Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is really good to follow the Minister on this bill it was almost like reassuring words before bed too: all is well because the benevolent hand of the Government is there to control the market. Unlike Adam Smith in his seminal work right back in 1776—invisible hand of the market—but we no longer have the invisible hand" of the market; we now have "the benevolent hand" of the Labour Government. I think this is absolutely hysterical. Today we found out we have you know inflation at 6 percent non-tradable inflation at 6.6 percent—so that actually directly points to the actions of the Government that have caused this inflation and non-tradable inflation being at such highs and we've got a very confused Government trying to implement policies in the name of helping consumers and actually having the reverse effect. I'll take you back Madam Speaker and members of the House to the Government removing the excise tax from fuel. The emissions trading scheme the main plank and method of getting our emissions down actually works by putting the price up according to what emissions you make. That all got too frightening for them because the fuel prices went up and actually consumers didn't like it; what a surprise. So the Government stepped in and removed the excise tax to the tune of 29c a litre and lo and behold that made it cheaper for people to use their cars—and what if that's less incentive for people to go to an electric vehicle and to alternative transport?Anyway that's all run its course now they've become very afraid of that and on 1 July 29c a litre went back on. We've just had the inflation figures to the end of June. What's going to happen now? We're going to have more inflation going out into the future because they've stoked it along with a 29c increase in fuel. So it's a very very confused Government that doesn't quite know what they're doing; they're running around in circles trying to come up with things that really just try and plug a hole in the dyke if you like. But they're actually causing more problems than they attempt to solve. Terminal gate pricing that the Minister referred to: yeah that's moved things along there's no doubt about that. But to then come in and try and regulate the market when we found in the committee of the whole House stage trying to ask the Minister for a definition of the pricing principles; the pricing principles that the Commerce Commission would need to take into account. I could not get a definition: "We don't know what those principles are." If you don't know what those principles are how can they be applied? How do we know if they are being applied in a way that is actually fair and reasonable and how do we know that we're getting the best bang for our buck when we have what will it end up being a regulated market? We know that regulated markets do not work. We know for the gas market in the UK the same sort of thing was tried and it led to higher prices and shortages. We've got huge issues when the Government's hand gets involved in the market and we can't actually predict how that will play out. The way the market works is by price discovery effectively: so companies operating in the market they find the best price for them to operate. And if they're too high of course someone else will come in and set up business and compete against them; thereby innovation and innovative practices are being driven by the market forces and the Minister herself even mentioned Gull and Nelson Petroleum Distributors (NPD) and others who have set up in the market and are actually offering a different offering from the major fuel companies—the main fuel companies which I think everyone knows. But with those new entrants into the market it has driven a whole lot of innovation. For example when you go to the supermarket you can get a little code on your receipt which if you take it along to some fuel companies you'll get a discount off your fuel from your grocery docket. That's great; that's innovation; that lowers prices. Then you've got operators like NPD and others that have very aggressive pricing strategies at times. I know my local NPD has 20c a litre off quite often and flashing up on the sign when I drive past it—it's quite close to my house. So it's a very innovative market player; it's grabbed a lot of market share by giving its customers what they want and what they need which is the ability to buy fuel at times at very low prices. So what is the problem here? We have heard from the Minister that there was a study that showed that there were unreasonable prices but we don't know what is unreasonable. And we know that in places where NPD—or what is known as I'm sure you've heard of the Gull effect: when Gull comes to town prices drop by about 30c a litre. So that is about competition. We have not heard through any of the stages of this bill or select committee why we wouldn't just be looking to ensure that the conditions are right for Gull or players like them to expand out into other areas—and they are; they're doing that anyway they're moving out into the market. These things take time there's a lot of capital to invest and then on the other hand we're getting the Government telling them "Well actually the days of fossil fuels are very much numbered" so why would they invest?So we end up with this really quite confused response from the Government—which I alluded to at the beginning of this speech—where the Government on the one hand removes excise tax because they panic and the public don't like higher prices then they bring it back in because they have to at some point. You know it's just really quite confused and they drive inflation along. And as I said we are in a significant cost of living crisis partly driven by the unwise and ill-thought-out actions of this Government. I am still very concerned—and we did try to get to the bottom of all of the mechanisms that are going to be used under this new legislation when it comes through and there's no doubt it will; the Government's got the numbers so it's going to pass—how it's actually going to work in practice. Despite a number of members in this House asking quite direct questions; asking for some of the details about how these things would work we got little to no information from that questioning. It's very concerning that we're at this position. I think that we have a well-functioning market at the moment. We have a Government with a solution looking for a problem to apply it to and to actually appear to be doing something when really the best thing they could have done would be to just leave the market to solve the problem. And it isn't actually a problem at this stage I don't believe—and certainly with the entrance of NPD and others I think that that is the best way for us to go. Price controls we know do not work. We know that pricing principles and price discovery has worked all around the world; it's worked in every other market; it is working in the fuel industry market at the moment. There is no need for this legislation. We oppose it; we think it is another bureaucratic sand in the gears of the economy adding costs needlessly to Kiwis going about their daily lives. We know that fossil fuels literally fuel our economy. We all get to and from work by it—almost all of the MPs from outside of Wellington fly here and fly back all from fossil fuels. This legislation is not going to do any good it all it is just a needless waste of time I do not support this bill."