Wong Pansy: Third Readings 
Wong Pansy: Third Readings 
[Volume:635;Page:6539] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 This is legislation that proposes incremental and minor improvements to the reduction of business compliance costs. It streamlines the various provisions in the business law area and National—and the public as well I believe—has come to appreciate small concessions from the Labour Government when we can get them because they are better than nothing. 
All the Minister’s talk and all the Government’s talk about economic transformation is unfortunately not backed up by this legislation or by the numerous pieces of commercial legislation that have come before the House—legislation that seems to consist of incremental changes. Some changes in the area of employment law are significant improvements to the business operating environment and were requested particularly by small and medium-sized businesses which the Minister continues to champion and which make up 92 percent of New Zealand’s business. The majority of those businesses requested a 90-day litigation period for employers to enable them to give an opportunity for work to new staff and new graduates to people who had had no previous work experience and to new migrants. But the Government turned the request down. 
Businesses also asked for clarification to change the confusing holiday provision not to mention the provisions of the Resource Management Act. But none of those significant improvements as requested by businesses is evident in the bills being passed in that direction. The outcry of those businesses in terms of increased compliance costs—taxes fees etc—seems so far to have fallen on deaf ears. But that is reality and unfortunately businesses have to come to terms with having low expectations and have to accept what little incremental improvement we can extract from the Government. 
A further example of this Government’s anti-business attitude was shown by the passage of the insolvency law reform legislation. It is opportune today that I relate all this business law to that legislation as well. The centrepiece of the insolvency legislation was the introduction by the Government of the so-called voluntary administration scheme where creditors can come together and agree to freeze outstanding debts to allow an entity to work out of a financially difficult situation. 
A hundred percent of submitters came before the Commerce Committee to say that unless the special privilege enjoyed by the Inland Revenue Department was addressed—with regard to the position that it could have a preferential claim on outstanding deductions such as GST and PAYE—then the scheme would not work. But when it came to the crunch the Labour Government chose to protect the Inland Revenue Department instead of standing alongside business—particularly small and medium-sized businesses which the Minister claimed to champion. The Government was very defensive of its position of making sure that tax revenue would not be affected by the loss of that privileged position of the Inland Revenue Department yet we learn from the department that even with that protected position it claims back only $5 million a year. So it is disappointing that once again we are consigned to supporting legislation that consists of very low ambition or expectation for the business community in terms of reducing compliance costs or creating an environment of economic transformation. 
All those exaggerated claims by the Minister of Commerce Lianne Dalziel about conducting a vertical horizontal and dynamic review of regulatory frameworks are nothing but—once again—hot air when the House is passing yet more legislation that makes only minute incremental changes. Maybe the Minister was indeed embarrassed by this legislation which consists of only timid incremental changes and that is why at the last minute she decided to inject some excitement into the process by cutting through the public consultation phase of the select committee deliberation. She wanted to bring in a Supplementary Order Paper that would have introduced major changes to the Takeovers Code in order to tackle the issue of why some entities choose to use the scheme of arrangement under the Companies Act rather than the amalgamation provision under the Takeovers Panel jurisdiction when a merger situation occurs. 
Well this Minister should not be complaining too loudly or crying wolf about the fact that National refused to be at her beck and call to undermine the select committee process. Labour believes it is above the law; National is here to uphold the law and to defend the public’s right to make submissions to the select committee. We learnt that earlier this year the Takeovers Panel carried out a public consultation over a short 10 days and it did not receive an overwhelming endorsement from the commerce sector with regard to the proposed changes. Indeed this Minister was on the record in  
Hansard  
as saying that a 10-day consultation was hardly a proper process. She turned down a request for us to cooperate in that instance and she duly delivered a lecture on the importance of following the proper parliamentary process whereby submitters have the right to present their arguments and engage in robust debate through the select committee process. National endorses that point and that is why it turned down the Minister’s last-minute introduction of the Supplementary Order Paper which would not have given the public an opportunity to present their arguments. 
Lindsay Tisch 
: It’s outside the scope of the legislation too. 
PANSY WONG 
: By the way the National Party’s pride and joy the hard-working up-with-the-play senior whip has very correctly pointed out that that particular Supplementary Order Paper was totally out of the scope of this legislation. Therefore to introduce something that was outside the scope of the legislation at that late stage was not acceptable. 
But I point out how cooperative National is when it comes to improving the environment for economic activities. The chair of the Commerce Committee Katherine Rich actually offered to accept that Supplementary Order Paper provided we were allowed to have a limited consultation because after all only a confined sector is involved in the takeover type of activity so it would not have been a very difficult process. We agreed to accept the Supplementary Order Paper subject to our being able to invite those relevant submitters to come to the select committee for us to hear them because it was a very technical issue. Well the Minister would not have a bar of that. She simply wanted to ram the Supplementary Order Paper through the Committee stage then pass it into law. 
National wants to make it very clear that it is a responsible Opposition party. We will support positive and sensible changes even though they are not ambitious and will not lead to economic transformation but we will never be bullied into undermining the parliamentary process just because the Minister and the Government are announcing themselves as being above the law and proper process. National supports this legislation and we will support further legislation that consists of logical—even incremental—positive changes.