Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. This morning I was invited actually to an event in Dunedin from Waitomo fuels who opened two service stations in Dunedin and unfortunately I wasn't able to attend because of my parliamentary commitments. But I did receive their media release this morning. Andrew Bayly: Hard-working MP.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: That's right—hard-working MP. Somebody's got to keep democracy running. Certainly this Government doesn't appear to be doing much about it. I want to quote though from the press release that Waitomo sent out about the impact of their entry into the Dunedin market on the fuel price down there. It says We entered the Wellington market over 12 months ago and prices have dropped by up to 30 cents. As soon as we announced we were coming to Christchurch a year ago prices also dropped instantly. Now we're seeing the same behaviour from our competitors in Dunedin—we reckon an 8-cent drop since our announcement." So if we needed any further evidence of the fact that the thing that is going to moderate fuel prices the most it is the entry of competitors into the market and my party strongly supports it. There is a corollary to that though. In my professional experience over a long period one of the things that marks out commodities like fuel like milk things like that is that from a competition perspective pure competition and pure collusion look exactly the same. The prices go up and down almost immediately in pure competition because they want to be able to compete on price. But where there is collusion they do the same thing. And the reality is—and the Commerce Commission would probably accept this—that it's very very difficult to tell the difference between pure competition and pure collusion. I frankly don't think that anything in this bill—another lazy bill from the Government which lays out a broad aspiration and then leaves two features. It leaves a lot to regulations to be written and as my colleague and friend Jonathan Young said the possibility that a further bill needs to be brought back to this House in the next Parliament to give effect to some of its measures. But at the very least it's going to require regulations that may not see further scrutiny of this bill. That's the first feature. And the second feature of course as Mr Young mentioned is the rushed select committee process. Now the answer from Dr Russell to that criticism was to say "Oh well we had a Commerce Commission report and officials supported it." Well here's the reality. The Commerce Commission are not accountable to the New Zealand public; we are. We are responsible for the legislation that we pass not the Commerce Commission good people though they are. We also need to hear from those people who are going to be affected by that legislation and what they said when they came to the Finance and Expenditure Committee was that this is being rushed. As was mentioned the Prime Minister has said that consumers are being fleeced at the pump. Well actually that may have been the case some years ago but it doesn't appear to be the case now. According to the submissions by Z from 2016 to 2018 Z returns as calculated by them went from 12 percent to 10 percent. Last year they declined to 8.5 percent and this year they're forecasting around 7 percent. That's hardly the sorts of margins that one would expect from organisations that are fleecing their consumers. But if anybody is actually fleecing the consumer it's the New Zealand Government because they are the ones that are imposing the biggest contribution to the price of fuel at the pump through its motor vehicle fuel excise. And of course in Auckland they are absolutely being fleeced by the regional fuel tax which has collected over a quarter of a billion dollars and less than half of that has actually been spent on its intended effects. So if the Government was truly truly keen to ensure that motorists aren't being fleeced at the pump they would be a little easier on them in respect of the punitive taxes that have been imposed on them by this Government. We do support this bill but we are concerned both at the haste and at the lack of consultation. And I have no doubt that we will be back here making improvements to it when the National Government is elected on 19 September."