Muller ToddTODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. It's great to see that the Green Party and the ACT Party are still having the debate to my left. The mischievous part of me listening to that conversation thinks wouldn't it be hilarious to have a grand coalition postOctober just to see their faces as they seek to carve out for the New Zealand populace their vision of the future as they drag the centre-left party left and the centre-right party right. Well you know we're not Germany so that won't happen—as I said too mischievous for a long Tuesday afternoon.There is a clear philosophical difference when you sit and listen to this debate. I haven't sat through the select committee. But on the one hand you have an incumbent Government that looks at prices at the pump rising rapidly. We all understand a lot of that is driven by global forces but as has already been outlined there are significant taxes that get put on the top of that. Actually getting close to three bucks a litre is getting really tough for a lot of families so they create this sense that perhaps what's sitting beneath this is a cabal of oil companies that should be smashed. And so the Commerce Commission gets sent on the way to do some sniffing comes back with a view—some of which I think makes sense: there should be a bit more transparency with respect to the terminal gate price that gets adopted. But that's not good enough for this Labour Government; there needs to be a threat of regulation where a Minister can decide in the future if the prices are still high—and it's coming up to an election—to ask the commission to go and look again with the regulatory backstop of essentially a Government stepping into the market and saying this is what the price should be. And as has been articulated by many on this side of the House the Government stepping in and trying to decide what a market price should be is just a recipe for at the very least inefficiency but frankly worse than that: a whole lot of waste and additional cost for New Zealand businesses and society.And then when you look at the detail of the bill and actually test the thinking that sits behind here as we have sought to do through this process—and I appreciate we're in the third reading as opposed to clause by clause analysis but this clause struck me as interesting clause 29C which says that the terminal gate prices will be regulated or may be regulated when it is agreed or assumed by the Minister that the prices are above what would be expected in a competitive market. There's no confirmation of what that criteria would be. So what's above? Is it 5c above what everybody else is doing? Is it 10c? There is no logic apart from a subjective assessment which will be absolutely driven by a political determination by the Minister at the time. This is a political sensitive issue. Therefore let's create a regulatory impost to give the impression we're doing something but at the same time ignoring the fact that the great driver of wholesale prices is what's happening globally and that the impact on retail prices is the function of the various road excise and GST taxes—and emissions trading scheme (ETS) taxes—that actually inflate the petrol price to be quite a punitive and tough cost for a lot of New Zealand families. And that then sits at the core of the lack of logic in terms of the Government's approach because with the same breath they will talk about the leadership they are seeking to take with respect to climate change action but at the same time they will water down ETS settings will make sure that the price that arguably should be reflected at the price pump reflecting the cost of carbon in that vehicle—they will dilute that because of political pressure. So there's a lack of logic. There's a lack of coherence. And again we would say there is a far better area of focus that the Government should be working on which is sorting this economy and reducing the cost of living for New Zealanders.