Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee to consider the bill.

The right to repair bill is exactly that: the right for us to repair our goods. In Aotearoa, we’re all really proud of being able to fix our stuff. We actually highlight that as a primary part of the culture of us. We fix stuff. We like to get under the hood. We like to work out what has gone wrong. The right to repair bill will support us to be able to fix our stuff when things go wrong, when they break.

I’m really, really proud of being able to bring this member’s bill to the House tonight. I’m also really grateful for the incredible, long work that many organisations, community groups, and businesses have put into calling for exactly this sort of bill. Organisations like repair cafes across the country—my goodness, if anyone ever gets a chance, I urge our MPs to attend one of those, and I know many of the MPs have—they are the epitome of who we are. They are people coming together with their broken things—I saw coffee machines, lawnmowers, toasters, watches, clothing, and a whole range of goods—with people in the community who have a flair for being a tutu. We all know that. We all love that about us. We’ve probably got one in our own whānau, most of us: the person who we called up when the video bunged up, or when anything bunged up.

There are the repair cafes, organisations like the Repair Network Aotearoa, the Right to Repair Coalition, Consumer New Zealand, Choice of Repairer and their particular focus on mechanics and campaigning for better protections for their mahi, and many businesses—many businesses—who already have repair in their business model, like BLUNT Umbrellas, for example. There’s also, I believe, Sleepyhead New Zealand manufacturing and so many community groups and advocates who have been working collectively for a long time to bring legislation like this before Government, before the House. Also, Mr—Madam Speaker, thank you. I turned around and you had changed.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We surprise you like that sometimes.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: Ha, ha! It’s good to see you there, Madam Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. It’s good to have you back, too.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: Thank you. Because people are aware that I have been away, I need to thank my colleague, firstly, Ricardo Menéndez March for drafting this bill and allowing me to steward it into the biscuit tin and out and being the kaitiaki of this bill while I have been away.

We cannot do our work without our incredible staff—we know this—and I am so proud to pay respect to our team who have been doing the research on the bill, who have been allowing us to stay connected to the organisations who are really backing this legislation, connecting us to the community leaderships and the repair cafes across the country; so many people to thank, and that is because this bill is quite a common-sense one—it’s a very common-sense one. It is because this bill is at the heart of our communities wanting to fix our stuff and removing the barriers.

At the moment, the issue that we have got here is there’s a loophole. Manufacturers normally have to provide information, spare parts, and tools so that when stuff goes wrong, we’ve got a pathway to repairing it. There is a loophole where they can get around that requirement by simply saying, “I’m sorry, you must bring this to a manufacturer-approved or a licence-approved repairer.” or “You must not replace any parts with any other parts.” or “You must not seek a third party to help you to fix this.” All they have to do is be upfront about that at the start, at the point of sale, and then they are not obligated to help us to fix our stuff. This right to repair bill removes that loophole and will require manufacturers to provide tools, information—access to diagnostic information, for example—spare parts so that we even have a chance of fixing it in the first place.

Now, there are so many benefits from this: yes, of course, as I’ve highlighted, the convenience, the sovereignty of us actually owning our stuff for real, which means being able to have control over it when it breaks down, but what we also know—and I’m going to pick up on farmers and rural communities—[Applause] Yeah, we should all be clapping for this. It’s really important for farmers and people in rural communities to be able to address their issues promptly when equipment breaks down, and often that equipment is large, massively priced, expensive investment machinery. What we have got is a barrier, often, to even diagnosing the problem, especially with some of the more modern equipment where there is what’s called proprietary software. It’s closed software—“I’m sorry, we can’t even access the computer that is operating your thing.” You can’t even have a look at what’s going wrong.

Then, beyond that, we actually have skilled specialist people in our communities, often on the same farm. We’ve got the story of a farmer whose two sons have actually trained as technical automotive and mechanical repairers, but because they cannot access the information, they cannot fix the machinery themselves. Farmers are held hostage by having to then call on manufacturer-approved technicians and wait. Often, the machinery breakdown is at crucial times like harvesting, and then waiting for a technical expert, an approved expert, that can actually price-gouge and exploit farmers and charge a price that is well above what is reasonable, whereas a local technical expert can get there faster and for a reasonable price. These are some of the examples of the stories of why this bill would make it better for all of us.

Not only that: even, let’s say, vacuum cleaners, dryers, washing machines, coffee machines—we have got the instance of, when those things break down and are taken back to the manufacturer, because that’s the only option, less than 24 hours later, that thing is in landfill and has had a full replacement—straight to landfill. It might be a broken lid; it might be something as trivial as a little part—motor’s fine—straight to landfill. There are environmental benefits, also, to this bill, alongside the convenience and cost of living benefits to this bill. We’ve got climate change; we’ve got reducing the cost of living.

I want to acknowledge the thousands of businesses who have at their heart a vision for enduring sustainable practice, who are also lending their voice to this bill. We often overlook that, actually, many businesses are streets ahead of successive Governments when it comes to wanting leadership, because they understand and are not pulling the wool over their own eyes—because a smart business does not—that they have to address in their practice model the crises of climate change, inequality, and social cohesion. These businesses have reached out to us in support of this as well.

I see no reason why this House wouldn’t unite when you have got rural communities, farmers, businesses, community—just consumers, just people at the heart of our communities. I don’t see any divide across all of the political parties in here for being able to step up and support this bill right now—not later, not down the track; right now, where we can send it to select committee, where we can hear from the experts, where we can hear from businesses and farmers in rural communities and just people who buy things to come in with experts.

Also, that’s where the link to international overseas legislation will be made, because we are going to be left behind—behind the UK, the US, Canada, Australia. France has a repairability index, where they are now forcing competition, for businesses to say, “Hey, my stuff can be fixed better than yours.” What a fantastic way to cause competition.

I am so proud of being able to bring this bill to the House with its multiple benefits to people and planet and to just our everyday convenience, with its broad support from across diverse communities, with the opportunity right now to get it to select committee. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

It’s a pleasure to rise and to kick off the opposition’s debate to the right to repair bill. I’d like to start out by acknowledging the member Marama Davidson—good to see you back in the House—and for her willingness to bring this bill to the House. I’d also just like to acknowledge the people in the audience from Federated Farmers—thank you for what you do for the communities across New Zealand. We back you, so thank you very much for what you do.

It’s a pleasure to rise and—look, I want to just start by saying that National won’t be supporting this bill, but there’s a lot we agree on, and I want to run you through our rationale. I’m a strong Bluegreen member, and being a Bluegreen means being a pragmatic environmentalist. There’s a lot to like about this bill—there’s a lot to like about this bill. We support the intent of this bill, because, really, what this is about is ensuring that, as part of a free and competitive market, it’s relying on perfect information.

There are some market failures around the lack of perfect information that is available. We’ve all got our own stories of things that we’ve bought and that we’ve taken in to get repaired and we haven’t been able to get repaired. I’ve had kitchen equipment—but most recently I had an electric vehicle. I won’t tell you the manufacturer, but there was an issue with the lithium battery. I took it in to the manufacturer, who said that there’s a couple of cells in the battery that need replacement. They said that they don’t replace it directly—I’d have to actually purchase a new one, but the new one cost twice as much as the vehicle.

There is a real challenge here around right to repair. The interesting thing is that there are innovations happening in this space to make a more competitive market as a result. We do support the intent of this bill, but the devil is in the detail. Let me run you through the details.

Firstly, it doesn’t support all goods in New Zealand. There are expensive goods, but not suitable for low-cost items. The research backs this up. If you go and look at the research from Harvard Business Review that looks at the effects from right to repairs for low-cost items, all it does is manufacturers can reduce the price even more to flood the market. That actually has perverse incentives for both the environment but also for consumers because consumers just end up buying stuff because it’s cheaper rather than actually the right to repair. It doesn’t suit low-price goods.

Even with high-priced goods, like the automotive situation that I described, if you have a right to repair model for the high-priced items, what ends up happening is that manufacturers just price that into the value of the project. What you actually see—and the research from Harvard Business Review backs this up: in their models, they calculate that, actually, prices increase for particular high-priced items because of the right to repair. It becomes a lose-lose-lose situation for consumers, producers, and the environment.

Thirdly, there are issues with enforcement and compliance. There are hundreds of thousands of different goods and products out there waiting to be purchased in New Zealand. There is no way the Commerce Commission or anybody—any other regulatory body—can enforce those tens and hundreds of thousands of products available. The devil is in the detail. We support the intent but we have serious concerns about the details.

On behalf of the National Party and on behalf of the Minister Andrew Bayly, who is passionate about this topic, who does see the merits of this, we will be looking at more targeted approaches to rights of repair—more specific examples, like the one they’ve got in Australia, the right to repair that the Australian law has, that they just implemented in 2021 around sharing motor vehicle and service repair information. That is a great example of choosing, out of these tens of thousands of products, a product category that actually will make a big difference to consumers, a big difference to the environmental outcomes of this country, but will also have a few unintended consequences as a result.

I mentioned the Australian law because it is a good example, because actually the Australian Parliament changed the Commerce Act and created a marketplace. They created a marketplace so that automotive manufacturers can sell to the secondary market their information so that repairers can access that information at a fair price, and that is going to be good for consumers. That is something we will take very seriously: looking at a specific product category and designing regulation and a marketplace that is fit for purpose. That is what you will see. One member from this side may, in fact, put a member’s bill up in this area, or it will come through in Government policy, but that is our commitment to advancing this cause as we have today.

In addition to that, on behalf of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, there are scopes for reviewing the Fair Trading Act to look at, as has been pointed out, what are some broad scopes, some broad things that we can do to help strengthen the rights of consumers and the rights of businesses and the obligations for manufacturers so that the intent of this bill can be delivered in a pragmatic way. That is something we will be looking at as a review of the Fair Trading Act. It is subject to Cabinet approval, which I’m not part of so I can’t tell this House any further than that.

With two minutes remaining, I just want to say, on behalf of this side, we approve of the intent of this legislation. We are pragmatic environmentalists on this side of the House, but we have very serious concerns around the unintended consequences of it. It is likely to go through to select committee, judging by my crude mathematics. I would encourage any of those four people that are sitting at home tonight who may have an interest in this bill to submit, and we will endeavour to incorporate your feedback into our Government programmes and initiatives, whether it be the Fair Trading Act, whether it be a possible member’s bill, or whether it be Government policy.

I look forward to following this bill through this great select committee called the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee—some hard-working members here and, I see, across the House as well. I look forward to following the development of this bill in the select committee process. Without further ado, I do not commend this bill to the House.

Labour supports this bill because Labour supports the little guy to fix his own car, to fix his own tractor. The National Party has told us in the same week that they’ve gone and announced a big policy for vintage car owners, that those same vintage car owners can’t be trusted to repair their own cars, and that they should be paying the manufacturers the privilege of being able to order the special parts, and order the special information, and order the specific schemes.

They’re telling farmers that if you own a tractor, you might be able to fix it yourself—you might be able to get under the hood and do a little bit of tinkering—but if it’s got a wee light on the dash that says “Error. Please fix.”, you won’t be able to turn it off without a $90 trip down to the repairer to get the right code. That is pathetic. New Zealand farmers should be able to fix their own gear. New Zealand small auto workshops and the mechanics in our towns should be able to fix your car for cheap and not have to go to the manufacturer to get an expensive, worthless code.

This is a good bill because it opens the door to fixing all of these problems. This is a good bill because it recognises the Kiwi ingenuity involved in actually getting out and fixing our things—

Dana Kirkpatrick: I thought this was about toasters and hairdryers, not tractors.

ARENA WILLIAMS: —and saving waste. There are thousands and thousands of people fixing up their toasters, Dana Kirkpatrick. They’re fixing up their vacuum cleaners already, but they’re struggling against the very manufacturers who want to stop them from doing that, because a wasteful, throwaway economy is more profitable, and the small businesses who are in the business of fixing those things can’t get ahead.

There are 8,000 small businesses in the business of aftermarket auto repairs around this country. They are a struggling industry where young people aren’t getting into auto workshops because they cannot buy in for the capital requirements. It is a skill that is rapidly declining as skilled auto engineers and auto workshop mechanics cannot get qualified to do that work. That’s a hard job. You know what makes it much harder? When big corporate giants require those small mechanics to pay them 160 bucks for the privilege of fixing up the car they already knew how to fix up. This law fixes that.

I have an amendment called the Consumer Guarantees (Motor Vehicle Repairs Information) Amendment Bill, which you can read because it is in the ballot right now in the name of Ginny Andersen after she went out to a local Hutt mechanic and heard about this problem firsthand. I went and talked to Kam and Swarti from the Manukau Midas, and they told me that they’re shelling out between 60 and 160 bucks for these codes—no value to the consumer, no value to their business, no value to the apprentices they take on. They’re a small local business and they deserve a fair go. This National Government is telling them that they should be paying the giants for the privilege—

Dan Bidois: You had six years.

ARENA WILLIAMS: —of their intellectual property that is worth absolutely nothing to those businesses—shame. Get this guy on Michael Laws. I know that talkback will have something to say about this National Government that says no to farmers fixing their tractors and no to the small auto workshops that want to fix up your car for cheap.

Can I tell you that I really have appreciated working with the small auto aftermarket repairers in this bill. It is a useful amendment that Labour has got ready to go because we back them. We back those 8,000 businesses that are rapidly facing declining market as big manufacturers get into aftermarket repairs and try and eat their market shares. That is a problem. It is anti-competitive, and it is large overseas corporates eating up small businesses that are owned by mums and dads in our community.

The auto shop in Manukau has been operating for 28 years. They can’t find local young mechanics to take on their work because they are paid more at the large global auto manufacturers. At the same time their working conditions are eroded. They are not affording the same kind of training and professional development to these young guys. That is a shame, because their mums and dads in this business can’t continue to train up the people that they need because their margins are getting eaten up by those big players.

If this Government was serious, it would say yes to the right to repair bill. It would send it to the select committee so Labour can make the amendments it needs for cars, and New Zealand First can make the amendments it needs for tractors. We back the little guy. National does not.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on behalf of ACT on the Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge the Hon Marama Davidson for having this bill drawn and for speaking tonight and putting forward her case.

I will come to some of the issues, as we see them, with the bill, but I want to start, really, at a higher level and talk about why we don’t think this bill in its current form is the right thing to do. Really, I’ve got three key points that I want to put forward. The first is we need to think about the actual economic impact on manufacturers. If we impose this right to repair—it’s not an offer to repair, it’s not a may be repaired; it’s a right, so a consumer can demand something is repaired—that is actually going to place additional costs on manufacturers, and we have to accept that. Those costs are likely to be—well, they are going to be—passed on to the consumer. I think we just need to think about that.

Also, if you’re a small or medium business—pretend you are, and I’ll get on to why there are many New Zealand manufacturers in a moment. If you are a small New Zealand manufacturer—and you’re likely to be small—that is going to be a substantial cost on your operation, having to put in place this right to repair obligation. Also, we don’t want to be adding these extra costs on the consumer goods, or any goods in fact, because that’s actually just going to put further pressure on household budgets, and we know what’s happened to household budgets over the last few years with inflation costs. That’s something we do want to avoid.

Many, many of the goods that we actually consume in New Zealand are imported. If you think of electronics, TVs, etc., they are actually imported—we don’t make those here; we’re a very small market. By having this right to repair legislation—again, it’s like a kind of tariff, because those importers would be required to put in place something special for New Zealand. We really need to think about that. There’s a lot of talk, obviously, about tariffs in the world at the moment, with some things that have come out of the US, so we actually need to think about these things.

Also, large, consumer electronics companies like Apple and Samsung have very complex supply chains, so putting something in place for one very small jurisdiction, which, unfortunately, New Zealand sometimes has to accept when we are in-buying goods—we do need to think about what that might do and whether that might deter them from bringing their goods here.

A point that was well made, actually, by Eric Crampton, who’s an economist, is that we’re really a regulatory taker. Because we import so many of these small goods, we’re actually required, really, to take them and not be too difficult about the rules and regulations we impose on them, because all that’s going to do is either deter them from selling their goods to New Zealand or put really high costs on the goods that they do sell here. Also, there are businesses that do want to repair goods, and that’s actually their business model. Again, we want to make sure that they are—

Laura McClure: Niche.

TODD STEPHENSON: —yeah, niche—and able to do that. The second thing is that this bill could actually reduce innovation. Again, we just want to talk through that with a couple of points. Actually requiring companies to make repairs and parts available might disincentivise them from investing in new technologies and going to the next innovation. We want to make sure that innovation is encouraged—that that is delivering new products and thriving economic growth.

Also, some technologies are actually planned to be obsolete; that’s the life cycle. They’re actually not designed to be repaired; they actually move on and go to the next iteration.

There are also some implementation challenges, which were also mentioned. I’ve got to agree with my colleague Dan Bidois that this bill is too broad, and there are probably some targeted product categories or interventions that we should look at, but this bill doesn’t do that. There’s also a very scary clause, which actually, basically, is around discovering net percentage profits and imposing, basically, a mark-up—actually deciding what the mark-up that a manufacturer can decide to make for a repair. On that basis, ACT will not be supporting this bill.

First of all, I want to congratulate the Hon Marama Davidson both for this bill, and also it’s good to see you back in the House. All of our health is really, really important. It’s great to see you back here.

Look, this bill is about amending the Consumer Guarantees Act. At the moment, when something goes wrong, consumers have the right to replace, to get a refund, or to repair, but there is an opt out. What the current legislation says is that, under section 42, if the manufacturer or the retailer says, “Actually, we’re not going to repair.”, they can opt out of that, and so there is no right to repair. The bill seeks to remove that option to opt out of repair by repealing that section 42, which means that manufacturers or retailers would then be responsible for repair if that is reasonable. The bill requires manufacturers and retailers to provide repair parts, tools, and information to consumers within a reasonable time of purchase. Obviously, that’s going to depend on what the nature of the product is. Some products are going to be long life; some products are going to be short life. That’s going to vary.

It’s interesting to get advice about what the international experience is. This is a relatively new proposition, so we’re going to have to see how it goes internationally. My understanding is that our friends from Federated Farmers have actually just left at the moment—but my understanding is that it was started in the USA when farmers were getting pretty grumpy; come in, John Deere, with their ability to be able to service and repair their tractors, and then it took a lot longer to get their tractors back into operation, which obviously is a significant impost on business. It’s also now growing in the EU, and also in Australia, so the question is: is it also something which we should be looking for in New Zealand?

Look, I’ve been engaged by proponents on the right to repair legislation last year. I acknowledge Paul Smith from Fixed First, who’s in the gallery at the moment. Good to see you here, Paul.

The principle is a good principle. We heard from my colleague Dan Bidois that the devil is in the detail, and that’s right. The question is: do you try and fix the detail now or do you wait for soon, whenever soon might be, and then have a go at fixing that, whenever that might be—you know, next term or the term after, or whenever it might be?

The general view that I’ve got—and that is from proponents of the legislation; people who support the legislation—is that it does need to be narrowed, that it can’t be every product. If you say that the product that’s worth $20 is going to cost $100 to fix, that makes no sense whatsoever. Generally, it seems, from the experience that’s been overseas, it is the bigger, more complicated products that are relevant to this bill: your tractors, your cars, your whiteware, your computer products—and, I’m told, Winston’s mower; and that was important in our caucus! Narrowing it up is really, really important.

The other thing is that this is also about the Consumer Guarantees Act, and at the moment the Consumer Guarantees Act doesn’t provide an answer to our farmers, because a “consumer” is defined in the Consumer Guarantees Act as “a person who—(a) acquires from a supplier goods or services of a kind ordinarily acquired for personal, domestic, or household use or consumption”. That is not a tractor.

In some places, you’ve got to narrow the legislation as proposed; in other places, we might need to broaden it. The proposition here is: why not let the people who know about these things have a say, tell us what they think the legislation ought to look like, so that the devil that is in the detail can be fixed? That is the position that New Zealand First is taking, so we’re going to support this legislation at its first reading. It doesn’t mean that we’ll support it beyond that, but it does mean that we want to see—

Glen Bennett: The coalition’s crumbling!

ANDY FOSTER: —God, they got very excited there!—that detail fixed, then maybe we support it at second reading and beyond; if it can’t be, then we don’t.

Back to the legislation, look, this is about better resource use. Who hasn’t got frustrated by—you’ve got a product there, it’s a complicated product, and you want it to work and one small bit breaks, and because you can’t repair that small bit, the whole thing’s got to be thrown out. Now, that’s a terrible situation to be in. What about the potential to build repair capacity? Who doesn’t love that small shop that can fix almost anything? This might give those small shops the ability not only to fix the new stuff that’s protected under this legislation but also to protect old stuff, simply because they’re able to exist to be able to do that kind of work. I think it’s more likely that these repair shops might be able to exist, and they’re gold. It might make us a little bit more resilient as well. The evidence seems to be so far—early evidence—that it will make products cheaper not only for the consumer but also for the manufacturer. On the flip side, we don’t want to be too onerous for businesses. We need to get our economy working. Clearly, as I said, repairing some of those smaller products won’t work.

On balance, we support this legislation to go through the first reading and we look forward to what feedback we get through the select committee process. I commend the bill to the House.

Kia ora. Tēnā koe e te tuahine. Tēnā koe me tēnei pire, me taku aroha nui kua hoki mai rā koe ki te Whare nei.

[Thank you, and greetings, sister. Greetings in terms of this bill, and my love to you who has returned to this House.]

It’s nice to see you back. It’s nice to see you back and strong. This bill, we will be supporting also. It’s nice to hear all the kōrero around the place, and I’m glad that Andy wants to make sure that he can fix his Saab, or the BMW, that he’s got in his garage. Those European vehicles, they’re very, very difficult to fix, and I know you’ve got a garage full of them, to fix those vehicles. We want to make sure that the legislation is in place to ensure that you’re not parking that BMW or that Bentley or whatever the vehicle you’ve got in your garage there—that you’ve got to go to Germany to get the parts or whatever. You know, these European vehicles are very difficult to fix—just like the European system we’re working in.

Section 42, the “opt out of repair”, is also an issue, and I think this piece of legislation is a good piece of legislation. I live an hour and a half away from any town. When you’re living in a rural community and you buy something, you want to make sure that it lasts. Once upon a time, you could buy a Zetor tractor and you could grab a garden hose and put it on that bit there to fix that piece there. And uncle was always good at fixing things, right? It was a smooth transition. But it’s not like that any more, right? You’ve got to plug something in to tell you where the issue is, and it takes you a very, very long time to get anything fixed, like the old John Deere tractors. They don’t make them like the old Zetors any more. They don’t make them like the old Ford tractors any more. They don’t make them the way they used to make them where you could fix things, where you could go down to the shop and get something to fix it.

This puts the responsibility on those who actually sell these products to our people. It’s a little bit like my auntie and uncle’s marriage, right? Sixty years—60 years—married. I said to my auntie, “How did that last?” She said, “You know, these days when something’s broken you just throw it away, go down the shop and get another one.” “But”, she goes, “in our day, you fixed it.” It’s nice to be able to look at a bit of legislation that ensures the people that buy a product know that they can get it fixed—that they can get it fixed; you can get that product. It’s like your bloody iPhone, you know? With the iPhone, you’ve got to buy the phone and then they sell the cord separately. Then there’s a different guarantee for the cord than there is with the phone—you know, it’s all that type of stuff.

Look, we’re looking at supporting this particular bill because I think it’s good and it’s sane. We don’t have to look at the detail now; let’s go to the select committee and deal with the detail and sort it out there and make sure that we get the things that we want in there to ensure these products, right? As a consumer, I live an hour and a half away from Ōpōtiki, and that doesn’t have everything. I’ve got to go two hours away to Whakatāne, which also doesn’t have everything, right? So I’ve got to go three hours farther, to Rotorua or Tauranga. This is the reality for people who live in rural places like Cape Runaway, Whangaparāoa. If I buy a product, I want to ensure that I can fix it quickly. Otherwise, look, I’m weeks out, months out, from continuing to do that mahi. Maybe I’ll go and borrow Winston Peters’ lawnmower, right, that he wants to make sure he can get the part for. But I doubt if I’ll get it—I doubt if I’ll get it. And I doubt if he’ll get it, after some of the rhetoric today.

Look, this bill will help to reduce waste, specifically e-waste. I’m into that. Aotearoa and Australia produce the highest volumes of e-waste per capita in the world, while having some of the lowest documented rates of recycling. Aotearoa produces 99 tonnes of e-waste every year—that’s 19.2 kilograms per person. You fellas are learning something tonight, aren’t you? Only 2 percent of this waste is recycled. Ensuring that consumers have the ability to repair their product will help to lower our e-waste production and raise our recycling rates, erasing the burden on our whenua. We’re into protecting our whenua, we’re into protecting our people, and I think this bill does both.

I commend you, Marama. Ngā mihi nui ki a koe mō tēnei pire. [Many acknowledgments to you for this bill.]

I was just blown away also with New Zealand First supporting it. I think we’ll be going to the select committee with this bill, to go down and drill down into the deeper parts of this bill—not like these miserable fellas over there, you know. Miserable—miserable. They’re not even looking at how they can support people or the whenua. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora tātou.

There is something completely bonkers about this world and there’s something completely bonkers about our modern economic systems, that the right to repair is something that we have to fight for. It is actually, if you think about it, sort of back to the past—it’s going back to what we always used to do. I think about the fact that—

Cameron Luxton: No one’s stopping you owning a horse and cart.

GLEN BENNETT: —they’re asking me what’s stopping me—for example, I have a modern jug in my kitchen that I’m unable to fix because of the way it’s compiled and created. Back in the day, who got in trouble from their parents when they forgot to fill the jug up and, of course, they burnt the element out? What did you do? You went down to the local electrical shop, you went down to the local Mitre 10, and you were able to get a new element, put it in yourself, and the jug would boil again until one of us boys forgot to do it. You cannot do that any more, all right? That’s the thing; you cannot do that any more. It’s the simple things that we need to think about.

The other one is around, for example, my grandmother’s Kenwood mixer. Now, my grandmother’s Kenwood mixer from 1970 sits proudly in my kitchen. For some reason, I was, obviously, the favourite, because in the will that’s what I got. Who knows? Anyway, the thing is that some parts are starting to fail—it’s 55 years old, almost—and, once upon a time, it was quite easy to go to Kingsroy Electrical on Devon Street; some of us in this place have probably been there. They were in business for 75 years, repairing small electrical goods, ensuring that they were fit and didn’t end up in landfills but were things that could be fixed and taken home and used again, like my grandma’s Kenwood mixer. That’s hard, these days. For a company like Kingsroy Electrical, they had to close down. Because of modern technology, because of the ecosystem we’ve created where we’ve locked things off, it is unable to happen. We support this bill and think it is good quality.

I also think about my colleague Arena Williams, in terms of the amendment that she has on the Table. Now, I very proudly, back in the mid-1990s, owned an HQ Holden myself. It was a golden Holden. It was quite beautiful. It had a couple of problems as well, though. For example, the head gasket blew—wasn’t my fault, of course; it wasn’t me burning it out or doing anything dodgy. The thing is that, when it went, my dad and I were able to sit inside the bonnet, pull it apart, put the head gasket on, and go from there. The issue now, and this is why I support Arena Williams’ amendment, is the fact that my car, which is not that modern—2010, but it’s not that modern. There’s no way I can even unlock it without having the mechanic come in and do the electrical thing and do—what do you call it, the thing with all the computer stuff?

Hon Member: The codes.

GLEN BENNETT: The codes. This is just good simple legislation. This is good simple legislation that will make a difference. It will move us forward. The grumpy ACT Party, who just want their mates to make more money—it’s the fact that, actually, people want to repair stuff. People actually want the opportunity not to dump it in the landfill. A classic example is recently I was at an op shop, and I went in and the op shop truck was piling full of—

Hon Marama Davidson: Love an op shop.

GLEN BENNETT: —oh, I love an op shop too—electrical goods. They were throwing them in the back of the truck, and I said, “What are you doing with those?” They said, “We have to dump them.” “Why do you have to dump them?” “Because there’s small issues with them but also there’s electrical certificates we have to do. We don’t have the money or the capacity to do it, neither the ability to repair them.” Where did they take them? They took them to the landfill.

So, to the Hon Marama Davidson, we say thank you for bringing this to the House. We say thank you for having some pragmatic environmental ideas for the future of our country, and we look forward to it going to select committee and ironing out some of the challenges and, hopefully, going a little bit further as well.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, the Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill has very good intentions. As is a cliché, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so National isn’t supporting it. However, you’ve seen this before—we’ve changed our minds. We might be tempted to do that if there had been some huge changes that were made. This would be a massive amount of work and is probably much better done while we’re in a review of the Fair Trading Act and we’re looking at all of the reasons why this whole ecosystem is damaged.

I agree that it is a problem that there is such a thing as planned obsolescence. The very idea of planned obsolescence is awful. Now, are we in New Zealand going to be able to influence that whole ecosystem that is an international problem? Maybe, maybe not. But it is something that when we go through the select committee process, I’m sure we’ll be able to hash out many of these things. I’m surprised members across the House didn’t actually pick up when Dan Bidois nearly gave away the secret and stole Mr Andy Foster’s thunder at being able to say it. He really dragged it out, didn’t you, Andy? You really dragged it out and let them wait to find out what New Zealand First’s position was going to be on this bill.

There are many things in this bill that are to be commended and that we agree with—agree very much so with the intent behind this bill—but the current scope is far too broad. To have everything included—including, as the previous speaker alluded to, a kettle. Those sort of things, at the moment—I just quickly looked it up and you can buy a kettle for $10. These are the kinds of things that just show that the economies of scale are ridiculous.

In this bill, it does mention that they expect that it’s just no problem and won’t affect intellectual property, but I think there’s some actual fish-hooks that are in there. Intellectual property is a little bit of a challenge at the moment. This is something that I think we need to think harder about, because intellectual property, when it comes to things that are secret in the set-up of and really are commercially sensitive items—people need to be able to protect that intellectual property. In Australia, they have a regime, as Dan Bidois mentioned, where they’re able to sell to specific repairers to be able to enable that repair ecosystem to go on. This is something that’s not considered within this bill.

I think there are also real significant problems with the idea of how you would possibly enforce this. Whilst many things, when we bring them in in a bill or as legislation, it’s bringing in the understanding and it’s about creating the structures that people and businesses can operate within. Whether this would set up the right kinds of penalties and incentives from this would be a real challenge. I’m not sure that it would really go far enough. In our planned review of the Fair Trading Act, I think there’s much more that can be done.

Also, when we were speaking about the electronic goods and the inability to fix those, well, some of the reasons for that is not necessarily economic. Some of those reasons are actually around health and safety. There are other reasons where there are other barriers that come in when we try to repair things. While I’m just still on my feet, I would just like to point out that it was a little bit galling, I think, for some of us over on our side, hearing Labour talk about farmers and how they stand up for farmers. After what they put farmers through over the last previous six years, it did sort of stick in the craw a little bit.

Although many of us see good things in this, as many have, Hon Marama Davidson—I have also been to these repair cafes and had a look and had lots of people talk to me about this issue, and give lots of reasons why I would want to support it—there are just too many holes in it to be able to do that from our side. We do support the intent. It’s a shame that we cannot commend this bill to the House.

Thank you. It’s a real pleasure to be able to support the bill, and welcome back to the Hon Marama Davidson. It’s lovely to be able to do that tonight. I’ve been really listening tonight to the contributions made and taking on board that concern over things like proportionality and practicality. It would be really nice if this bill came out in a way that serves that kind of pragmatic need and becomes a bill that is a workable contribution to New Zealand.

I wanted to talk about my concern that what we’ve heard from the ACT Party, and the reservations that National have had, show a real lack of hope and vision. This was something that had been part of a New Zealand world. My friend Glen Bennett is exactly right about that. We did used to repair things. I’m sure that most of us have had the experience of buying appliances, then watching them die in what looks like, actually, a calculated obsolescence. It has definitely happened. That is one of the things that has become part of the experience of many New Zealanders. They’ve bought these expensive appliances, and they have found that they cannot repair them or that they are trapped into repairing them at a high price.

It has affected our small businesses. I too have been out to see the people who are repairing our cars and heard their frustrations about how they are locked out of repairing cars by tricks, basically, that are being played in terms of repair by monopolies that have been created. This is a complex area. It does need our full attention, but it also needs some basic principles, and what I like about this bill is it’s a very basic principle: New Zealanders have a right to have products repaired where that is appropriate. They should not be in a situation where they are buying an expensive product and not being able to repair it, paying a great price for it. Our small businesses have a right, if they are competent, to repair things for the New Zealand public, and we all have a right not to expect good quality products that cost the environment money in our landfills. That is a price we simply cannot pay on our planet any more.

I see this as a bedrock piece of legislation, if we get it right, where we reset our expectations in our society. It lets our small businesses grow, it lets our consumers pay a fair price for a fair product, and it lets our environment survive.

This is an important bill, and I’m absolutely thrilled to see it here in this Parliament with the support, at least to the first reading, to make sure that we can actually do our job. I say to the National Party and to ACT, who have spoken tonight: it is not a time for defeatism. It is not a case of just handing over the control of our world to these big monopolies, which are actually manipulating us in this way.

Now, I’ve got a minute and a half, and I’m going to have a little bit of a gripe about this happening to me, because it has happened to us all. It’s a really classic story. I used a little electric scooter. I went into town on that electric scooter for years. It saved me buckets of money. It meant that I wasn’t using up petrol. It was extremely good for the congestion in Auckland. When I replaced that scooter with what I thought was an identical one, it turned out that I couldn’t get the battery in any more. I have to go offshore if I want to. Where do you think the scooter is now? It’s sitting in a cupboard in my house. There will be lots of scooters, lots of dishwashers, lots of washing machines, lots of motor mowers. There will be lots of these things sitting and wasting in New Zealand, and they represent the hard-earned cash of New Zealanders.

Yes, there may be a balance to be struck, but it’s not being struck at the present time. It is not functioning the way it should. I am thrilled to see this bill. I am looking forward to it coming to my select committee. I will give it my full attention, and I commend the bill to the House.

I rise to speak on the Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill in its first reading, and I actually am conflicted over this bill, because I do often live by the motto “If it doesn’t move and it should, use WD-40; if it moves and it shouldn’t, use duct tape.” Actually, that’s probably a little bit of a stretch. I don’t use WD-40; I usually use a hammer, and, of course, the difference between an amateur and the professional is the size of hammer that they use! I have lived my life repairing motor bikes, coffee machines, and vacuum cleaners. We actually don’t need this bill to do some of these things; we can actually do that, as we’ve said.

We’ve heard a lot of hyperbole that we don’t support the small guys—well, how about the tax relief and how about cutting the red tape? Those are the sorts of things that are going to help the small repair shops, if they have been absolutely hamstrung with health and safety. We’ve heard about repairing jugs. I don’t know when the last time was when you legally were allowed to play with 240 volts here, in New Zealand, and there are other issues around this legislation which haven’t been mentioned tonight.

While I do actually support the objectives of this bill and I think they’re sound, I think the current scope is far too expansive. Extending the right to repair to all goods is actually impractical, and you can probably think of, I don’t know, a waffle-maker from Kmart. It actually is not practical to do it. In the end, we’d actually end up making things far more expensive, and we don’t actually have some of the safety features that some of these things have. Often, those are probably the first things that are bypassed when things are repaired, so I think we’ve got to think about this very, very carefully.

Of course, there’s a whole piece of work that needs to be done around the Fair Trading Act, because I think there’s a lot of issues that we do need to iron out. An iron is another appliance that I wouldn’t suggest repairing—once again, the high voltage. We’ve heard about scooters and lithium ion batteries. I wouldn’t be encouraging anybody to have a wee tinker with a lithium ion battery. We’ve all seen the sorts of fires that can occur by doing that. I think there’s a whole range of issues that there could be here.

As I say, I agree with the principles and I have spent my life repairing things, but I think that this bill doesn’t actually come to the nub of the problem. I think we have a whole health and safety issue that we’d come to with some of these things. Of course, we have a safety issue, and we heard about the code for key fobs for cars. That’s a security thing that has been brought in.

I appreciate that there are certain members of this House who want to go back to the bygone era when things were very simple, not very environmentally friendly. Without fuel injection and things like that, some of those mechanical things were far easier to repair. Of course, machines have got far more complicated. We have far more safety regulations now because everybody should be able to go to work and come home safely.

There’s a whole range of issues, and I don’t think this bill is actually going to fix the problem. I see the intent, and I think that it is a good intent, but I don’t think this bill is going to fix the problem.

The Hon Marama Davidson, in reply.

I was supposed to mention in the first speech reading that I purposely chose to wear my hokohoko op shop dress tonight that I also did have to repair to be able to wear it. We all love a good op shop—many of us across the House.

All of the valid reasons—there were some very invalid reasons, but the so-called valid reasons that I have heard in the House tonight from politicians who are not going to support this bill are reasons to get it to select committee right now rather than delay the bill. Whether that’s for a review—we have got the evidence of what is needed: a review—and then what and how long? Right now, we can get this to select committee, we can look validly at product specification, we can look at any other potential challenges that members may have valid concerns about at select committee.

With product specification in particular, even if something might seem to fall outside the scope of this current bill, we can work together to write to the Business Committee to be able to ask and request that we make this opportunity work for us all right now. We can do that right now, and the urgency is real. I again want to shout out especially again to Consumer New Zealand, but I’m going to again shout out to Ōtautahi Repair Revolution; Para Kore; the rubbish tip; Federated Farmers; businesses’ Choice of Repairer; Brigitte Sistig; FixedFirst New Zealand; and Paul Smith, who was also formerly with Consumer New Zealand.

We have the urgency which needs us to legislate right now. A quote from the chief executive of Consumer New Zealand, Jon Duffy, says that Kiwis throw away 100,000 tonnes of just e-waste each year, on average around 20 kilos per person. A Lower Hutt recycling centre says the number of products coming in to be processed has escalated just in the last two years. There is urgent need for legislative action to tackle the scale of even just e-waste alone. Well, here it is—here is the opportunity right now.

Let me also pick up price, because I will pull that one right apart. Around the world, we have several countries and places where repair legislation has been in place for a number of years. I mentioned the US, the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, France—and that’s several states across the US. After several years, there is absolutely zero evidence of price increase to consumer, and I know why: when you think about right to repair, actually, at the moment, manufacturers will often replace the whole entire thing for a little thing that is wrong with it—a whole product replacement.

Actually, there is no general actual real cost increase to manufacturers when they are trying to repair things. That is why there is no evidence around the world, where this has been in place for years, of price increase to consumer. I had a responsibility to rip that argument right apart, and thank you again to Consumer New Zealand and Paul Smith who have also helped us on the research with that.

Local jobs, for crying out loud, we all love that—we all say we do. This is an opportunity to support local employment with something that is in our Aotearoa DNA: our fix-it expertise, having your local people and person be right at your ready when something breaks. This bill will support our local jobs, our local community initiatives.

We used to make better-quality goods. It’s no good in this House to pretend like going back to better-quality goods will hurt the world. It is actually planned obsolescence that has been hurting us and Papatūānuku for many, many years. That we pretend that going back to a state where we had better-quality goods in the first place, where we were able to conveniently fix our things in the first place—pretending that that’s going to be a horror situation for us just does not stack up.

The real problem—the real problem—is planned obsolescence. The real problem is a market that has allowed big companies to force us to buy and buy again, and buy again, and be locked out of fixing our things. Let’s be straight about where the real problem is. Thank you. I’m so glad we’re getting this to select committee.

Just before I put the next motion, I did hear a comment from someone on my right-hand side during a vote, saying “Crazy.” I’m not going to ask who it was, but I wouldn’t expect a repeat of that comment during a vote. Thank you.

Members, the question now is, That the Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill be considered by the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.