SpeechCommerce Consumer Affairs and StatisticsJAMIE STRANGE (Chairperson of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee): Thank you very much for the opportunity to take a call in the Appropriation (2020/21 Confirmation and Validation) Bill Commerce Consumer Affairs and Statistics. Look as the chair of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee I'd like to acknowledge the committee for the process that they undertook in terms of the annual review hearing from over 20 Government agencies; a hard-working committee. I'd like to acknowledge all of the staff and the officials for the work that they did in terms of preparing the reports for us to now present to the House.In terms of questions to the Minister I'd just like to highlight a couple of areas. The first one is around Stats NZ. I'm interested to hear from the Minister around the measures that Stats NZ has taken to support a successful 2023 Census. We heard from Stats NZ that Census 2018 entailed a number of challenges and issues. The response rate was lower than expected especially amongst Māori and Pacific. Stats NZ has been focusing on learning from the issues and challenges with the previous census and it's talked about a number of changes in its data collection approach for 2023. Now one of those changes that the committee heard from Stats NZ was around the community engagement aspect. The Community Counts initiative we heard is a development for Census 2023. I'd be interested to hear from the Minister what Stats NZ are planning to do in terms of engaging with the community further to increase the rates of participation in Census 2023. I understand that there are some other areas that Stats NZ are specifically looking at in terms of increasing that engagement. One of them I'll be interested to hear from the Minister as well is around how Stats NZ are planning to work to improve both the online and the paper data collection—you know because as a society we are evolving to more of an online world really. And the census is moving online; how do we move online in a way that we also offer the paper-based system so in effect people don't fall through the cracks? So that's my question about the stats. Then the second question I have is in terms of market power and then obviously I know other members will have questions following on. But the question of market power: New Zealand is a small economy in relation to other countries around the world and being a small economy we often don't have quite as many active players in markets and because of that we can at times be prone to having less competition than would be desirable for consumers. Sometimes this leads to monopolies. Sometimes this leads to cartel-type behaviour. So I am interested to hear from the Minister what changes have been made over the past 12 months to strengthen the prohibition against misuse of market power. Now we heard from the Commerce Commission a little bit around this particularly in terms of some of the market studies that they've been doing in terms of the grocery sector. The commission released its final report on the conditions for competition in the grocery sector on 8 March 2022. The other area we heard from the Commerce Commission was around the retail fuel market. In 2019 the commission released its final report into the retail fuel market in New Zealand and I understand there's been some changes in that area to increase competition in the fuel market. The third one is the residential building supplies. Now I think we've all seen quite an escalation in some aspects in terms of residential building supplies. The Commerce Commission said in their annual review that in November 2021 the Government asked the commission to study whether competition for residential building supplies in New Zealand is working well and if not what can be done to improve it. So I'll be interested to hear from the Minister why the Government asked that question. Has the Minister identified something in the residential building supplies that needs to change in terms of the competition? So just to summarise for the benefit the Minister: Stats NZ in terms of the 2023 census and the second question in terms of the changes that have been to strengthen the prohibition against the misuse of market power acknowledging that we are a small market. Thank you.