Curran ClareCLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): As I begin can I also congratulate the Minister the Hon Jacqui Dean on her appointment as Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. Can I also say that in my 8 years in the New Zealand Parliament Jacqui Dean is the fourth commerce Minister. Two of her predecessors did not contribute much to commerce if I may be so bold as to say. Jacqui Dean does have quite a lot to live up to compared with the contribution that Simon Power made as the Minister of Commerce. He was probably the Minister in the House that I most admired under the National Government particularly for the thinking work even if we did not always agree that he did on copyright. I note that this Government although promising on paper to commit to a copyright review has not undertaken that to this date. Under Simon Power that would have progressed. I wonder whether Jacqui Dean will move that forward.My colleague David Clark in his contribution which was a sterling contribution—he did much of the heavy lifting on this bill in the Commerce Committee. When I say heavy lifting" I mean the heavy lifting across the major parties. We went into this bill with an open mind as we usually do and were quite disturbed and shocked by the response of submitters submitters who represent a significant part of New Zealand's export earnings who came before the committee. One after the other after the other expressed their extreme discomfort and distress with the public interest test that was being proposed in this piece of legislation. Although my colleague David Clark may have jested about listening to Catherine Beard we had industry after industry—the horticultural industry the steel industry the manufacturers' peak body; industry body after industry body—that expressed grave fears for the export industry in New Zealand. If we are not listening to that message then what is wrong? What on earth is wrong with this Government that it has not heeded these messages?I note that the Minister talks about a minor amendment or series of small amendments to the bill that will come before us at the Committee stage. The Labour Party certainly has not been provided with any information on that. There has been no consultation. There has been no attempt to bridge the divide and have sensible discussions about this. One would think that that would have happened if this Government was serious about this.We cannot fathom quite what the motivation is behind this attempt to introduce this public interest test that nobody supports or that very few support other than for there to be somehow a lowering of prices to consumers. There is no problem with being concerned about lower prices to consumers but if the impact of that is to affect our export industries when there is a goal of export growth to 40 percent of GDP then what is going on here? Somehow the dots do not join up. On the one hand Melissa Lee talked about choices and a fine balancing act but on the other hand we hear from the steel industry that its future is in the balance—it is more than in the balance; it is going down the gurgler—should this bill progress. We also heard from the horticultural industry—numerous industries. What is the point of that? There is something fundamentally wrong. I hope Jacqui Dean is listening. I hope that she has read the submissions on this legislation. I hope that she has reached out and actually done some consultation herself and done her homework herself because in my view the previous Minister did not do that homework and was woefully inadequate in his approach to several pieces of legislation.We also sought advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade on this piece of legislation. It was quite difficult to actually pin down what its advice was. I have actually got the advice that it provided in front of me and it is vague at best. Again this raises questions about what the motivation really was for this piece of legislation and what the Government is actually trying to achieve. I hope that when the next speaker gets up they can actually enlighten us on whether they think that this piece of legislation is actually going to contribute to that target of export growth to 40 percent of GDP or whether that is going to be affected. I would hope that other Ministers who represent other significant export industries would actually be paying attention to what the impact is of this legislation—Dr David Clark: That's you Mr Guy.CLARE CURRAN: —I am looking at Mr Guy right now—and would go and talk if they have not already to the horticulturalists. Who knows whether Steven Joyce was paying attention when this piece of legislation was going through its first reading and the select committee stage. He is the one who got up in the House along with Bill English when he was the Minister of Finance and trumpeted the growth of our export industries and said that there was a target of 40 percent of GDP for export growth.Dr David Clark: Now below 30 percent.CLARE CURRAN: Now we are below 30 percent. How does it match up?If this is actually about driving down prices for consumers—and we have submitter after submitter coming before the House telling us that it is actually desperately going to affect their industries. I will just quickly read a few of these. We have got Wattie's: "Our view was that the introduction of an automatic termination period … would create a domino effect which would almost certainly translate into a significant loss of jobs in the Hawke's Bay region and potentially beyond. Attached is a copy of our letter to Minister Goldsmith …"—clearly that was not listened to. Business New Zealand and ManufacturingNZ said "it will be harder for New Zealand business [in that] aspects of the public interest test look to be speculative/subjective at best." and "The already long time-lines to get a determination will blow out with the addition of a public interest test."New Zealand Steel as I said described it as "an unnecessary and radical shift in New Zealand's trade policy … result[ing] in a materially weakened anti-dumping regime … a significant threat to New Zealand industry." There were similar submissions from Metals New Zealand the Building Industry Federation and the New Zealand Food and Grocery Council—I cannot believe I am reading these out but I am—"is strongly opposed to the introduction of a bounded public interest test … Such an approach will disenfranchise both small and large companies from a process that is already complex costly and time consuming by adding a substantial risk to the outcome of an anti-dumping investigation."Well for goodness' sake! What is going on here with this Government which claims to be pro-business claims to be pro-small business claims to be the brains trust and claims to be the one that represents business? Here you have got business telling you that it is—[Interruption] So clearly they are all wrong? What is going on here? We look forward to being able to ask questions of the Minister in the Committee stage. Let us hope she can answer them."