Curran Clare: Consumer Law Reform Bill — First Reading 
Curran Clare: Consumer Law Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker and I would like to add my congratulations on your re-election to the august position of Deputy Speaker. This is my first speech in the House this term and I would like to welcome all the new members here as well. 
I note the views expressed previously by my colleagues and by colleagues across the House about the importance of the Consumer Law Reform Bill and its status as a kind of bipartisan measure. There seems to be a lot of agreement around it which I think is a really good thing because ultimately it is about consumers about providing more protections for consumers and about bringing the protections up to date. So I would like to make a few comments about that and about what some of the implications of that are particularly with regard to the new technology—or not-so-new technology—about the encroachment of the online environment in our lives generally and about the importance of bringing legislation up to date across the spectrum which is essentially what this piece of legislation is doing. 
Before I do that though I would like to make special mention of where this bill came from along the lines of my colleague Lianne Dalziel. This bill has been a long time coming to the House and it probably should have been brought before the House well before now. I would like to make special mention of the previous Minister of Consumer Affairs John Boscawen in this area and of the work that he did on that. I know that my colleague Lianne Dalziel talked about Heather Roy’s contribution but I would like to acknowledge Mr Boscawen’s contribution and his commitment to these issues and also to the quality of the work around what underpins this bill I suppose around the importance of the wider spectrum of consumer law reform and also the seriousness with which I know the Commerce Committee will take it. We will be looking at it from a range of different perspectives and I am really looking forward to doing that particularly with regard to the impact of the consumer issues on the online environment and the special challenges that that raises. 
I would also like to make mention given that the previous speakers talked about it of the importance of balance and fairness in the legislation. Although I absolutely agree with them on that it did sound as if there was somehow a potential conflict between the importance of protecting consumers and the enabling of innovation to occur and business to get done. In regard to this particular bill I do not agree. I actually think that it is pretty clear that consumers and good law protecting consumers are what drive good business. Having strong and relevant consumer legislation is important for both consumers and business but it is good consumer legislation that is ultimately good for business and I think that is the important point to make here. If you have got good consumer legislation then you are going to have consumers who are able to make purchases in an environment that they know and trust and you are going to have good laws around them that are going to deal with the issues that should not be arising particularly the issues that should not be arising in this day and age around how people are purchasing more and more online and how people are purchasing more and more products in environments where they should not be being ripped off. So financial literacy is obviously an issue around that but to my mind we should be coming at this from the perspective of providing those things and putting things such as financial literacy and protections for consumers in place in order to ensure that consumer confidence will drive more consumer purchasing. Ultimately that is what I believe lies behind this. 
So with that frame in mind that is how I believe that the select committee should be looking at this piece of legislation. And when you are talking about principles I think the committee should be asking itself in the decisions that it is making whether if it is going to be good for consumers then it will be good for business. I think that is a good starting point to take. 
With that in mind I would like to mention a couple of pieces in the bill around the changes that are proposed. I would just like to refer back to what I think was Todd McClay’s point around the fact that consumer law reform was one of the 120 points of the Government’s economic plan. I have to say that is the first time I have heard that phrase and I was wondering to myself what the other 119 were and whether there was a list of them somewhere because that would be— 
Michael Woodhouse 
: Yes there are; they’re on the website. Go and have a look. 
CLARE CURRAN 
: There is? Good. On the website? 120 points? Good. I heartily agree that consumer law reform is a very important part of a wider economic plan and it was good to know that such an economic plan exists. Perhaps the fact that is has got 120 points in it is a reason why people have not really got their heads around what it actually all means. However one of those things is around as I have said closing those loopholes around allowing unscrupulous traders to get away with avoiding their obligations and having a responsible approach to the online environment. And I would just like to say that I would expect that the important and emerging new businesses that we have in New Zealand in that online environment—it would be good if we had more and perhaps consumer law reform might help drive confidence in that area around more businesses being developed—for example TradeMe which has been used today in the House as an example and other reputable organisations already take a responsible view on these things. But the traders that operate through TradeMe do not always and having those laws to prevent that kind of behaviour happening is good. 
I would just like to refer to Consumer New Zealand and the work it has done on this and its signalling this as a significant issue at least 2 years ago—more than 2 years ago—where it said that it believed that unscrupulous traders were exploiting a legal loophole in online auctions. And I would just like to make reference to that because I actually think that that is hopefully one of the things that this legislation will address. Just to explain exactly what that means for people—because no doubt there have been many of us who have gone on to TradeMe and made purchases—you may not know that if you are clicking on the “buy me” button then you are protected under consumer law but if you are pressing on the button that is called “starting bid” then you are not. That is an issue. I mean it is a simple issue and hopefully things like that will be addressed through this legislation and a lot more protection for consumers will be provided. So I think that is really important. 
And while we are talking about the importance of consumer confidence I would like to just quickly make mention of another issue which is not directly related to this legislation but hopefully will be addressed as part of the 120-point economic plan—that is the protection for consumers who are buying and likely to be buying a lot more of the products and services associated with ultra-fast broadband. I see that there is a new survey that has just been done about how people are more likely to take up products if they have got high video content attached to them. The questions I have are: how can they be reassured that they are paying a competitive price for those products and services and how can they be reassured that they are not going to be ripped off by monopoly pricing? Those are issues that really do need to be addressed and I hope the Government will be looking at them as well.