hear about the operation of that. We will certainly, on this side of the House, be watching the way that the regulations are designed to promote that competition rather than to shut it down and incentivise the smaller players to need to partner with the bigger ones. Also looking to the—and that is my speech; I commend the bill.

Thank you very much. I rise in support of the Customer and Product Data Bill. I think particularly when so much of the time in this House is consumed by members of the coalition importing culture wars, scapegoating our migrant communities or queer communities rather than addressing the material needs of people, it’s refreshing to see a bill that actually aims to address the material realities of people. It’s doing it in a way that reforms the system in relationship to a consumer data right regime. In this case, it will liberalise it and will enhance consumer rights. The intent in here is that through consumers having more options and more information to be able to make decisions about, for example, which bank provider they choose to go to, which gym they will get a better deal out of, or an electricity provider, that will have a tangible material cost of living benefit for families.

I think, to me, this is why in the committee of the whole House stage I was trying to get more granular around the outcomes that this bill is promoting, because there are a lot of definitions in this bill, but I think the bill fails to capture and make the argument for competition and innovation driving better material results. In the case of this bill, I do think, particularly when it comes to the banking sector and a few other businesses, those cases have been made, particularly by advocacy groups who have campaigned for many, many years to have this kind of regime in place. I want to acknowledge the many campaigners out there who have campaigned for things like an open banking regime. This is one of those important first steps. I acknowledge former Ministers from the previous Government who started this piece of work, and commend the current Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for carrying it forward. This is one of those rare examples where we do have cross-party consensus on an issue.

The other issues that I think are important to acknowledge as well will be on the implementation side, because as we have this economy-wide consumer data right regime to give consumers in some sectors more control over how their data is accessed and used, and to promote innovation and facilitate secure, standardised, and efficient data services, how consumers are able to make the most of this bill will actually rely on information that is provided and delivered to communities on the ground so that they can make the most of what the regime is putting in place.

So the Government may come into some equity issues, and who’s taking up the benefits of what this bill is actually proposing? So I’m thinking, for example, English as a second language communities—they already struggle, actually, accessing many services, for example, in places like banking, so some banks do decide to go the extra mile to ensure that their services are accessible to migrant communities and English as a second language communities. But, when it comes to them, for example, being able to access the data and the information to actually be able to get a good deal out of a provider, I think them understanding how this new regime will affect them will be absolutely critical. What I think we don’t want in the implementation of this bill is for there to be new inequities arising as a result of inadequate resourcing to bridge the divide on who already has been able to access services like banking, which has been used a lot, in relationship to the bill.

Disabled people will be another group that I think stand to benefit from the Government investing a bit more resource into how this bill is implemented. We know already that disabled people face additional barriers to, for example, accessing banking services and accessing utilities, and those businesses don’t often take the additional steps to make the information accessible.

So when it comes to how disabled people are able to access this data, I do think that the Government may think of how they choose to, again, roll out the benefits of this bill and the information in relationship to this bill. This is also a challenge for particularly the big players in some industries to do what is right. Because, ultimately, what we have here—and once again I’m going to reference banking—is the big players in the banking industry continue to make humongous profits, even when the everyday person is struggling to make ends meet. What that tells us is that these companies have their resources to actually do what is right in ensuring that information is adequately available on how people can make use of the regime in this bill to get a good deal. I think, to me, that will rely on the Government itself actually issuing a challenge to big businesses to make sure that they cooperate and do not become barriers in the uptake of how the information in this bill can be facilitated.

The other area that I think is worth noting—and the previous speaker, Arena Williams, touched on a huge amount of substance and technical details in this bill—is on deterrence factors that have been put in this space to prevent this data not being adequately used. We have some relatively static figures, and I do thank the Minister for being really upfront, actually, in the committee of the whole House stage in giving fulsome answers to our questions. That does not always happen in other bills, so I appreciate the Minister being new to his role and yet being so willing to constructively engage in the committee of the whole House stage.

I think, though, the infringement fees that are being laid out in this bill pose the question that when you have fees that are static, what this means is that for the really, really wealthy individuals, they become less and less of a deterrence factor. So I think, to me, that’s something that we’d like to see reviewed and ensure that the deterrence factors put in this bill actually deter the particularly big players from not taking part of the stuff that is intended to benefit our communities.

I also wanted to comment on the fact that we are seeing this bill advance under urgency. It is something that has been used a lot, actually, throughout this term, to advance different pieces of legislation. I think our communities, particularly when we see bills like this one that has been relatively constructive, do deserve the guarantee that we’re following due process. I just cannot see an argument for why a bill such as this one needed to be progressed under urgency. The case has not been transparently made by the Government, and I think, to me, that’s something that we deserve clarity on as to why this specific bill was chosen to be progressed under urgency this week. That’s incredibly important.

Finally, I hope that the Government also takes actions to measure and work with the industry to quantify the cost of living benefits of this bill, because I think, once again, if the argument is that innovation and competition drives material benefits for our communities, I think the Government needs to be able to take steps to quantify those, to make the case for advancing bills such as this one. I think the late work on the quantification of the cost of living benefits of a bill like this was actually done by community advocates who actually put forward case studies and stories around the barriers that people face when it comes to having the information and the data that they need to make informed decisions as to which provider they go to, whether it’s banking, electricity, even things like the gym that they choose to participate in, and whatever else it may be.

I think that will also help to quantify, for example, whether it is in the big players’ space—like big banks, where we’re seeing the greatest benefit—and whether the small players are actually also then delivering better outcomes by the nature of whether consumers are able to access information more easily and therefore to compete for better prices, for example. That’s going to be really, really important, particularly for those people that are living week to week, month by month, many of whom, for example, when it comes to the decision that they make in terms of going with a specific provider, have a genuine opportunity cost about whether they’re able to, for example—if they choose to go to a fitness centre that may actually infringe on them being able to meet their needs at the grocery store. So, you know, this is why it’s going to be really important to have that information put in place.

The Green Party does support the intent of this bill. We commend the select committee that did the work on the bill to honour the contributions by submitters, and we hope that the Government focuses more on delivering material improvements for our communities rather than caving into imported American culture wars that only seek to divide our communities.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of ACT to support the Customer and Product Data Bill. This is a bill which I have seen so far, from those who have spoken before, is being supported by all parties that have spoken, so I won’t take too much of the House’s time. What I would say is that this is the bill that is to set up an economy-wide framework to allow easier access of customer and product data.

Ultimately, it’s all about data. We know that consumers are always creating data, and that data is held by the entities they deal with. Consumers sometimes really struggle to get that data transferred to other entities. So this bill will enable easier and convenient transfer of data and that will be controlled by consumers. This is ultimately about empowering the consumer. What will that lead to? That will lead to innovation, competition, and we expect that with the passing of this bill, there will be new entrants in the market. I heard a lot of excitement about open banking, so yes, that is the area that is going to be designated first, and then electricity, and telecommunications, as we have heard from the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. So all these sectors will be up for competition. We expect new entrants will be coming because of easier availability of data. With data, these different companies can see what our consumers need, and they can provide product that will suit consumers.

Another thing that this bill provides for is that the product data that is made available should be easily read and processed by a computer. So that will make it easier for consumers to switch suppliers. So sometimes if consumers can’t understand what that product data is, then they won’t be able to make that decision. But this bill will provide for ensuring that product data is easily read and processed by a computer so that consumers can make a calculated choice of where they want to be if they want to switch from one supplier to the other supplier. When the suppliers know that consumers can switch from one supplier to the other supplier, they will innovate, they will do their best to provide the best possible service of the products to their consumers.

Now, when it comes to data transfer, one thing that comes to mind is about how secure is that data transfer. So this bill also provides for a standardised and secure way of transfer of data. There are a lot of incentives for customers to use this bill once it’s implemented to allow for sharing of data. We have learnt from Australia. In Australia—as we have heard before as well from the Minister when the Minister was in the chair during the committee of the whole House—the uptake of this consumer data regime hasn’t been that great. We have learnt from Australia, and we have tried to make changes in the committee stage to ensure that those kinds of hurdles are removed from this legislation so that the uptake is better.

Finally, I want to say that there are a few things that I know that are in the bill. If we had started working on this bill from the start, we might have done those things differently, because I know that this bill originated under the previous Labour Government. But overall, to support innovation, to support competition, and to ensure that consumers are able to get better deals, the ACT Party supports this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I stand on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Customer and Product Data Bill. I too was also on the select committee for this bill and it was a very interesting process seeing it go through. Look, it’s a much-needed piece of legislation. Times have changed. When I was a young accountant many decades ago and I bought by very first computer, it was a Macintosh Classic. It was about the size of one of our handbags and I used to literally take it from client to client—pick it up. So I suppose that is what data transfer was like back in those days—“the olden days”, as my nieces and nephews used to say.

Things have changed and it is now important that we are able to provide a service for not only the customer but also for businesses—small and big businesses. This will be an advantage to all. It will allow people to have a bit of control as well. It’s an area where a lot of people may want to put their head in the sand and not have to look at spreadsheets and numbers, but this will make it easier for them to have a little bit more control of their finances and their lives. New Zealand First commends it to the House.

I stand in support of the Customer and Product Data Bill. We support the intent of this bill to combat and to protect ordinary people from anti-competitive behaviour. We want to make sure that ordinary people have choices so that they aren’t taken advantage of and feel secure that their data is serving them and not anyone else.

We know that this won’t make a difference to the vast and real issues of capitalism—you know, capitalism, colonisation; best friends—but I know that the intent of this bill is that we are going to be serving the people of Aotearoa, and I think it’s really important that when we go through these select committee processes, we are hearing a wide range of views from our communities that this bill will affect, and particularly our disabled community. We need to hear their voices in this because we know that things like banking and access are a real issue to them—actually getting the same services that people who don’t have the same barriers have access to.

When I was a banker, at the beginning of the week—in fact, most days—we would sit and get the comparative rates from all the banks around New Zealand. We knew, actually, which banks were probably going to be serving our customers better, but we couldn’t give that information to our customers unless they asked specifically, and this bill will go a long way in making sure that customers have access to that really important information. It means that third parties are able to go, “Hey, what you are asking for, tailoring those banking needs—the bank you’re with isn’t actually serving your needs as well as this bank over here could.” And that just makes sense, because New Zealand is a modern society and we need our laws to reflect that.

In saying that, I think that making sure that people feel like their data is secure and only being used for purposes that will actually benefit them is so important for our modern society and ensuring that we are moving towards the intent of this bill, which is to move away from that anti-competitive behaviour and protect ordinary people. So we’re very happy to support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a delight to be able to speak on this bill, having been part of the progress through all stages, including the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. We did have excellent discussions, and it was wonderful to be able to make some sensible and, hopefully, very impactful changes to the legislation as it’s come through. We are very excited about the potential improvements that this should make in several sectors, including banking, towards improving competition. I think this will actually be a great first step amongst many that our Government will be making. It all comes down to improving options for customers and reducing barriers. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There are so many short calls on this Customer and Product Data Bill that we’re moving through very quickly, and I think the pity about that would be that we missed the opportunity at this third reading to actually dig deeply into what it is that we agree on but also what points of difference there may still be with the Customer and Product Data Bill at this third reading, even if there is broad support across the House.

I was really lucky to sit on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee and to hear and witness the development process as this bill came to that committee and as we heard from submitters, and also to get the various perspectives and inputs. They are all slightly different and slightly unique, even though, in principle, we all agree with the idea of opening up things like banking and opening up things like the electricity market, because what it comes down to is empowering consumers. We do that by increasing competition and, by doing that, allowing consumers more freedom to create fairer outcomes for those consumers and for them to get some better value.

A number of speakers have acknowledged the long lineage of this bill, first through David Parker, then Duncan Webb, then as a member’s bill led by—

💬 Hon Rachel Brooking: It was Clark.

Sorry, David Clark—David Clark, before that, then Duncan Webb, then as a member’s bill from Arena Williams, then by Andrew Bayly, and then Scott Simpson. Someone has suggested that potentially a bill like this needs a bill of its own just to manage its lineage because it has moved from so many different supporters and suppliers over its lifetime as it has moved through the House. But that’s why it’s so good for us to be here tonight and to be able to step through it with a little care, and to take the time to do that.

One of the things that I wanted to speak to was the name change that it had along the way. Different parents have different priorities—that’s true in all areas. Under Labour, this was called the Consumer Data Rights Bill. Under the National Government, who have seen this come to its third reading, it’s morphed into the Customer and Product Data Bill. I think that whilst that may seem subtle, it’s worth noting the differences there, because the Consumer Data Rights Bill really focused on prioritising consumers and focusing on the needs of consumers to be able to be more nimble, to be able to deftly move between suppliers much more easily so that they can get a better value and a better deal.

When we’ve looked into studies and seen the differences that consumers can achieve, right now it’s quite difficult for people to think about shifting power suppliers, for example. But if you move power suppliers or if you look at moving power suppliers, the average saving for a New Zealander is more than $500 per year. That’s a significant amount of money, and that’s what a good bill like this can achieve for New Zealanders—that ability to move much more easily between suppliers, and, in that example, suppliers of power.

So in reviewing this bill and looking at what this bill does, I think it’s important that we focus on the consumer benefit aspect of the bill. One of the objectives was to realise the value of certain data for the benefits of individuals, organisations, and society. That felt quite broad, but it did ultimately capture what we needed to capture. Although, really, in essence—as I alluded to earlier when I spoke about the difference between the Consumer Data Rights Bill versus the Customer and Product Data Bill—a truly consumer-centric approach is essential to ensuring that the bill achieves its goals, which is empowering consumers through increasing competition and creating fairer outcomes.

Now, one of the things that we did speak about a fair bit this afternoon—but is worth revisiting—is that regulation of derived data. I think that data 10 years ago was very different in value and in volume than it is today, and if we look at what data is going to be and the power of data in 10 years, it’s almost impossible to imagine just how significant that shift is going to be over the next 10 years, with the kinds of technology and the kinds of opportunities that are open to us in the data space. So there is an enormous power in data and that’s why getting these key components and the framework in this bill is so important to ensure that whilst we are allowing people to share more of their data and for that data to empower consumers, we do need to put the protections in place to prevent any abuses of people’s data and to ensure that there are adequate facilities for people, whilst they may have granted permission for their data to have been received and stored and potentially shared, that it is equally as easy and fast and simple for people to then be able to withdraw the provision of their data and withdraw the supply of their data so that that data continues to belong to them.

There was quite a bit of discussion as we went through the committee of the whole House this afternoon with exactly what that looked like and exactly what the considerations of privacy looked like in the New Zealand context, given the variance with the older sibling—Australia—that we often compare ourselves to when we roll out this kind of bill. So I think it was really good that we acknowledged that through that process, and I thank the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for the time and detail that he allowed through that process. It was really valuable that we were able to see the different context in the older sibling Australia, who don’t have the Privacy Act provisions that we do here, and, therefore, the variances for that data consideration in the New Zealand context.

Now, the other piece—which I don’t have time to go into fully here, but I will still address it at this point in the third reading—is really the penalty and dispute resolution portion of the bill, and looking at whether that got the balance right between having a significant-enough penalty to dissuade and disincentivise the abuse of power, which there is the scope and potential for, and not creating an environment of keeping people out. One of the major considerations that was particularly raised a lot from this side of the House was ensuring that a bill that aims to serve consumers does provide the incentive and the opportunity for smaller operators, potentially and particularly in the instance of open banking—smaller fintechs—to be able to step into this space and know that even though they don’t carry the weight and resource of the larger banks by way of personnel, they will still be able to work within the framework of the Customer and Product Data Bill to provide an additional service, another option, and a level of service that can be trusted and can provide good value for consumers, because that’s the thing that’s quite easy to lose sight of.

When we get into the detail and what we call sometimes the weeds in this legislation, and we start to look at clauses and numbers, and letters and letters after letters, it’s very easy to lose sight of the fact that, actually, what we are trying to do here is empower consumers. So I think it’s really important that we don’t lose sight of that in amongst all of the backwards and forwards agreement, in general, on this bill. What we saw today was broad and general agreement with the direction of travel towards empowering open banking and towards creating an electricity market that allows consumers to move around and get a better deal for them and their families in order to make sure that they are paying—yes—a fair amount, but not more than they need to, because we know that the impacts of those fixed costs have a real negative impact on families and people who are trying to make ends meet in these times.

So a bill like this really provides greater flexibility for consumers. Thank you to all of those people who have shepherded it through from the very beginning under Labour, and thank you to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee colleagues. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

This is a good bill, and has the potential to drive competitiveness, productivity, and innovation in the target sectors that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs will designate. Target sectors like banking—and I’ve been on the banking inquiry, and I think there’s really good feedback about this bill in terms of driving competition. I’d like to thank the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, the previous Government, plus our previous Minister Andrew Bayly and current Minister. It is all part of our plan to grow our economy and lift productivity. And with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. One of the difficulties in a place like this where you can be swapped from one committee to another, and I want to acknowledge the very hard-working and well-led Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, which I was a member of up until recent times—I now find myself on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee that considered this bill and am excited about the opportunity given the collegiality I’ve seen in the debate on this particular bill moving forward.

We can talk about the semantics around the difference between customer and consumer, but I want to use the words of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, which I think are quite relevant and something that I know we all believe in, which are: this is my data, it belongs to me, it is part of me, it is who I am. I think, ultimately, when we look towards the way we protect that data, the way we share that data, the way that businesses like banks and others might use that data, and then the expectations we have on them protecting it just as much as we’d look towards protecting it ourselves, I think this bill does a good thing in making sure that, as already mentioned, we can look towards new markets, new horizons, new opportunities in business. But ultimately, it comes down to how we protect, how we store, how we share our data, and that’s really important.

I’ve raised, during the debate on this bill, the work of a group called Te Kāhui Raraunga. For those unfamiliar, it is a Māori data collective born out of the Iwi Chairs Forum. I raise them because they do some amazing work when we think about data sovereignty and the way that we look and care for data, the way that we enter into partnerships with external partners from our daily lives, not just at a tribal level but also at a macro and a micro level in the way that we interact with people in the use of our data. And that only works if the public and if the consumer—the customer, the person, the individual—buys into a secure system or a secure institution where they know that their mana, their data, and their information will not be compromised.

What we know is that’s difficult. We’ve seen it in the past. In fact, there have been a number of reports about how data can be misused, how data can be used in a way that doesn’t keep the individual or even the collective safe. So we want to make sure that whatever we pass today continues to build that trust and confidence that’s needed to make sure that we believe in these kinds of institutions. That’s easier said than done given the kind of mood that we see voters, New Zealanders, people all around the world—the mood towards public institutions and the confidence they have in those institutions.

The same can be said with matters such as banking and where we put our custom, if you will. So in passing this bill—this is a good bill—we take the point, though, that it opens up into new horizons, and the ability for the Minister and this House to come back to make sure that we can keep a regulatory framework that’s agile. A lot of the examples we used during the debate of this bill were, “If I walked into a shop”, and that’s what we would normally have done; that’s how many of us in this House have grown up. COVID taught us that shop doors look very different right around the world. Shop doors aren’t just ones you walk in; shop doors are portals that you visit. There’s so many different ways that you can achieve what we used to do by walking into a shop door once upon a time.

So we want to make sure that we’ve got this rock foundation—or this foundation legislation as the Minister described it—good, and I think we’ve got consensus across the House. The second part is that regulatory framework and the flex that’s required to make sure that it does continue to serve New Zealanders into the future. And we’ll continue to work, I’m sure, collegially across the House to make sure that particular thing happens, and we look forward to playing our part in that.

The only thing I’ll caution here is too often, and we all know it, in a place like Parliament, the world moves on a lot faster than we can do things in here. So that’s a warning to each and every one of us as we look towards the flexibility I know the Minister was hoping for in the regulatory framework in this bill: we must consider the way that we do things in here in order to keep agile, flexible, up with the current times, and up with the people who put us here. So we commend this bill to the House.

As the previous speaker, the Hon Peeni Henare, has so eloquently said, this is a good bill. It’s a bill that has been well canvassed. One of the many good things about our legislative process is that it is nothing but thorough, and we have considered all angles and all details of this during the debate this afternoon. So rather than delaying the debate further, it is my pleasure to commend the bill to the House.

Thank you. I wanted to start by actually thanking the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for the full answers that he gave in the committee stage, and I wanted to thank the many people who’ve been involved in building this legislation, including my colleague Arena Williams, who took it on as a member’s bill, and it’s come through now to the Government.

I think this bill is a little bit unusual in terms of what I’ve seen come through this House in that it is actually quite a creative bill. The fact that it started under a Labour Government is actually something that I think still remains integral to what we’ve ended up with in this bill in some pretty important ways. While there’s been an argument about the use of the word “customer” and the deletion of the word “consumer” between the major parties, because Labour preferred the term “consumer”, because that’s based on kind of people rather than a transactional business approach, I think the use all the way through the legislation of a recognition of power imbalance is actually a reflection of that early drafting.

So what we have here is a changing world, where something like data has become more valuable than it was and has been subject to misuse in a way that wasn’t true in a world before. I take my friend the Hon Peeni Henare’s point that data sovereignty is a pretty important principle. That links to the concept of consumer rather than simply a customer, but I think it also links to the wider importance of our duty to change up as things go on. What we’ve got now is a world where this data that belongs to us has been monetised but it’s also, in this situation, the dragging of information, so that it’s closed off from people, that has been used anti-competitively.

We’ve seen that do real damage. We can see the black and white damage that that’s done by the example given by another one of my colleagues, which was the issue over power and how much people are saving when they go to something like Powerswitch and they look at the comparative information and they make a decision to switch providers.

Now, Powerswitch are hampered by a lack of information in this area. I went on to the site myself and I looked at what I could put in and it was better than it could have been. I could see that I could generate a saving, I think, of over $1,000 a year, but it was based on guesswork. This availability of data is going to make sure that that becomes a slick process and a more reliable one, where I can actually see what the best saving scheme is before I sign up to a term of maybe a couple of years of being locked in.

So that’s the changing world we’re in where that information becomes power and the dragging out and the keeping of that information can also be a depository of power against, yes, customers, but also consumers. So it is very much an important part of this that this House—all sides of this House—are becoming aware of a changing landscape. So while I’ve heard some words in this House this very day where people have accused each other of being—I think at one point it was capitalists; another point it was communists and Piketty devotees, etc. Actually, despite all of that banter and really banal rhetoric, what actually has to happen in this House is we have to show flexibility. We have to look at those big problems we’ve got and look at them in terms of our basic values.

For the Labour Party, we do care a lot about power abuse. It’s not a matter that is going anywhere very soon. But this little bill does some good in that area. It starts to redistribute that power and put it back in the hands of the average citizen. So for us, this bill is a very important one and it really is going to have a large impact.

I think when I was in the committee stage I asked the Minister about some provisions where there were actually additions made to some of the protections that recognise that people who were perhaps saying that they wanted to give this data across might be also subject to kinds of abuse like financial abuse. To see those things go into the legislation at this late stage means that people are still thinking in those terms. This piece of legislation has opened people’s minds to all those forms of power abuse, and so I really love this bill because of what it attempts to do.

Now, it won’t necessarily get all the way. It will be a case of looking at it again. It will be a case of making sure that the regulations are actually appropriate. I love the way that the piece of legislation also involved those in the industry, also involved the submission process. I think we are on our way, when we look at something like this, as we adjust to a modern world—we’re dealing with a situation where globally we really do have to concern ourselves with the power of big business. It is so serious out there. That’s our greatest threat to our democracy; it is the concentration of power in the hands of a few people. None of this would suit them. This is not going to suit someone who wants to monopolise the power of data, and so making this call now to take a step away from that, to give it back to the individual, that’s a big deal. It’s a very important thing, because it recognises that problem.

So I don’t expect everything in this will be absolutely un-revisable. I hope that we will revise it, we will look at it, and we will make sure that we aren’t just going for the banks and the telecoms and the obvious areas but we’re looking at this bill and its application beyond that, and we keep on adding to those regulations, not because it’s red tape. Often regulations are viewed or cast in that way. It’s not red tape; it’s the flexible detail that those regulations can have to make this work for average New Zealanders, to save them money, to make sure that they’ve got the power in their hands over the information that they’re generating. Those are really important to New Zealanders right now. If you’re talking about cutting your power bill by $500, it would be nice if you could do that without taking a risk or taking less risk. That’s the kind of thing that I think this starts the process of doing, and it’s the kind of thing I’m really proud to see the whole House behind tonight.

I’d like to thank, again, my own select committee for looking at this piece of legislation. I was on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee at the time. I think there are concepts here like “derived data” that were difficult. We had to get our heads around them. I’d like to thank all the businesses that involved themselves actively in this, the Xeros that came along and told us how this would affect them and what more they could do for the New Zealand consumer if they were allowed a little bit of flexibility. I’d like to thank everyone for trying to get the balance right here between freedom for those companies to grow and protection of the individuals involved, and I commend this bill to the House.

I call the Hon—oh, sorry. I call Dr Hamish Campbell—a very honourable man.

Oh, I was hoping for a promotion, Madam Speaker! It’s a great honour to rise in this last debate spot in the third reading of the Customer and Product Data Bill. I think it’s great that every party in the House is supporting this bill. It’s a great step forward to empowering individuals and fostering innovation in our economy. It’s not just about individual empowerment; it’s about unlocking the potential for innovation, so therefore I am very happy to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and it would appear that I might be the last speaker on this bill, rather than the previous member for Ilam there.

💬 Dan Bidois: No, it’s the last last.

It’s the last laugh, perhaps—we shall see. So it is with great excitement—as the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and my colleague Arena Williams and some other colleagues have mentioned their excitement as well—that we are speaking on the Customer and Product Data Bill. Of course, talking about the member for Ilam, I should acknowledge that I’m the member for Dunedin, and the previous member for Dunedin was the Hon Dr David Clark. He did a lot of work on the earlier versions of this bill, and I know that it is something that he was very excited about, as well, and about consumer rights. That is the issue that we’ve heard about on this bill from my colleagues, who have been speaking about how it is not as focused as it could be on consumer rights.

However, I also want to acknowledge, then, the work of the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, and we’ve also heard about how Arena Williams then took it up in this Parliament as a member’s bill. It’s wonderful that the Hon Andrew Bayly then picked it up, with some differences that we’ve heard about, and then we’ve seen the Hon Scott Simpson bringing it to the House.

I do want to pause for a minute to note that we heard from Greg Fleming, and in his speech earlier, he mentioned that it’s good to have such robust lawmaking processes in New Zealand, where there’s a good committee process. I was in the House briefly and was watching some of the committee stage on this bill and I do want to acknowledge the Hon Scott Simpson for answering a good number of questions whilst he was in the chair in the committee of the whole House—not in the Chair. He wasn’t in the Chair; someone else was in the Chair—but it was whilst he was sitting in the House as the Minister in charge of the bill. It is very good to see Ministers answering those questions, but, unfortunately, that is not what we always see in the committee process. So I will acknowledge him there, though.

Now, this bill is interesting because, of course, it relies a lot on secondary legislation. We’ve heard—and we see in the report back from the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee—that the likely first two issues to go into force will be banking and electricity. How that works is interesting from the legislative perspective of how this bill is drafted, and we heard Helen White talk a little bit about that before as well. So we have the purpose section, and whilst it doesn’t talk about consumers, it does talk about customers and society.

But then the interesting part, and it seems like a useful purpose clause, but I won’t read it out or anything—it is clause 3. But the interesting structural part of the legislation is found at clause 4, which is the overview, and the people watching won’t be able to see if I hold up the bill exactly how that works. But I’m going to try a little bit anyway, because why it is interesting is that it tries to set out for people who are reading the legislation how it works, almost like a flow chart. So it’s got the words “If” a person has these different circumstances, “Then” something happens, and “However”, where there are certain provisions that apply.

I think that’s a really interesting legislative tool, and I commend the Parliamentary Counsel Office for doing the work on that, because it is quite a dense piece of legislation. I’m somebody who enjoys reading legislation, but when you come to this it does have a lot of terms. We heard Helen White talk before about derived data, and about how it took the select committee some time to get to terms with thinking about data in that way. So this overview is helpful when you come to the bill—which will soon be an Act—and I’m just acknowledging that the regulations, or the secondary legislation, is so important as to how this whole framework works. So, again, like our earlier Labour Party speakers, we really ask the Minister, when making those regulations and looking at the various settings, that the consumer be at the forefront of his mind when doing that work.

With that, I say well done to the select committee, to the Ministers, and to everyone who has been involved in progressing this bill. There’s still some more work that we can do for consumers, but this is very good and I commend it to the House, as the last speaker.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.