Falloon AndrewANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you Madam Chair. I am pleased to be taking a call this afternoon on the Commerce Amendment Bill. I want to focus my comments specifically of course on Part 1 which relates to competition studies and inserts a new Part 3A into the Commerce Act. But I did just want to start with new section 51 which allows the Minister to require the Commerce Commission to carry out a competition study.Now at this point I have to remind members and those watching at home—I'm sure there are many of those—why we have this bill coming to us at this point. At this point we've had this Government in charge for around 12 months—just over 12 months—so why is it that they feel the need to bring this piece of legislation to Parliament after 12 months? And the answer to that question is petrol prices. Today in my electorate of Rangitata petrol prices are $2.46—$2.46—for a litre of 91 octane. That's 20 percent more than a year ago—20 percent more than a year ago. And we ask ourselves why that is—why that is. What is it that changed 12 months ago? What happened 12 months ago that might have had an impact on petrol prices?Hon Shane Jones: The dollar.ANDREW FALLOON: Well first of course there is the regional fuel levy—the so-called regional fuel levy—of around 12c that the Government opposite brought in and the problem with that legislation that they brought forward was of course price spreading. There was nothing in that piece of legislation that meant that that tax that was meant to be applied to Auckland would stay in Auckland. The second reason we have higher fuel prices than we had 12 months ago is a nationwide levy of 4c a litre across the country. So at a time when we have as the member opposite said a declining value of the New Zealand dollar the Government opposite are putting additional taxes on. In real terms petrol prices now are the highest they've been in 35 years.So this Government has suggested Oh no the problem is not us. The problem is not all these additional taxes that we're putting on." The problem is not the 12c a litre they've put on Auckland car owners! The problem is not the 4c a litre they've put on across the country! The problem is not the 4c a litre that they're going to put on next year! The problem is not the 4c a litre that they're going to put on the following year! The problem is somewhere else! The problem is with the fuel companies! And so they've brought this piece of legislation forward to require the Minister to allow for competition studies by the Commerce Commission.I've got two questions to the Minister in the chair Kris Faafoi. He's been very good at answering our questions so far today so I've got two questions for him. The first one is: if he is genuine about helping consumers—he talked before about consumers—will he agree today to talk to the Minister of Transport to take those additional taxes off until the commission has reported back on the study into fuel prices? Will he do that today? The second question I have: will the Minister commit if once that review has come back the commission finds that the Government's additional fuel taxes are having a disproportionate impact on the price of fuel across the country to having those taxes removed?I now want to turn to the Supplementary Order Paper in the name of my very hard-working colleague Brett Hudson and in it he asks for some additional democratic oversight because as has been talked about this afternoon we did this. This piece of legislation was drafted by our Government the National Government in a sense and it really allowed for these competition studies to go forward but only at the discretion of the Minister—at the discretion of the Minister. The legislation that's been brought now by the Minister allows for those studies to be put forward at the suggestion of the Commerce Commission. Look that's fine if he wants to do that; we disagree with that actually. We don't think that that should be the case. We think there should be some democratic oversight. But if he is going to go down that route why not provide for the commission to have to come to the Minister to essentially receive sign-off for that decision? The Commerce Commission can decide that they want to hold an investigation or a review into something but require them to come to the Minister first. And the reason I ask that is because in the Minister's own bill—in fact it's a new part to the bill; section 51(e)—it already requires the Minister to respond to a commission report which is fine. Again I think that's a valid approach to require the Minister to report back at the end. Why not have him involved at the start?"