Franks Stephen: Consumer Protection (Definitions of Goods and Services) Bill — In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Consumer Protection (Definitions of Goods and Services) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:609;Page:6894] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: We are now at the heart of the stupidity in this bill that has resulted in ACT committing to vote against it. When the services that this bill puts under the Consumer Guarantees Act are compared with that Act’s provisions we see just what happens when ideology or a political manifesto gets in the way of logic. When we put water electricity or gas supply into the Consumer Guarantees Act—a pretty suspect piece of law to start with—we end up with the rich being subsidised by the poor. Essentially this means that the people who use more of those services who use lots of them can insist on a higher standard of service. They will exercise remedies the others will not have the time to exercise and will get the benefits of inventive new ways of persecuting the supplier that the poor will not think of—and they will do all of that for no particular reason. 
Let us take water as an example. Paekakariki just to the north of Wellington has something in its water that corrodes tap washers. This may seem trifling to members on the other side. They may think it is funny that tap washers and joints get corroded quite quickly by the Paekakariki water supply but quite clearly a reasonable person coming into Paekakariki from outside would not assume a tap washer was likely to disappear within 3 years. That is in fact what happens. If the taps are used frequently the time taken for the washers to corrode is less. The effect of this requirement is that the local authority or the supplier of the water is probably going to have to guarantee that it will meet the cost of those tap washers. Who does that take money from? It takes it from the people. People make a claim and they get paid for their tap washer or the supplier upgrades the water supply to make sure it does not corrode tap washers and everyone has to pay extra. The people who pay the price of that in their water supply will be paying much more to those who have lots of taps than to those who have only a few taps. They will probably end up paying for tap washers they would never dream of using. Those who can afford to put a water softener on or to take a precaution with their tap washers will be paid for by those who cannot afford to take such precautions. 
We can see the same thing with electricity. The person who can afford to take a precaution against losing the contents of their deep freeze because there is an outage or a power unreliability will be paid for by those who do not even have deep freezes. It will be paid for in the price of electricity to those who cannot afford to take any sort of precaution. Householders who decide that an interrupted supply or a power spike in their computer is really irritating and who decide to go and harass the local power supplier because of what the spike did to their computer are going to be subsidised by people who do not even have a computer. The cost will be borne by the people who are busy using candles and hot water bottles so that they do not use up power the local authority has asked them to save. The sort of madness we had with the major industrial suppliers deciding to go uncovered on spot prices will presumably come under the Commerce Act or under one of the other parts of this bill so I will not in this part go into the subsidisation of big business that is occurring. But I will say that the prospect of business for lawyers or the prospect of the business the disputes tribunal will have is just rife in this bill. 
Let us look at some of the guarantees. Let us take water. There is a guarantee that the water is durable—durable for what purpose? There is a guarantee that it is safe if it is used in a manner that a reasonable consumer would expect to use to obtain the goods. What about when one’s swimming pool is too deep for the kids? Does the local authority have to worry about that? The local authority can of course draw attention to the defects so we will see another set of these ludicrous warnings with which New Zealand is now infested saying that if we use too much of something it might make us feel bloated.