Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Madam Chair. What a great contribution from our colleague Brett Hudson. I would like to congratulate the Minister in the chair Kris Faafoi who is my favourite Minister at the moment. I have no idea why he's not in Cabinet. He should be there. I think we'd vote for that—except that of course he won't be there long because we'll be back. I'd like to congratulate him for taking up the work that our excellent colleague the Hon Jacqui Dean did last year when she worked with me when I was dealing with the fuel price study that was undertaken into the price of petrol and diesel in New Zealand and the margins that were being charged by the fuel companies. The Hon Jacqui Dean undertook some very good work. Cabinet under the National-led Government last year agreed to a proposal which is essentially this bill plus Brett Hudson's Supplementary Order Paper 139. In other words the concerns were always around—those eloquently expressed by Mr Hudson—the ability of the Commerce Commission to undertake surveys and work and to get right into the detail of how pricing is being calculated and also around the profits involved and the supply of goods and services but at the same time remembering that the Commerce Commission is quite a blunt instrument. It is a very powerful organisation even now and to give it the powers that the Government wishes to do without any caveat or any responsibility to come back to a Minister or to a Cabinet about whether or not the Government wants to have that sort of extremely invasive and costly look at a market I think is a little dangerous.I say it's a little dangerous" because the cost involved to businesses and therefore to workers and therefore to everyone else who buys from those businesses tends to be extremely high. So this is not a power that should be undertaken lightly or because of a general gut feel. It should be based on whether or not there appears to be a serious issue that needs to be reviewed and looked at and got to the nub of. That is why I think it's quite important to bring this decision back to Cabinet to the Minister because Ministers in Cabinet are responsible to the people.The Commerce Commission is not elected. It is not responsible to the people. It's appointed by the Government of the day and once they're in there they're there until the end of the term. So what that really means is they're not going to have to answer all sorts of questions. They're not subject to questions in question time. They're not subject to the sorts of interrogation and holding to account that Governments are. So I think it is a very wise thing for the Government to adopt Supplementary Order Paper 139 which gives the Minister and therefore Cabinet a say in whether or not something goes ahead.The reason why we can do this without worrying about what this does to an individual business is that the Commerce Commission's market study powers would not apply to a single business but to a whole industry or a whole market and therefore it's not about deciding to interrogate down into one particular business but an entire area. Now the cost of that can be enormous. Time is money in business so the cost in time is enormous. The threats around this if someone gets things wrong when they're providing information can be enormous. So this is not a power to be used lightly. I would suggest to the Minister—who I am backing to have two years in Cabinet; I thought that was quite generous really—that he considers this because that would actually take away quite a lot of the concerns and the fears particularly of people in business who are wondering whether or not this is actually going to become an empire being built by the Commerce Commission without anybody being able to say "Hang on. This is really not OK and it's not what this Act is all about." So I would suggest he takes on that concern."