Webb DuncanDr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Well I hope five minutes is enough to explain to the member what's wrong with cartels and why they are in fact criminal behaviour. I'll tell you what: let's just think for a minute what's going on here. What's going on is price stripping—taking wealth from consumers and moving it to corporates. So let's talk about price fixing. A competitive market the so-called market that that lot over there on the other side of the House says it promotes would see a price equilibrium—a fair price that gives fair profits to the producers and a fair price to the consumers. What a cartel does if we price fix is it bumps the price up. It's a cartel agreement to ensure that the consumer pays too much so that the money goes illegitimately—illegitimately—from the consumer to the corporate.And you know what: look at this little word in the bill that it intends" that the person "intends" that to occur. That's what makes it criminal: that someone intends to get money they're not entitled to. For that the penalty could be up to seven years inside because you know what: it's just like theft. It's getting money you're not entitled to. It's not rocket science. It's pretty straight forward. If you take money if you strip money from a class of people that you're not entitled to whether it be through price fixing—DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'm not doing any of that. I'm not doing any of that.Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Sorry Madam Deputy Speaker. If the corporates do that then they should be—it's all very nice to say "We don't want to chill too much activity on the part of these directors these company directors." Look it's "intends". The law protects people. There's such a thing as burden of proof and beyond reasonable doubt and that's the protection. The prosecution will have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the person engaged in this conduct intended to do so and if they did then that is deeply wrong. It's taking and that's why they should go to jail.You've asked for evidence. Well I'll tell you what: you don't have to go far. The last Government got that evidence. The Ministry of Economic Development way back in 2010 did a report on this and do you know what they said? The civil penalties regime is not good enough. It's not a deterrent. So what we have here is something that will be a deterrent.It turns out if you look at the record that only in 2016 the Commerce Commission said they were having more cartels. They were increasing their work around cartels; it was on the rise. So what we have is a regime that's not working. We are needing greater deterrents and that's what we've got here. It's not enough to say "Look you really oughtn't have done that. We're going to take some of those profits away from you." whether it be three times the profit earned or whether it be your $10 million. Whatever it might be it turns out when you're playing with the numbers that some of these industries are playing with it's good business to take a risk. You might get caught but let's take the gamble. Well let's set it apart for what it is: it's deeply wrong it's taking it's illegitimate. Let's criminalise it and let's make sure that people who go down that road knowing what they're doing pay the appropriate price. And that's what we need.So look you know when we think about it we've got defences in there for legitimate conduct because cooperation in industries is sometimes necessary it's sometimes appropriate. If that's existing in the current legislation unlike the last go at it which didn't have that that is a legitimate defence. So what we have here is an appropriate response not one that we're going to put into the water then get lobbied terribly about and have Chapman Tripp say that it's a bad idea and have the Institute of Directors say that it's a bad idea and do a u-turn on. No it's one that this Government is committed to because it is an entirely appropriate step. What beggars belief is that you've got a step here that is looking to make sure that the market is preserved that it operates effectively. We've got an Opposition that's saying "No. We don't want that. We want to go back to Paul Goldsmith's world where we want to give a free pass to company directors so that if they get into a bit of strife even though they intended to embark upon this course of action they're not criminalised for it." It is wrong. It is taking.Price fixing is utterly illegitimate as is any other arrangement such as organising regional procurement or sales regimes. Those kinds of things might be complex. They might take a lot of resources of the Commerce Commission but we've got to stamp on them because they take large amounts of wealth from the New Zealand public and that's got to stop. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker."