Shaw James: New Zealand Business Number Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: New Zealand Business Number Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 February 2016. Volume:711;Page:9055. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): It is a pleasure to rise and take a call on behalf of the Green Party in relation to the New Zealand Business Number Bill. It is quite a pleasure to come back to this bill after some time; when I was on the Commerce Committee about a year ago is when this first got introduced to the House. We have supported this bill the whole way through its process. I think it is really important.There are a number of concerns about the implementation of how business numbers will be rolled out. There are a number of concerns: for example the previous speaker from the Labour Party Jacinda Ardern raised concerns about the exemptions. There are some concerns about the costs that will be imposed in the short term and whether we have created a structure so that we can soak up those costs to make sure that they are not onerous. There are obviously some outstanding privacy concerns which you have to balance against the ability to hunt down fraud and so on. But none of those concerns would deter us from supporting this as an initiative. I think it is really important to support the intention of the bill which is to make things simpler for businesses and trading enterprises.The last few speakers have spoken in particular about small businesses and the advantages that they may gain from having essentially lower transaction costs with Government through use of a business number. But I want to also pick up on some of the other forms of trading enterprise. This kind of system already exists for limited liability companies in New Zealand—a particular type of company—and of course what we are doing here is essentially extending out an existing programme or a similar programme to other forms of trading enterprise.Of course in New Zealand there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of trading enterprises that you would not normally think of as businesses as trading enterprises: non-profit organisations some of which trade; a lot of charity shops; people with online presences; social enterprises; organisations that are subsidising non-profit work using commercial models; and so on. All of those will now have access to business numbers through this kind of system. We think that that is really good to start treating different types of trading enterprise in the same way that we have been already treating your standard meat-and-potatoes limited liability company.We do note that there are some concerns about privacy and we have been seeking reassurances during the course of the bill that those go through. I want to acknowledge that there is still some discomfort that having this kind of system in place may enable Government agencies to essentially go into places and get information that they should not normally be getting.Again we do not feel that the level of risk there is so high that it would deter us from supporting this bill but I think it is important that as this gets implemented we keep an eye on that that we make sure any complaints or concerns are addressed and that if there are those sorts of complaints we do take notice of them. And of course if there are mistakes we then learn from those mistakes and we improve the implementation as we go forward.One of the concerns that we want to keep an eye on of course is whom this is for. Sometimes Government will launch an initiative and say that this is to make things easier for business or for the public sector or for the community sector or whomever and then what happens in actuality is it ends up being for the convenience of Government rather than the group that is actually using it.Again I think that in its early days as we start implementation here it is really important for us to be very highly tuned to not just the rate of pick-up but the quality of pick-up amongst the organisations that are supposed to be using this and to get a sense of whether this is actually delivering the value to small business and to other trading enterprises that we say it is—or is the value actually being delivered primarily to Government in the form of making it easier for Government?One of the specific concerns that I am really interested in is that in New Zealand there has been a rise in recent years of ghost companies—particularly small traders who set up shop run up accounts and bills with clients and with suppliers and then declare bankruptcy. They then close up shop open up again a few weeks later using a sort of vague nom de plume and essentially go back into the same type of activity without honouring their bills. One of the things that the New Zealand Business Number Bill may enable—and I think one of the opportunities that we have got—is an ability to start to keep track of what is essentially low-level business fraud.It has a huge economic cost. We know that there are hundreds of thousands of sole traders and tiny tiny little organisations in this country. The cost to them of trading with someone who is essentially fraudulent and who does not have an intention to honour their bills is huge.I get complaints about it all the time. As I am travelling the country and talking to businesses about what their concerns are one of the chief things that keeps coming up over and over again is the sense that people are being ripped off by dishonest traders who because they are able to get away with it are essentially just closing up shop when they want to. One of the things that this does is it gives us an opportunity to just start tracking dishonest traders a bit more. That is one of the reasons why I personally am quite keen on supporting this bill.This has not been set up here but one of the opportunities here is that—what this does is it gives Government a one-to-one relationship with pretty much every single trading organisation in the country. While it is not in the same way that you should have an Inland Revenue Department number and you should have a one-to-one relationship with the Government via inland revenue what this may enable is an opportunity for businesses to start offering aggregate services to huge swathes of tiny organisations. One of the bizarre outcomes of the economy that we have created of course is that if you work for a large corporate you probably have health insurance you probably have a company car you are able to access discounts—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.Debate interrupted.