Dean JacquiHon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker I should say—apologies. I'm at a slight loss for words after that last speech.Hon David Bennett: It wasn't a speech—it wasn't a speech.Hon JACQUI DEAN: Well yeah. We are very clear and we were very clear when we were in Government. Ministers of consumer affairs and of commerce had the opportunity to listen to feedback around the criminalisation of cartel behaviour and after a fairly robust and lengthy period of reflection it was determined while I was in that position that the civil regime of penalties against cartel behaviour was in fact working well. Under the civil regime there can be penalties of some millions of dollars. In fact there are penalties that have been awarded against cartel behaviour against New Zealand companies and I think I would be fairly safe in saying that a penalty of some millions of dollars has just got to hurt. As a distinct disincentive and as a strong signal against cartel behaviour anti-competitive behaviour it is our belief and our position that the civil regime in fact has been and is very effective.Treasury gave a view that was not in favour of criminalisation; it concluded in fact that the civil cartel regime appeared to be working well. So where's the problem? Where is the problem that this Government felt they needed to fix? Can I be so bold as to say: was it that in the commerce and consumer affairs space which was left in such good shape they felt they had to do something so they cast around in some old papers and went I know. I know what we'll do. We'll reintroduce criminalisation for cartel behaviour."? Not a good policy position in my contention because it does not address a problem which does not exist. That is our position—Brett Hudson: It's not broken so they're going to fix it.Hon JACQUI DEAN: Exactly. As the chair of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee Brett Hudson quite rightly points out there is no problem that needed fixing except for the fact that the new Labour-led coalition Government needed to come up with some more work to bring to the House. This was an easy picking. The anti-business position that this Government currently holds is now expressed again. Quite frequently we discuss other anti-business measures that this Government has brought in. They do see business as the enemy and this is just the latest version of that philosophy and ideology—[Interruption]ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! Members please do not have a conversation across the chamber. I apologise to you the Hon Jacqui Dean.Hon JACQUI DEAN: I wasn't listening to the conversation because it's not worth listening to; neither is their position around criminalisation.I want to just give one example of cartel behaviour which was not of criminal intent and it is a case study that I'm aware of and it is around an online tyre dealership arrangement where there was a young guy who had an online tyre dealership business and there was a mate in another city who also had an online tyre dealership business. They had a conversation between them and said you know in fact they indulged in cartel behaviour. They fixed the price of their product. The former I was talking about sort of woke up in the middle of the night perhaps and thought "What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?" and went to his lawyer. His lawyer contacted the Commerce Commission and this man turned himself over to the Commerce Commission who literally came down on him like a ton of bricks.It was a very unpleasant—very unpleasant—experience for both of these business people. They were the subject I believe of penalty and certainly the subject of a lot of deserved unwelcome attention because it was cartel behaviour; it was. It was done more out of ignorance which is no excuse but one would be hard put to convince the court or the Commerce Commission that there was criminal intent; there wasn't. The intent there was stupid the intent was unwise the intent was unlawful and all of those adjectives but it wasn't criminal. So to bring in criminality into cartel behaviour where there was a lack of criminal intent is one thing but my main point is that the civil regime is working. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker."