Andersen GinnyHon GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much Madam Chair. Thank you it's really a pleasure to take a call on this bill. It was a bill that I was responsible for when I was the Minister for Small Business and it is a real concern to see that it's being repealed without any real active programme in place.So the first point I'd like to ask the Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing is in relation to the information provided to support the repeal bill. I do understand that there is no regulatory impact statement provided with this legislation. I would just like to ask the Minister if he's considered still doing some sort of analysis because while he is repealing the bill it still requires some level of analysis to understand what the impacts are on small business by not implementing this regime.So the problem that the initial bill was attempting to address was access to finance for small businesses. And we know—we all I think agree—that that would be the number one issue that small businesses struggle with: accessing finance. New Zealand is right up there in the world as being one of the poorest countries to provide small-business owners with some way of accessing finance. No doubt the Minister will have heard stories as I did of small-business owners who mortgage their own home who go into debt simply to be able to make the next wage round. So what this bill was attempting to do was to free up regular payments—from those large companies that wait to the last minute in order to accrue interest on that that that income that money—to enable small businesses. So that's my question to the Minister in relation to what analysis on the regulatory impact statement might be done.Secondly my question is: what are his plans in order to enable small businesses in New Zealand to have greater access to finance? Because that is the outstanding question that is not addressed when you simply repeal this legislation. Just having a voluntary code or just ensuring that Government pays does not address the heart of that problem. What I put to the Minister—and I'd be really interested to hear his feedback—is that while this Government has come in claiming to get a lid on inflation to bring inflation down which we all want to see what we are actually seeing is some unintended causes in the economy as a result of cost cutting of reducing spending. There's been some really interesting reports—Bernard Hickey one of these—that are saying that inflation is actually being pushed out and up into the economy. We're seeing this through increased rates through increased compliance costs on small businesses through new fees through user-pays—CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Can we come back to questions for the Minister please.Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: So what these additional costs that are pushing up inflation and putting an additional burden on small businesses—what is the Minister's plan? Maybe it's in the eight points that he's mentioned that we haven't heard what they all are. What is the answer to enabling small businesses in New Zealand to have access to finance so that we don't have mum and dad businesses with their home getting a second mortgage in order just to make payments. Because that is the fundamental problem that we still—I don't see—have an answer for and I'd be very keen for the Minister to speak to that.I'd just like to raise one issue in relation to the legislative statement that's been presented to the House. In particular the Government's views that most small businesses won't have the time to search for payment data and so we'll just throw it out. I just think I'd like to hear a little bit more from the Minister. That can't be the whole reason: they don't have time to do it so we should just throw the baby out with the bath water. I don't see that as a sufficient justifying reason to scrap this bill that would help small businesses.The other point I would just like the Minister to speak on is that it states in the explanatory note that information on late payers is already available from credit agencies." My point to the Minister is: that's different that whether someone's got a bad credit rating it is not the same as actually being able to pay on time or being a good payer. So I'd just like some more information about what other information is available whether it be Government or small businesses. If we're going to scrap this register and it's going to be voluntary what else can small businesses have as tools? Someone can have a great credit rating but can be a lousy payer of their bills but do it on the last day or like the day after—that's still not fair on small businesses."