Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Chair for this opportunity to speak on Part 3 of this bill here talking about enforceable undertakings. People tuning into this broadcast might be wondering what on earth an enforceable undertaking is. Well it's a mechanism that allows particular industries or businesses to reach an out-of-court settlement as opposed to going through a very large long and incredibly expensive court process in relation to company law in relation to competition. So it's a cost-effective enforcement tool as it can be used by a regulator to resolve alleged breaches of the law without asking the court to find a breach and impose a penalty. You can imagine—Kieran McAnulty: We know.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well thank you very much. I'm glad that you understand it but people outside might not have had a chance to consider this possibility.So what we're looking for here is the opportunity for New Zealand businesses to deal with the Commerce Commission in a way that doesn't necessarily involve three months of very painful court work and at colossal expense. What we're trying to achieve is a competition framework that allows New Zealand consumers to have access to robustly competitive industries in whichever field of endeavour that they are dealing with whether it's supermarkets when buying their groceries or fuel or airports—you name it—so that we have a good system in place so that New Zealand consumers can get a fair go. This is part of the process.The balance that we're trying to achieve is having those rules in place and having them robustly enforced by the Commerce Commission so that New Zealand consumers are getting a fair deal and getting the best bang for their buck and at the same time having a clear and transparent rules-based system so that New Zealand businesses who are investing and going into business can feel like they have a high degree of confidence that they know what the rules are and they know how to be on the right side of the rules so that they can make investments and be confident that they are going to get something back for that investment. That's the basis of all decent business.I suppose it comes back to the point that I was making earlier: it all does rely on that discipline within Government and around the way that it conducts itself. What we saw last week was the Prime Minister acting as judge and jury on the question of fuel prices where she said and declared in thunderous tones that New Zealanders are being fleeced and I've come to that conclusion based on whatever evidence I have. Then we'll go and get the Commerce Commission to look at it but I've already made the decision." Not only was it the Prime Minister but also the Minister of Transport and also the Attorney-General answering on behalf of the Minister of Energy and Resources. When all these Cabinet Ministers and the Prime Minister have concluded something before they have even asked the question that doesn't lead to a high degree of certainty in the broader business community.The only point I would make is that this particular part here this provision that's being brought in in Part 3 around enforceable undertakings is a useful addition to the law so that everybody can have a chance to deal with issues of contention in a manner that is sustainable from an economic point of view particularly in a country such as ours where most businesses are small businesses and we don't have colossal resources at our fingertips. So that all makes good sense but it does rely on a broader discipline within which we are operating around the conduct of our political system in relation to the legal system when it comes to competition law.So the question I would ask the Minister is: can he reassure us that the Government that he is a member of will continue to act with good discipline—well not continue to act with good discipline but actually will reflect upon the manner with which it has operated over the past few weeks and give us that assurance that they will actually let the law take its course in an appropriate way? I leave that for the Minister to consider."