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:6876] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: I rise on behalf of the ACT party to consider the commencement date of the Consumer Protection (Definitions of Goods and Services) Bill. This is the bill that does what the drafters of the Consumer Guarantees Act deliberately decided not to do back in 1993: it overextends what might have been a good idea for a standard form of contract for consumer services whereby consumers would have been able to shop around into areas where in effect the service has to be universal. The introduction of this bill should be deferred because it will have so many unintended effects. 
Although the Minister in the chair the Hon Judith Tizard may not be knitting today I am quite sure that she cannot have paid much attention to this bill. She cannot have considered that there will be a host of unintended consequences when the bill commences like that faced by the “People’s Republic of Christchurch” in its recycling scheme under the Consumer Guarantees Act. The Christchurch worthies set up a recycling scheme which was running in very good order until someone found that with the whiteware and other products that were being recycled with volunteer labour—and indeed the volunteers were eventually being paid for their labour—they fell foul of the so-called consumer protection laws. They could not satisfy the after-sales service requirement they could not give a warranty as to merchantable quality and even though people were perfectly prepared to take the risk of low quality in return for low price they were not allowed under that so-called consumer protection law to contract out of the obligations that simply could not be satisfied by a recycling scheme. 
I urge the Minister to take the National Party amendments seriously. She may consider that they are just intended to harass or to reduce or defer the inevitable but the inevitable might mean for example that the Minister could get a chance for local authorities to look at whether their ratepayers really do want to have a one-size-fits-all warranty slapped across the supply of water. Local authorities should have an opportunity to deal with what this bill requires—to go out to the consumers and to give them a full description of the risks they face so that the reasonable consumer will not be fronting up and claiming a guarantee or an obligation on the part of the local authority the electricity supplier or the gas supplier that is far more expensive to everyone than they would ever have dreamt of. 
If this bill’s commencement were to be deferred it would allow the principal Act the Consumer Guarantees Act to operate in the way that has been contemplated which would mean that the suppliers could go out and use some of the exceptions in the Act. For example they could make a statement about the goods on any packaging or labelling or a representation about the goods that would notify the consumer of any defects that may have been specifically drawn to their attention by the manufacturer. Is the Minister comfortable that local authorities and the other suppliers of those services have had an opportunity to consider those exceptions given that this bill was introduced back in 2001 that it sat waiting as a slogan all that time that it had a pathetic consideration by a very weak select committee to which the smartest and brightest members were too busy to turn up and that there is no urgency— 
Hon Harry Duynhoven 
: Who are the smartest and brightest? 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Obviously the Hon Richard Prebble. He was too busy to turn up. 
The select committee has not properly grappled with the issues that were raised in submissions. If this bill were to be deferred long enough for the people who will become subject to it—and for those who in turn will get the cost of an overreach in the guarantee—to go through and make sure that all their standard-form contracts labelling warnings and defect descriptions were in order there would be advantage to everyone.