Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Madam Speaker. This is legislation that the National Party has decided to support. We decided that proposed new section 36 Misuse of market power was important in particular in relation to changing or amending the provisions around taking advantage of that power for an anti-competitive purpose.Let's be real about this. Supermarkets have been doing this stuff for years and this Government actually hasn't done anything about it and nor did ours but what we didn't do was shut down small businesses during the COVID lockdowns and force everybody to go and use the two big supermarket chains which is what happened. And so the very people who are now saying Oh we're going to do something about it." I'm sorry you didn't save the small butchers you didn't save the small grocers what you did do is you helped the big supermarkets—Helen White: You would have left it all open would you? Is that what would have happened?Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —become even less competitive. And yes we would have fixed it because we're not a bunch of incompetents when it comes to business.Helen White: And people would have died—a lot more people would have died.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: When I look at the Commerce Act—I have no idea who that person is speaking through the mask because I can't see who it is. But what I know is that the Commerce Act—I was actually practising law when the Commerce Act was brought in. It's not that old you see.Hon Dr David Clark: 1986—not so long ago.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Exactly 1986 and I did a paper for my air and space subject for my masters in this and I did it on what the Commerce Act was going to do to the airline industry and it was absolutely right which was it was going to increase competition in a market that had been absolutely devoid of competition. You might have noticed more competition brings prices down better customer service brings people to understand that the customer is right not the business itself. And that is why we do need to change some of this behaviour.But we also see this behaviour happening in the Resource Management Act in terms of the behaviour of supermarkets and others—the big giants who object to some competition anywhere near them. What other industry gets away with this—what other industry? And the answer is there isn't any. This is a piece of legislation that is needed but do not think for a moment that it is going to solve all these issues.We need a competitive nature in this country. We're sitting around as a country competing against ourselves when we should be competing against the world. And there are only a few industries where we really do compete against the world. Even then we become complacent. Even then we think that market's always going to be there. Even then we don't understand that we are paying in New Zealand far more than what people are paying in for instance Australia.I read just recently about a woman who went online and she had Amazon deliver her groceries to her at less than what they are in New Zealand to go down to the supermarket. And that's the next thing that I'm going to try because frankly if that can happen then it's simply not good enough to continue to rark up the prices. And I understand the minimum wage has gone up all of this affects the profitability of the supermarkets. All this affects the profitability of every business but I'm fully aware too that we shouldn't be taking ourselves as fools on this. It is simply not good enough.And this Government is now saying well they're going to do something about it finally. We started off the process of it; they've finally decided to do something. We're happy to support them to do it but let's not kid ourselves. This is not going to be the game changer we think it's going to be. The Commerce Commission is under-resourced it is not high powered enough to take on some of this work and we do need to actually sit back and say "Why are we continuously going down this path of enabling big players to take out the smaller players in the market to take away all the competition that there is?" And we turn around and say "Oh well this is going to fix it."It ain't going to fix it until the Government stops doing things like shutting down small businesses. Treating the local butcher—and I'm thinking about the butcher that we use. Treating that local butcher during that Auckland lockdown as though he is the problem and yet you can go along to the Australian-owned supermarket and go in and buy their meat. Now what was wrong? What was going on there? And the answer is big Government thought it knew how to deal with this because it had no wish to deal with small players it had no wish to treat those people as though they are responsible people. They have to already follow hygiene procedures they are all licenced they have to do all these things well and yet the big Government just like talking to the big business because they can shut out the little people—didn't have to deal with them didn't care about them. That's why small businesses are saying they're never going to vote Labour again."