Alexander Marc: Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Alexander Marc: Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:618;Page:14276] 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 I rise for United Future to offer our point of view on the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Bill and will not take too much of the House’s time in doing so. Most of my concerns have been set out in Supplementary Order Paper 236 and there are quite a few amendments there. What I would like to do is focus on a few minor areas that I think would make this bill a much better bill. 
We consider clause 6(2A) for example to be unnecessarily restrictive in arbitrarily setting 6 or more days or $2000 in value of traded goods as the benchmarks for meeting the criterion of being a second-hand dealer. We think that is restrictive in this day and age and see no reason why the amount should be quite as low as that. Moreover clause 44A(2)(a) limits the resale value to a minimum of $40. That is the threshold for separate identification as a single article—that is in cases where one is selling a CD collection a set of bottles or whatever. I think $40 is a little bit too low for that so I have suggested in my Supplementary Order Paper that we actually look at $100 as being a much more reasonable amount. The sum of $40 really does not cover very much and anybody who has gone to a garage sale with $40 does not usually come away with very much. If one does it is not something one wants to keep for very long. It is usually a present for somebody else or one might offload it for a $5 profit—but I am speaking as a capitalist at heart. 
Clause 48B and the consequential clause 57(1)(aa) are not supported by United Future as they impose restrictions on pawnbrokers conducting their activities in premises other than their normal place of business. It seems reasonable to me that if a person has had a business arrangement with a pawnbroker over a number of years and that person becomes incapacitated or there is some other reason why that person would like the pawnbroker to come to his or her place to conduct business it seems unnecessarily restrictive in the normal course of trade to disallow that. I see that provision as going against the grain of good commerce. At the end of the day it is very good policy to allow pawnbrokers or any other dealer— 
Hon Member 
: Car dealers are allowed to move around. 
MARC ALEXANDER 
: Well car dealers are allowed to move around but to go to the clients and conduct the business at their convenience is to provide a service and after all that is part and parcel of what good old capitalism can do for this country. 
United Future does not support clause 54 in its entirety as it places a restriction on freedom to trade on a best-practice basis. And that is exactly what I have been talking about: the customer should come first as every good capitalist knows and if securing the sale means going to the customer’s place of business to conduct business then that is the way to do it. It is service after all that hospitality in this country prides itself on. 
We will be supporting this bill all the way through the House. I would like to thank the members of the Law and Order Committee for working together very constructively. It is a good bill. It is a bill that is being pushed forward by Labour very reasonably and it addresses a lot of the problems people have had with pawnbrokers and second-hand dealers. For the most part it is legislation that I think will stand up and will not need immediate amendment. So United Future will support it. 
Bill read a second time.