McClay Todd: Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcClay Todd: Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 09 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:17113. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon TODD McCLAY (Minister of Revenue):I move that the question not be put because I want to intervene in this part of the debate on the Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill to talk about the principal Act the Electronic Transactions Act. I was not going to but when the Hon Chris Tremain spoke I was moved to as I am the person who climbed to the top of the ladder to get the paper copy of the Act to be able to come here and sit in the Chamber and read it. I am going to ask my colleague Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi to bring it over to me if he would because I very much believe it is quite important. He can take his time. I reckon that I have got 10 minutes in me for this part of the debate.The thing about this is that there will be members in this Chamber in the Opposition who were in Government at the time when this piece of legislation the principal Act went through who did not bother to read it back then. They would have taken part in the debate they would have been in the House they would have voted in favour of the principal Act and they did not read it. Today the hard-working member of Parliament Paul Goldsmith has brought in an amendment to the principal Act and I give you a guarantee Mr Chairman that there are members in this Chamber who were there in 2002—who were in Government at the time and who are now in Opposition—who did not read the Act back then. Now we have an important piece of legislation to amend the principal Act to fix some of the challenges and problems that Mr Goldsmith found in it and I am sure they still have not read the Act.I too would say that when I came here and had an opportunity to look at this draft piece of legislation I had not read it. That is why I went out the back and I climbed the ladder to the very top got this New Zealand Statutes 2002 Volume 2 at page 1217 and found the principal Act and started to read it. And do you know I think that any members from the Opposition who would take part in this debate who want to rush through this and are trying to get the Committee to vote on the different clauses before we are ready to who have not read this legislation the principal Act are doing themselves and the Committee a great disservice because it is a very weighty piece of history of what this New Zealand Parliament has done.When one looks at the bill Mr Goldsmith has brought before us it is not the largest piece of legislation we have had to debate on a members’ day. But when one looks at what he is trying to achieve and you take the different clauses in this and you come back to the principal Act it is clear that he has put great detail and thought into his legislation. It is clear that he at the same time has looked and found inadequacies in the legislation that was passed by a Labour Government in 2002 and that he genuinely comes here to fix them. He wants to make the lives of New Zealanders who are uncertain about their electronic transactions and the formation of contracts better by diminishing and taking away that uncertainty.I can say to my colleague that I was going to stop at the next bell anyway but what I can say to you Mr Chair is that that uncertainty that New Zealanders will be experiencing is unnecessary. Had the original movers of this legislation—some members opposite who are now in Opposition who were members of the Government in 2002 who voted on this legislation who would have made speeches in this House and who might not have read the legislation—read the legislation they could have moved Supplementary Order Papers. They could have improved it they could have spent the time that was needed in the Committee stage taken that extra bit of time in urgency to make the changes so that we would not have to be here today so that the House could be doing other business that may or may not be more important. But Mr Goldsmith has had a close look at the principal Act and Mr Goldsmith has found problems that are affecting New Zealanders and some members opposite did not take the time to get the legislation right and that is why we need to be here right now.Can I say to Paul Goldsmith I want to congratulate him on reading this lengthy piece of legislation. It actually is good legislation. It is detailed it is quite technical but the Labour Government did not get it right. I want to give members opposite the benefit of the doubt because members’ days are—what did the last speaker say about “jocularity” or something like that; we studied in different places—and it could well be that some of the challenges and some of the difficulties that Mr Goldsmith is fixing here with this legislation this year in our Parliament may not have been as obvious or as apparent in 2002. The world has changed. Many many more people are involved—Clause 3 agreed to.