Curran Clare: Commerce Commission (International Co-operation and Fees) Bill — First Reading 
Curran Clare: Commerce Commission (International Co-operation and Fees) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:663;Page:11267] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 Firstly I would like to commend my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel for her work on the Commerce Commission (Co-operation and Fees) Bill—a Labour bill—which is part of a work programme supporting the memorandum of understanding on business law coordination with Australia as my colleague across the House has mentioned. I think it is important to acknowledge that this bill was originally a Labour bill. It is about mutual cooperation and it has been a long time coming with the issue first being discussed by commerce Ministers of New Zealand and Australia in 2003. The bill was initially introduced by my colleague the Hon Lianne Dalziel as Minister of Commerce on 9 September 2008. It has since been taken up by the present Minister of Commerce Simon Power which is a good thing. 
The bill will directly benefit New Zealand businesses and consumers and will promote open and dynamic markets as other speakers have mentioned. I am pleased to see that the Government is progressing with this bill. It extends Labour’s work towards supporting a single economic market with Australia. It aligns us with Australia which passed similar legislation in 2007 and also complements the Trans-Tasman Proceedings Bill currently before the Justice and Electoral Committee which focuses on the enforcement stage of regulation. 
Specifically this bill provides for the Commerce Commission to use its statutory powers to assist overseas competition through a consumer regulator with an investigation. It also sets out how the commission can share compulsorily acquired information to assist overseas commission and consumer regulators. It also streamlines agency investigations into unfair trading practices and anti-competitive behaviour which I think we all know is becoming increasingly important in the global marketplace. It also strengthens the commission’s ability to share information and provide investigative assistance which will make overseas regulators more likely to help us. It is this mutual assistance that will ultimately promote the operation of a fair and effective market between the two countries which is good for both consumers and businesses. 
The bill also makes minor amendments to require the commission to make refunds where appropriate and allow for fair exemptions for particular groups including small businesses. Both the Commerce Commission and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission have advised that the constraints on cooperation are impeding trans-Tasman investigations. 
I note that in his speech to the House the Minister raised a couple of issues that he would like the Commerce Committee to consider and I will reiterate those. One of them relates to whether it ought to be a requirement to have a full cooperation arrangement Government to Government as the basis for the sharing of information and investigative assistance with the overseas regulator. The issue is whether it is necessary for that Government to Government arrangement to be in place or to have a lesser form of arrangement that might be looked at. 
The other issue is in relation to exempting classes of persons from the requirement to pay any fee prescribed for in an application. As my colleague the chair of the Commerce Committee mentioned that was interesting because when she was the Minister for Small Business she took every opportunity to make compliance costs more manageable for the small to medium sized enterprise sector recognising that sometimes compliance costs could be disproportionate when dealing with a smaller entity that simply did not have the economies of scale of some of the larger entities. So that meant that the idea of having an exemption by regulation written into the legislation could be a fair way of allowing for that to occur and for allowing for adjustments over time. Those two issues will be looked at by the Commerce Committee. 
The Commerce Commission already has four existing cooperation agreements in place with Australia Canada the United Kingdom and Taiwan. These provide for cooperation on certain matters including coordinating enforcement activities and exchanging non-compulsorily acquired information—that is with the consent of the providing party. The bill acknowledges that without compulsorily acquired information being able to be shared mutual cooperation is somewhat limited and these existing arrangements will be likely to be amended to incorporate the new proposed powers. 
The bill amends the Commerce Act 1986 the Credits Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003 and the Fair Trading Act 1986. Ultimately the reasons for the legislation are that the international nature of transactions and territorial limits on regulators are making it increasingly desirable for regulators to cooperate to manage competition and consumer effects of transactions on domestic markets. The Commerce Commission is currently constrained from providing investigative assistance and compulsorily acquired information that it holds to the overseas regulators. The commission’s statutory powers of compulsion can be used only in relation to enforcement and adjudication within New Zealand. So there are also legal restraints on the provision to overseas regulators of confidential compulsorily acquired information that was already held by the commission which in turn limits the willingness of overseas regulators to provide assistance to our Commerce Commission as cross-jurisdictional assistance needs to be based on mutual assistance. 
Most overseas regulators consider the likelihood of reciprocity as a factor in determining whether to provide assistance or information to the commissioner and at present our Commerce Commission cannot pass on to overseas regulators any information acquired using its compulsory powers. Labour believes that this bill will ultimately enable genuine cooperation between the Commerce Commission and equivalent overseas regulators. 
I commend the work that the Hon Lianne Dalziel has done on this bill and also the current Minister of Commerce Simon Power for taking it forward. I look forward to its passage to the Commerce Committee.