Muller ToddTODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Well what a load of blah blah blah we have just listened to this afternoon. I mean really. I mean what are we doing having a conversation in this House about additional powers for the Commerce Commission to regulate petrol prices? We have already had a Commerce Commission review that occurred in 2018 and 2019. There are recommendations. The key recommendation that came from that was this requirement to ensure that petrol companies had to advertise the daily price at which they sell petrol to competing retailers because that was the piece that was missing in terms of forced transparency. So that got passed. We all supported it in the House. And guess what? Since that passed in 2020 there has been improvement in competition. There has been greater price disclosure. In fact there has been significant growth of NPD and Waitomo around the country. There is not a problem here in terms of no competition; there is more competition and there is more price disclosure and discretion. You would think that the Government might actually say Well actually we've done that job; we'll now turn our attention to"—I don't know—"building a road perhaps or building a house." It might actually fix law and order or do something that the rest of the country is actually screaming out for. Oh no. Now what we're going to do is we're going to have another process in which we're going to tie up Parliament time and tie up select committee time to see if there is an opportunity for the Commerce Commission to have powers under law to set petrol prices. What absolute nonsense. We had six submitters—six submitters—[Interruption] And here they are screaming at the back going "Oh but the petrol prices are too high." Yes. Let's talk about why petrol prices are high. Half of it is product cost. Forty percent of it is your—not your taxes Mr Speaker although I'm sure you like me find it very very irksome when you have to pay such a high petrol price. Half of it is product cost; the rest is excise tax and the carbon emissions trading scheme price. But this is their logic of it right? You cannot argue on one hand saying "Oh the reason we're doing this is because the petrol prices are high." Well the reason for that is because the product cost is high and we have a very high tax regime including 11c a litre more for those who have the privilege of crawling around in Auckland. But instead of actually acknowledging that that's the reason for the petrol price hikes this Government of course decides that what's actually required is even more process even more bureaucracy and actually creating the power for setting prices because regulating prices has always worked in this country! We have this long history of Governments and products that have worked so well when some Minister and bureaucrat somewhere says "Oh I know the better market price than what the market's showing; let me have a bit of that."! I mean sometimes I wonder: where did these guys go to school Mr Bennett? Where do these guys actually get some understanding around how the market works and how it's actually structured in New Zealand?Anna Lorck: I've had a lecture.TODD MULLER: Look we've already had a lecture—it was Deborah Russell before and I thought that tax response was fantastic! We're all far more elucidated because of that response earlier! But in all seriousness we have spent a huge amount of time on this in the House. It goes to select committee—we can't even agree; it's three all. We come back and the Minister gives—you know if you were listening you would try to follow—a sort of a broad assessment of why we're doing it. We do not need to do it. The competition is clear. NPD and Waitomo have been significantly spreading throughout the country. The Fuel Industry Act 2020 sorted the issue and got the disclosure that was necessary. This is just a Government who doesn't actually know how to get real things done but instead just obsesses and focuses on process and bureaucracy because it makes them feel good when they're in the middle of a bureaucratic process because it gives them a sense of progress. Well the rest of the country knows that on the things that matter they are a failure and in 140 days' time finally we can chuck this lot out and get some decent Government. Thank you very much."