Falloon AndrewANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you Madam Chair and I apologise to my senior colleague Brett Hudson. Look I just want to respond to Minister Faafoi for a moment because I think we've been reasonably clear—in fact very clear—this afternoon about what our position is. Our position is that we support the overall intent of the legislation. We support the legislation as it was drafted by the previous National Government. What we don't support are the changes that have been made to the legislation since the new Government's come in. We all support the bill because we do think that it is overall a worthy piece of legislation but we don't support some of the aspects around it that don't provide for democratic oversight of decisions made by the Commerce Commission and that leads me to my point that I want to make to begin with. In my previous contribution I spoke largely around petrol tax and I guess the reason that the Government's brought this legislation to the committee this afternoon. But just at the end of my last contribution I was making a point in support of Brett Hudson's Supplementary Order Paper 139 around why we should require the Commerce Commission to come to the Minister and seek his approval before they go off and do their market study. I pointed to new section 51E inserted by clause 4 which says that a Minister must respond to a competition report. So the bill as it stands already acknowledges that the Minister plays a fundamental role in this process that the Commerce Commission has to come back with their report hand it to the Minister and the Minister has to respond. All we're asking is that that process is I guess frontloaded where the Commerce Commission has to come to the Minister to begin with to seek his approval to go off and do a market study.That leads me to a couple of questions I have for the Minister. Again he's been very good at answering our questions this afternoon. The first one is particularly where the Commerce Commission have gone off and decided that they want to hold these market studies themselves will the Minister or will the Commerce Commission put a limit on time? As we've heard from the Prime Minister recently in relation to petrol tax this is an urgent issue apparently—this is an urgent issue. Well our concern on this side of the Chamber is that all they are doing is kicking it down the road. These market studies could take a year two years three years or more and all the Government will have to do during that time is say Oh yes we're holding a review. We've got this market study; the Commerce Commission is looking into it." and it won't actually report back until potentially the next term of Government.The second question I have for the Minister is in relation to scope and again I'll use petrol as an example. If the Government pushes ahead with their plan for a market study on petrol which I think is not a silly idea—if they do do that—will they put a limit on the scope of that inquiry to certain players in the industry? What we're worried about is some of those smaller businesses particularly petrol stations—and let's be fair individual petrol stations don't really have a lot of say over what the price of petrol is. Will the Commerce Commission start knocking on the door of the Allenton gas station in Ashburton and say "You need to turn over all of your records. You need to turn over your books. Tell us what your business is. Tell us what your margin is." because that would be quite a frightening experience for a lot of small business owners.Exactly the same goes for the dairy industry. I know Minister Jones across there has had a lot of words to say about Fonterra which is fair enough—he's entitled to those views. But our concern is that if he wants to go off and make those statements about the dairy industry that might force the Commerce Commission into undertaking a study into the dairy industry and if there was going to be one of those studies what would be the parameters of that? Would it be a focus on Fonterra? Would it be a focus on farmers? Would you have the Commerce Commission turning up to dairy farms and saying "Turn over your records."? Would it be the Commerce Commission turning up to your corner dairy and saying "Turn over your records. We want to know what your margin is on a litre of blue top milk."?I also have another very brief question to ask the Minister which is just in relation to new section 51C which relates to consultation on a draft competition report. In new section 51C(2) it says that "In preparing its final report the Commission must have regard to any comments received on the [final] draft". My question to him is: when it says "must have regard to" what does that mean in terms of if there are factual inaccuracies in the report? "Must have regard" can mean "Oh yes we'll listen to you but we don't really care what you have to say."My final point in this five-minute address is just I guess the overall signal that this legislation sends. Shane Jones again has made lots of comments about Fonterra he's made lots of comments about supermarkets—just this afternoon he's been making all sorts of comments about banks. Is this going to be a vehicle for Shane Jones and the Minister to go off—[Time expired]"