Tabuteau FletcherFLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): I would add my voice to those who have noted the sponsoring member's aptitude his intelligence and his considered debate in the House oft-times and in fact I would like to acknowledge Melissa Lee as well. She gave a good contribution this evening so much so that both of them combined actually made me think about my position. But in the end it is a commiseration speech I give to Mr Shane Reti because this is a non-event. It is an answer to a problem that does not really exist and the circular nature of the contributions from that side of the House kind of underlies the issue with this piece of legislation. Then Mr Hudson gave his contribution which did not help the Government's cause whatsoever. What I would point out to Mr Hudson is that he failed to recognise the Responsible Lending Code which he kind of alluded to but let us talk about that in a little bit more detail for the members' and the public's consideration. It provides the general principle that every lender must exercise the care diligence and skill of a responsible lender" when advertising before agreeing to provide credit or finance and taking guarantees and—and—in all subsequent dealings with borrowers and guarantors. The code lays out the responsibilities lenders owe to consumers in considerable detail. So I put it to Mr Reti that he has kind of missed an opportunity here and in fact he is using the wrong piece of legislation to deal with this problem that does not really exist. He mentioned stakeholders in his original contribution and I put it to the members on that side of the House that I think he was talking to the wrong stakeholders. He was not thinking about the consumers when he was engaging with those stakeholders. For example I agree with Mr Shearer in his contribution that this is more about limiting the protections of consumers than it is about improving them. It is about improving the protection of the lenders and New Zealand First would suggest to this House that that is not the recourse or the protection that we would want for New Zealand consumers. So regardless of how well-intentioned the member's bill may be the effect would be to weaken the protection of consumers under the Act. On principle New Zealand First believes that where consumers' suppliers' and lenders' rights intercept there has to be a presumption and a preference to protect the consumer in those incidents especially when we are talking about the Consumer Guarantees Act. I have listened to the member Shane Reti about why he believes the bill would be good. However we do not believe that in so far as an issue of unrelated lenders being liable under the Consumer Guarantees Act exists this bill is the best way to address the issue as I intimated earlier. Instead if an issue does exist we would argue that these definitional issues are best resolved by the discretion of the courts and they have thus far been doing that. The Consumer Guarantees Act is a 1993 piece of legislation and the courts have been using that piece of legislation to process these problems. Our courts have the ability to interpret this Act. The courts have this kind of broad interpretive discretion and I believe that they are better placed to deal with the issue that Mr Reti so eloquently spoke to. It is pretty clear. The intention may be right but I think it is a missed opportunity. We do not support this bill going further. It is an answer that does not actually have a problem. We would like the bill not to proceed and cannot support it. Thank you."