Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Well it's a pleasure to be talking in the third reading of the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill. I want to talk about Schedule 6 rental arrangements. Here we are 18 months later from when COVID first hit New Zealand and the Government is finally acting—finally acting—in a speedy manner. Then of course who's front-footing it? That dynamic and energetic Minister Kris Faafoi. He's the one leading the charge on this.I think we just need to put it in context. Earlier I asked the Minister of Finance about what's happening with industry and how many businesses we've lost. We've lost just over 9500 businesses in the last month and that's up 140 percent—140 percent—in the three months to July. We are starting to see absolute devastation in our small businesses in places like Auckland and the Waikato. This is not something that we're sleepwalking along to. This is happening now and this is the worst thing about this: this is the same idea that the previous Government talked about introducing under the Hon Andrew Little—the same proposition—and New Zealand First ruled it out and they ruled it out for good reason. It will not work. It is not the right thing to do. This morning in the committee of the whole House we saw a Minister who really does not understand business. He talked about revenue and that's the test that has been put into this bill but the real issue as we tried to point out to him is it's about cash when you are a small business. Do I have enough cash to pay my rent? Do I have enough cash to pay my wages?"—and that's the problem.In Auckland we're now what into the 11th week going into the 12th week tomorrow in one of the longest lockdowns that that city has been in. Compared to all the other cities in the world Auckland is now touching one of the places that has been in the longest lockdown and no one plans in their right mind to have a Government tell them "You cannot trade for 26 weeks." No one can envisage that. Now some people are lucky because they have other resources but in our plan that we announced last week I did a case on a hairdresser. She was lucky because her landlord had done the right thing and given her a 50 percent discount on the rent. She was lucky and I've got to acknowledge there have been many many generous landlords but I can tell you that if she hadn't had that write-off of that rent she would have lost $100000. That was $100000—she was telling me how she's borrowing against her house to try and keep her staff on her pay book so that they had a job when ultimately at some time in the future they can come back to work. That's the real reality of what's going on.This piece of legislation that will come into force today will mean that if you've got a dispute and if you've been having a dispute between the landlord and the tenant then you are having a dispute. This piece of legislation's not going to change it. The only thing that this legislation requires is that if you want to take the matter up the other party—it might be the lessee it might be the lessor—has to respond within 10 days. Yeah well they might respond but they might respond with the same response they gave last time: "Naff off!" There's no obligation to actually deal.Then they use this weird and wonderful term called "fair proportion" and there is no real substance to that new proposition other than talking about revenue drop. Not even a criterion about what might be a sufficient revenue drop. So if you have a 25 percent revenue drop do you get a 25 percent reduction in your rent—well do you?Hon Member: Who knows?ANDREW BAYLY: Who knows? There's no clear bounds around it and that is the issue with this definition—that is the issue. You're already in disputing parties and just because they have to respond to each other within 10 days doesn't actually make it any better. So then they talked about arbitration. Well at least when Andrew Little tried to introduce it last term they did put some money towards arbitration disputes because these are the type of businesses that are going to crash in the next few weeks. Even the increased resurgence payment doesn't come into effect. You can't even apply for it until three weeks after Grant Robertson made the announcement. In those three weeks we're going to see more small businesses go to the wall and here we are we've got this clause. "Oh let's go and I'll write you a nice letter." you get a grumpy letter back from the other party saying "Naff off!" OK what's your choice? "Oh well maybe we'll go to mediation or maybe let's go to arbitration." Well guess what! Did Minister Faafoi talk about a sped-up arbitration process? No. Did he talk about financial support to those parties like the small businesses who don't have any more cash to take the proceedings because if anyone's had anything to do with arbitration it actually costs money. And by the way you've got to prepare your case and that's at a time when small-business owners the mums and dads and their key staff are all incredibly stressed—absolutely stressed to the max. "Where am I going to get my money tomorrow to pay my wages?" No one else is getting a free ride on this and I hear Dr Duncan Webb scoffing. I tell you what I've just come back from Auckland. I came down last week. I can tell you that every day in my electorate—every day—I got on average a hundred calls from concerned constituents. Many of them were related to small-business owners—every day without fail a hundred people contacting me either by phone or email asking for help during this lockdown. Unfortunately most people down in this area haven't seen that degree of pressure mental stress and this is the one remaining aspect that should have been dealt with by our Government and it should have been dealt with back last year. But here we are 18 months later and you finally front up with this bill that will not help. Where's the cash? Well the cash—this is the socialisation of the cost of a Government-imposed lockdown where the Labour Government is saying to landlords "You're all wealthy. You can do it. You should pay for it. You pick up the tab." Well actually it's a Labour Government - imposed lockdown as a result of a poor slow roll-out of the vaccine and poor managed isolation and quarantine facilities. Nothing to do with a small-business owner a hairdresser or those types of people who've gone about doing all the right stuff. Many of them are double vaccinated now and yet here we are with a piece of legislation that doesn't help them one iota because most people will not have the time the money or even the mental capacity to take on their landlord if they have to and go to arbitration. That's why when they put up the 40 million bucks last time for the arbitration no one took it up—no one took it up. So here we are.This is an insensitive piece of legislation. This shows a Government that does not understand small business. I am really really concerned and I just think it's that lack of care and real understanding about how small businesses operate. The mums and dads and their key staff and they're all families. They're not workers and things like that in this esoteric concept; they're people that get on with each other who work together—families—and they're all going broke. A lot of them are going broke: 9500. I'll be interested to see how many go broke next month and I'll tell you what what's going to happen is that most of them are hoping they can get through to Christmas. Most of them are hoping that the Government's going to open up the country hoping they're going to get a Christmas where they can get a bit of money in but in the middle of January they've going to pay their first round of provisional tax then they've got to pay more in March and then in April that's when the road will hit because those companies will fall over because they don't have cash. What the Government should have done is the support payment that we put forward two months ago and given these people cash to get them through the process. And only now the resurgence payment—oh it's going to happen in two weeks' time when they finally can make their first application. That will be a month after the announcement. It's such a waste of people's lives. That's the most damaging thing about this bill—I'm ashamed."