White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): It's a pleasure to rise in support of this bill. I'd like to extend first of all my congratulations to Melissa Lee assuming that this will go through. She has been my competitor in Mt Albert and I have a great deal of warmth towards her. She's a good friend and I'm pleased that this has come through for her. I'd also like to congratulate Dan Bidois who has just had a baby—and I didn't catch the name but I'll definitely be finding out—Tom Rutherford: Noah.HELEN WHITE: Noah—congratulations to Dan and his wife. That's really lovely. I'm sure he's just feeling the full effects of the train that just ran over him!I now want to turn to the subject of this bill and why the Labour Party is supporting it. I want to contrast it a little bit with the surprise I got—that ACT isn't supporting a bill like this. It is interesting that that's where the line is for a party like ACT because this is in a way all about freedom and it's about consumer rights. I would have thought there was some common ground there and I'm disappointed that we aren't in a unanimous position on a bill like this.This is a bill about gift cards where people pay real hard cash and then they find that they can't use it anymore. I along with the majority of people on the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee accept that there are limits and there are balances to be found. People in the in the select committee agreed that three years was a reasonable time for an expiry in a bill like this because people at some point need to get it off their books. That's a commercial reality. But before that time we decided it was not reasonable for people to have these cards expire. Consumer New Zealand had done research in 2022 and they'd found that there were a lot of losses to real-life people and right now those are real-life losses. They are real. When we talk about the cost of living if in fact somebody has petrol vouchers that they can't renew that's not fair it's not reasonable and it's a total windfall to somebody to be able to bank money that they have taken and they've had the use of and then not actually give the product.Now I'm going to tell a little story I told my colleagues in the select committee about an event that happened to me because I think it's important to another part of the bill. My ex-husband bought me a balloon voucher and I was to go on the hot air balloon—Tom Rutherford: Hot air balloon?HELEN WHITE: A hot air balloon. It was pretty glamorous and I was pretty excited and it cost quite a lot of money. I never got to use that voucher because every time I called the balloon company I was told that there was bad weather and I wouldn't be able to use it. I had little babies and I would arrange my life around this damn thing so I would have a babysitter and I would be doing the hard yards. Now imagine Dan Bidois in that position right now. He's got the baby he's arranged the babysitter and the balloon doesn't go up. And actually in that scenario three years is not a very long time. I never got to use the voucher I never got the experience and there was no comeback on that company because there were expiries involved. And actually it's not a very long time for a large amount of money like that.We came to a point where we were talking in the bill about penalties and what should apply in this situation. The recommendation was actually quite low penalties and one of the contributions I made was to say no the penalties need to be significant here. This is stuff that will be used and will be calculated. If people do not comply with the law as we make it then they should be up for a decent penalty here. And we've got a penalty in which was the original penalty that had been drafted in and it was $10000 for a person and $30000 for a company that exploits this because people do unfortunately exploit these things and we need to make sure that these fines are real for people.One of the things that I am looking at at the moment actually is the issue around white collar fraud. It costs this country so much more not tenfold hundredfold more than benefit fraud—white collar fraud. So we have to always look at our penalties and our fines and make sure that it does not pay to be duplicitous to be fraudulent. When something like this comes up we need to take it seriously.One of the contributions that we made as the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee was to make sure that this is not a wet bus ticket. This will be complied with. People will take it seriously and they'll remember the consumer. They'll remember that it's hard earned. And when that happened when I had little children it was actually quite a big deal to my family because it was worth about $500. And it really did rob a family of something else—it robbed them of an experience. And it hurt us. I hope that the ACT Party remembers that there will be people way more hurt than that because it will be grocery vouchers and it will be petrol vouchers and it will be the grandma who scraped the money together and bought the prezzie card. And all those things are now covered and I'm glad for that.So I don't think this is the biggest law in the world but I think we can see that it's an important definer of our values. It is remembering ordinary people and the price they pay and remembering that it's not about big business.I will just have a look here and read you what the differing view is of the ACT Party on this. They say ACT believes that we must leave it to businesses to decide the length of their gift cards or vouchers to allow them to manage their services or offerings to meet the market demand and their changing circumstances." I'd ask the people here tonight who are from ACT to think: in that situation how does that work for the grandma who has paid the money for the present card? How does it work for the person who has the petrol voucher? How is the balance struck in this situation if this is what we do?I think the people who are supporting this bill tonight have something to contribute in terms of reminding all the parties in this House that this is not a religion; this is a pragmatic place. The role of Government is sometimes to come in and go "Nah. Yeah nah. That's not going to happen. That's not actually businesses managing themselves legitimately; that's people—sometimes shysters—pushing it too far." So we need to put consumers first.I am pleased to support this bill because it puts consumers first. It strikes a balance. It talks about three years which I think is about right. It strikes a balance. We need to set aside some of the ideologies that we have and think—absolutely with common sense—about what will matter to our thriving businesses and what will matter to our people in New Zealand what will matter to their wellbeing. That's an important thing for us to remember that we have in common. I would ask that all of us consider that tonight. I am very pleased to be in the majority in the select committee report and I commend this bill to the House."