Beaumont Carol: Consumer Law Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Consumer Law Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15174. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): It is a pleasure to finally be making some progress on this Consumer Law Reform Bill. Along with my colleagues I will be explaining why we support this bill. It is an important piece of legislation to get passed into law and it is very disappointing that it has taken so long to get this far. In supporting this bill we are looking forward to its passing because the essential proposition is that it updates and modernises our consumer legislation including giving us greater alignment with our colleagues across the Tasman. But despite the importance of doing this and of modernising our consumer legislation so that it better reflects the reality of the modern environment that consumers now consume in and provides greater protection for those consumers this bill has languished on the Order Paper for an indecent amount of time.It seems that the Minister of Consumer Affairs has a bit of difficulty getting his legislation through because we had exactly the same situation with the consumer credit legislation. Again that dragged on for a number of years despite being a really important and essential piece of legislation that we are now considering in the select committee. This bill itself and the consumer credit legislation are particularly important for New Zealand consumers at a time when many many families are struggling to make ends meet. The consequences of poor consumer decisions the consequences of rip-offs and the consequences of false advertising—all of those things are actually significant. Families do not have significant amounts of spare money. They need to be able to spend wisely and not be ripped off. But consumers have not been a priority for this National Government.Finally we are getting some progress and that is partly because there was a campaign. There actually had to be a campaign led by Consumer New Zealand to get this legislation moving. As it said in its magazine in February last year legislation was expected to be introduced into Parliament by the end of 2010 to align our consumer laws more closely with Australia’s. That did not happen. Consumer New Zealand went on in a piece this year where it started urging its members to put pressure on the Government to actually do something with this legislation. It said: “Once we had some of the best consumer laws in the world. But they are now outdated and there are significant gaps in consumer protection.”Having strong and relevant consumer legislation is important for not only consumers but also businesses so that everybody knows what the framework is that they are operating in. When this legislation was drafted after a review of our consumer legislation the Government touted it as legislation catching up with developments in consumer trends. Well the irony here is that it has languished for so long that it is probably out of date before it has even been passed because we know that this is an area where things do change fairly rapidly. If I again draw a link to the consumer credit legislation during the time that that has languished we have seen an absolute explosion of pay-day lenders a greater profile for mobile shops and truck shops and so on—since the time when there was the first review of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act. Things move quickly except for the legislation to protect consumers.The outcome of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs review has been a long time coming but we are pleased to say that there is progress being made with this bill. It has been a relatively robust process and there are good changes in there. But I just want to outline the time lines specifically because they are interesting. In 2009 the review wasinitiated. In June 2010 a discussion document was released. In April 2011 a bill was introduced in Parliament. In February 2012 there was its first reading. In October 2012 the bill was reported back from the Commerce Committee. In December of that year was the second reading. Now—almost a year later—we are doing the Committee stage. That must be some sort of record. It is incredible. It shows how bad the situation is. Almost a year has passed since the bill’s second reading.What does this bill do? Let us get on to this. The Consumer Law Reform Bill is an omnibus bill that amends the Fair Trading Act the Consumer Guarantees Act the Weights and Measures Act the Carriage of Goods Act the Sale of Goods Act and the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act. It repeals the Auctioneers Act the Door to Door Sales Act and the Layby Sales Act as well as the Unsolicited Goods and Services Act.The legislation is a major reform and will touch on a very broad range of businesses so obviously there will need to be some good clear information put out once we do get this legislation passed to ensure that both businesses and consumers are aware of these changes. Essentially some of the key changes are the introduction of new prohibitions on unfair contract terms and standard form consumer contracts under the Fair Trading Act an extension of the criteria before businesses may contract out of the Fair Trading Act and the Consumer Guarantee Act in business to business transactions the addition of a power for the Commerce Commission to compel individuals to attend interviews to provide evidence about possible fair trading offending—hopefully leading to greater compliance—and a provision making suppliers responsible under the Consumer Guarantees Act for goods that are sent by courier up to when the goods are delivered to the consumer. I am sure that my colleague Clare Curran will talk quite a bit about online trading so I am not going to go into that stage.Unfortunately I was not a member of the Commerce Committee but I know that it scrutinised this legislation very carefully and made a quite substantial number of changes in the legislation that I am sure we will talk about during the course of the Committee stage. We are dealing with the bill as one question but there are two parts in this legislation. The significant one is Part 1 which amends the various consumer laws that I have talked about. Part 2 provides for new auctioneers legislation.This legislation is important and it is long overdue but the other thing that I would like to really test here is the commitment to making this work. It is all very well to improve protections and rights for consumers but how are we going to make sure that people understand what those rights are? Also are we going to really put a lot of effort into assisting consumers with their rights?I would like to acknowledge at this point in my speech the work that is done by people like the citizens advice bureaux and budget advisory services because actually they end up being the de facto advocates for consumers in this country. There are many consumers who have no idea at all about their rights under our consumer legislation. In some ways if you have rights and you do not know about them it is almost the same as not having them. So there is a really important role here to ensure that with the passing of this legislation—when we finally get to that point—we put a lot of time and effort into widely disseminating information in an easily understandable form that tells consumers what their rights are under this legislation.It is in my mind worth thinking about whether there is more we could do to assist those consumers who may be particularly vulnerable. I would perhaps include in that group people for whom English is not their first language—and obviously a lot of the materials are produced in English. I would include in that group younger people perhaps and older people and people with mental health issues. There are many consumers who are actively ripped off perhaps more so in the consumer credit area. Iknow from being on the select committee that is currently looking at that legislation that certainly we are having many many examples being given to us of absolutely appalling behaviour. None the less for those vulnerable consumers generally it would be worth considering how we could better serve their needs. Certainly in the UK consumer advocates are specifically established as part of Government agencies to actively work with consumers. I think that that is something we should work on here as well.In conclusion for my contribution this time I do just want to—