Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well thank you Mr Speaker. This is a relatively small but quite important piece of legislation. It seeks to clarify some inadequacies in the existing principal legislation particularly that were highlighted in the High Court decision of Bennett v Ebert Construction Ltd (In rec & liq). In that case the High Court noted that the Construction Contracts Act had some policy gaps and that the trust requirements and the wording of the trust requirements were imprecise. I'll come back to that in just a minute but I cannot let escape the woeful hopeless incompetence and inadequacy of the Minister who introduced this bill at first reading. Here is a Minister the Hon Poto Williams who came to the House ill-prepared and ready to move a first reading and what she did was miss out a very fundamental part of the introduction speech. It's a formal part of the process but it's an important part none the less. It's the part that gives instruction to the select committee about report-back times and dates and the time of submissions. It's important because members of the public who will be listening to this debate who have an interest in it—subcontractors and larger construction firms around the country who are interested in this legislation—they want to know how long they have to submit at select committee and whether it's going to be a truncated or a full select committee process. The Minister Poto Williams actually forgot to mention that.DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's the Hon Poto Williams.Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Oh the Hon Poto Williams—she forgot to mention that. And what happened was that Speaker Mallard was in the chair and he gave an opportunity for the Minister—in fact asked her twice whether she wanted to include it and twice came back the answer No I don't want to make a comment on that." Then further into her speech at about eight minutes or so she received some instruction and some advice from an official or an officer of Parliament and late in the speech—somewhere close to about 8½ minutes into the speech when most people listening would have well gone to sleep—a date was mentioned and I think it was the date of 11 November. So thank goodness for that. But there we have an indication of the woeful inadequate hopeless incompetence of a Minister who comes to the House ill prepared and not ready to actually do the business on an important and significant piece of legislation. So we on this side of the House think that that is just an indication of a far greater malaise that enraptures this socialist Labour Government. It's typical of their lack of direction their lack of focus and no attention to detail. It's this lack of attention to detail that is deeply problematic—deeply problematic. It's not just the lack of ability to deliver on their promises but a lack of attention to detail and ultimately that is the problem for this Government. The Hon Poto Williams will need to reflect on that and probably get better advice before she introduces legislation into the House again.So what does this bill do? Well what it does is actually tightens up the definition around retentions. People listening to this debate may wonder what retentions are. It's all to do with the money that is paid by subcontractors as part of the process of entering into a big construction job for instance. Some of that money has in the past been mixed wrongly and poorly in commercial terms with the larger principal contractor in a way that has meant that if that larger main contractor falls over—goes into receivership or liquidation—then that money that is due to the subcontractors is not payable and not available to them. That's a huge problem for small businesses who are the subcontractors. In a previous life I've worked in businesses that have supplied many contractors and subcontractors and I know firsthand how problematic it is for a small-business person who's subcontracting to a much larger firm and the big firm falls over and goes into receivership or liquidation and then not only is the money tied up in loss because that larger company—as Greg O'Connor correctly made the case in the previous speech—perhaps poorly used that funding for cash flow or indeed capital but then that creates enormous effects further down the supply chain. What it means is that that subcontractor isn't able to pay their suppliers or their employees. It's pretty obvious about the inadequacy of that kind of situation. So the principal legislation seeks to solve that problem by creating a retentions regime and that's all fine and dandy but the court case of Bennett v Ebert Construction Ltd (In rec & liq) highlighted that there were some definitional issues and this piece of legislation seeks to remedy that. So on this side of the House we support that. But in terms of this legislation it goes a little further than just being related to mere dollars and cents. What typically happens when a company goes into receivership—particularly a large construction company—is that the site is immediately locked down by the receivers who are acting on behalf of the creditors. What has happened in the past and probably still happens today given the issues that we're talking about is that it's not only the money but it's the equipment the gear the tools of trade—the stock in trade of the subcontractor gets locked up and is physically unavailable to that contractor. So that means that not only do they not get paid but they lose their ability to actually continue on in business. If their tools of trade are all locked up on a site that they can no longer have access to and if their equipment and gear and sometimes in some cases the actual products that they might be installing—think of an air conditioning subcontractor or an electrical or plumbing contractor—the bits and pieces the bits and bobs that go with the job and the work that they do if they're not physically able to access that then they're not able to go on to their next job. Of course that then has a fateful and sometimes potentially devastating impact on those smaller subcontractors. So look at select committee we on this side of the House will be looking carefully to see that the definitions have in fact been correctly applied. We'll be looking to see that the sloppiness of the Minister introducing the bill has not been replicated in the drafting of the bill and we'll be looking to see that that sloppiness is not manifested in a way that makes the situation worse which quite often happens with this Government's legislation. So we'll be alert to that at select committee. We'll be looking forward to hearing submissions from a range of both large and small firms and I've got no doubt that there will be many who will come to the select committee during the submission process and will tell quite horrific stories about what the impacts have been on their business on their employees and on their ability to continue in business and in trade. So on that note we support this bill to first reading. We're looking forward to giving it a thorough look at select committee and we'll watch this process very carefully. Thank you."