Salesa Jenny; O'Connor GregHon JENNY SALESA (Labour—Panmure-Ōtāhuhu): E te Māngai o te Whare tēnā koe and I'm really pleased to be debating the Fair Trading (Gift Card Expiry) Amendment Bill tonight. This is a really good bill. Overall it seeks to protect consumers from losing the value of their gift cards due to short expiry periods and I believe that this should promote fairer and more transparent business practices. I'd like to congratulate Dan Bidois on his bill and to wish a happy birthday to your lovely wife and I presume that she might be getting a gift card as one of her many presents. This is a really sensible bill and Labour supports it. It is not always the case though that so many of our different parties in the House of Parliament agree and give support to a member's bill but in this case I believe it is well-deserved. This bill will put an end to the unfairness of gift card expiry dates. I remember when this bill had its first reading last year. I recall that many of the members of Parliament who spoke on it shared some of their experiences with expired gift cards. I too have had some experiences of having expired gift cards because I have been given gifts and unfortunately I don't have the habit of always looking to see what the expiry date on those gift cards is. So I've also been caught out. When Consumer New Zealand came to make a submission on this bill—and I was one of the substitute MPs that sat in on this particular day at the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee—they told us that they have received many complaints from consumers about expired gift cards. They actually urged the select committee to consider extending it from three years to a period of five years and they argued that this would be in order to ensure that consumers do not miss out on what is rightfully theirs. Now expiry dates on gift cards have been given the boot in other countries. For instance—and this has been spoken about by other MPs—in most of Canada they have banned expiry dates on gift cards. In the US and Ireland they are required to have expiry dates of about five years. In Australia—our neighbouring country—in 2019 they strengthened their laws requiring gift cards to be valid for a period of three years and I believe that this is one of the things that we're trying to do with this bill. We know from research that New Zealanders are leaving millions and millions of dollars on gift cards unspent. They found that more than a third of New Zealanders have at least one unused gift card and they've put the cumulative value to around about $267 million which is a staggering amount. Now in reading the Hansard of previous speeches on this bill I feel that it is actually a good idea that parliamentarians—especially on members' bills—come to an agreement and actually put aside our differences and put aside politics for at least a few minutes when we're debating a bill that we agree on because it is the right thing to do for New Zealanders. In this context we are doing what is right for consumers and I'd like to actually say that I agree with the author of this bill Dan Bidois when he said earlier on that the ACT Party which is the only party in this House who does not agree with this bill—I find it really interesting because Consumers" is actually part of their name. ACT stands for the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers so why is it that on this occasion ACT is not advocating for and not standing up for consumers of gift cards? This law change is a very practical way of making sure that money stays in the pockets of New Zealanders. Last Christmas after the first reading of this bill Consumer New Zealand put together a nice and naughty list of retailers. The nice retailers were the ones in New Zealand who either had no expiry date or an expiry date of five years. The naughty retailers were the ones with only 12 months or less. This bill will ensure that all retailers will be consistent and that they will have a minimum of at least a three-year expiry date. I commend this bill to the House. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Nancy Lu for the second five-minute call."