Davidson ReubenREUBEN DAVIDSON (Labour—Christchurch East): Thank you Mr Speaker. I stand to speak on the second reading of the Fair Trading (Gift Card Expiry) Amendment Bill. Like my predecessor I would like to acknowledge Melissa Lee; it was originally her bill drawn from the biscuit tin. She did some work to identify the issue turned it into a bill and had the good luck to get it drawn before it was then transferred to that speaker who just took his seat Dan Bidois. I thought it would be good to start by imagining being promised something of a certain value only to discover when you go to get it that it's worth less—or it's worthless. I think today is probably a day that most New Zealanders know exactly that feeling because they've been promised $250 and they discover it's $2.15. The relevance Mr Speaker is that this bill addresses exactly that issue and—relevance—because we're talking about a three-year expiry date.In the instance of gift cards they often do expire too soon so a very well-intentioned gift can end up amounting to absolutely nothing. That doesn't seem very fair so this bill is our opportunity to change that. And whilst our ACT Party colleagues may have pinned their hopes on something else we're yet to see what that is. What we do know is that 54 percent of New Zealanders have received a gift card in the last two years and 24 percent of New Zealanders are left with gift cards they can never redeem because they are expired or the business has closed. So what's that worth? Two hundred and sixty seven million dollars in unspent gift cards. That's only one-tenth the value of the gift card landlords are getting but it's still a lot of money. So this bill sets out to address that unfairness. I think with the work that we did at our Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee we worked through some of the issues and some of the unintended consequences or points that we could have missed. So some of the reasons it's a good idea: one is that we all lead busy lives. It's very easy to get a gift card slip it into your glove box of your car—I've got more than one in mine—and discover that it's expired by the time you want to use it. One of the members of our select committee had bought a shared experience but every time they went to redeem the gift card they were unable to redeem it because of weather—because the shared experience was a hot air balloon ride—and that meant that by the time the weather finally cleared the card had expired and they could not have that shared experience. So we had a lot of submissions at select committee from various retailers and also from entities who are associations or organisations that represent the interests of retailer groups. Foodstuffs New Zealand submitted in support of this bill. They were keen for the extended expiry period. They were not keen on an indefinite period which was one of the matters that we did discuss and they also identified the need for a really good transition period so that was taken into consideration.Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand noted that where we were heading would align us with the Australian model—a three-year expiry date—and that currently they're selling usually with a two-year expiry although they had extended this during COVID. They definitely supported the proposed three years and also talked about how a lot of their retailers honour expired gift cards already to ensure that customers and consumers have a really positive experience. And finally Consumer NZ who are there to look after consumers and do amazing work in that space had multiple examples and complaints from people who had missed out on what they thought they were entitled to due to unfair terms on gift cards sometimes terms of expiry of six months or even less. One of their really strong requests and again Dan Bidois mentioned this in his speech to the bill—sorry I think it was actually Tanya Unkovich who mentioned it in hers—was to clearly communicate the expiry date and that it was an expiry date on the voucher and to strengthen the penalties for effective enforcement; to make sure that there were enough teeth in the legislation to deter retailers or entities from issuing vouchers that were in breach of these terms. So I think it would be fair to say that the majority supported it with the exception of needing a bit of time for transition but they're happy enough with the principle of the bill. I won't go into all of the unintended consequences that were identified or addressed. My time would definitely expire before I could go through those but I am confident that we did at select committee look at those. So I think this bill ultimately is a gift to consumers. It makes sure people have the time to make the most of the gifts that they receive. It's a bill for the 54 percent of New Zealanders who have received a voucher in the last two years it's a bill for the 24 percent of New Zealanders who have previously missed out and it's a bill that will probably give New Zealanders more relief than the very small tax cuts that came into effect today. So I commend this bill to the House.