Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's an absolute delight to be talking on this bill—Hon Kris Faafoi: He definitely wasn't the chair!ANDREW BAYLY: —and I didn't even have anything to do with it! But it is the New Zealand Business Number Funding (Validation and Authorisation) Bill and as my colleagues have rightly pointed out this is a very important thing for New Zealand businesses. As you know we have 530000 of those thriving businesses in New Zealand creating all those jobs providing all those services to New Zealand. That's the backbone of New Zealand that we all refer to. But what people don't realise is it's the people behind those 530000 businesses that make this the great country it is. That's why this bill is so important because what we want to do and what we always wanted to do as a Government when we were in power was that we wanted to support small businesses. That's not about imposing big costs on them but to make sure that they can get on with as little interference from Government—those dreadful words: I'm here from the Government to help you". That's not what we see as the way to help New Zealand businesses. So when this was originally introduced under our watch it was about promoting a way for small businesses to interact much more easily with New Zealand Government agencies. As we've heard there are 60 Government agencies that if you use your New Zealand business number you can access all that range of entities and not have to continuously fill out all those mind-blowingly repetitive requirements that are often required. IRD numbers GST numbers all those sort of things—that's the type of information that you would normally see on a New Zealand Business Number and all the information that goes with it. So it's not about the number; it's the data behind it. So the whole purpose of this was to make sure that you only had to enter that data once and so when you interacted if you had to with the 60 Government agencies you could do it easily. That's what we set about—and it's been in place for a number of years. The whole purpose of this as I've said is really about reducing the cost on small businesses. I thought it was interesting—my good colleagues have highlighted a $60 million a year saving for small businesses. We know that compliance costs are one of the greatest banes of the lives of the owners of small businesses but as the proposer of the bill the Hon Stuart Nash highlighted the benefit is $1.2 billion if 60 percent of those using internet services currently were to actually go on and use this over time. So we've heard some of the talk about e-invoicing—the Hon Jacqui Dean talked about it—and it is very important. Recently we've signed the Pan-European Public Procurement Online which are all fancy words but it's Pan-European and actually part of this the first step has been to join up with Australia to make sure that we can interact with Australian Government entities as well in a much easier way.So this bill is about working through and making sure that that system has the right background to it. One of the issues that has been alluded to before—this has traditionally been funded out of levies that companies pay when they're on the New Zealand Companies Register through the Companies Act. But of course this piece of legislation relates not only to companies but partnerships and sole traders. So this bill actually makes sure that the funding that is used to operate this system—and it's a very small fund or cost—is actually taken from the right source. This is what this bill is; that's the validation and authorisation part of this bill. I think this is very good. I think New Zealand small businesses—I would urge them to take the opportunity to take up their New Zealand Business Number. Everyone has been allocated a number; all they need to do is fill in all the background information once keep it up to date and you are in ready to go and it makes it so much easier for them. I'm looking forward to hearing the debate as we progress through this bill."