Mathers Mojo: Third Readings —Text is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMathers Mojo: Third Readings —[Sitting date: 10 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15396. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOJO MATHERS (Green): I am pleased to be able to speak in support of the consumer law reform legislation. I think that it is extremely timely that this is one of the last pieces of legislation that we will pass in 2013 in the House before Christmas and that this law will be in effect by then—a law that will give greater protection to consumers. Several speakers before me have commented on the inordinate length of time that it has taken for this legislation to come through the House so we are very pleased to see it here.When I have spoken previously about this legislation I have spoken about the very strong support that we have for the fact that this legislation despite substantial opposition from major businesses has retained the unsubstantiated representation clause. I have talked about “greenwash” and about health claims and about all sorts of other claims that are being made about products without facts to back up these claims. I was just going through some of the submissions that the big businesses and so on have made against this clause and it struck me just how many had opposed this clause. They were arguing that they should not have to have evidence to back their claims. These were companies like Meridian Energy and Contact Energy banks such ANZ and Westpac and the Direct Selling Association of New Zealand the Association of New Zealand Advertisers Business New Zealand New Zealand Winegrowers and the New Zealand Food and Grocery Council. All of those really lobbied the Commerce Committee arguing that the current law provided adequate protection.The kinds of comments that they were making included saying that basically it would not take consumers much effort to go and look up whether their claims were true for themselves. It is absolutely ridiculous that consumers should have to go away and try to find out or work out for themselves whether claims on a product are true or not. It is just patently not fair on consumers to be expected to do that kind of extensive research. I would really struggle to do that for many of the claims that are made. Like many consumers I would like to be able to believe that when a company makes a claim on a product—when it makes a claim that it might be more effective at cleaning the carpet for example—you would expect that claim to be true. It is not actually physically possible to test some of these claims on your own account unless you rely on other groups that have done that research such as Consumer New Zealand and those sorts of groups.But I do want to single out that there were also strong submissions made supporting that clause on behalf of consumers. But at least one company did actually support retaining the clause on unsubstantiated claims and that was Mighty River Power. I would like to quote from its submission because I thought that it showed a very high level of corporate responsibility. It said: “Mighty River Power supports the proposed prohibition on unsubstantiated claims. We take great care to ensure that all of our claims can be substantiated. It is important to us from both a legal and a marketing perspective that consumers trust the claims that we make.” Fantastic—I just wish that all of the other companies had been as positive and as proactive about their statements as Mighty River Power was because that showed corporate responsibility.I was dismayed at all of the other submissions that were made by so many other companies arguing against that clause. I very much respected the Commerce Committee for withstanding that lobbying by all of those different companies and for leaving the clause in the legislation although we have amended it so that obviously untrue and exaggerated claims can still be made such as that a product might make you fly or something like that. There is now a straightforward simple expectation that you do not make a claim on a product unless you have some evidence to back that claim. And why is that so important? Because the status quo prior to this was that it has been up to the Commerce Commission to provide evidence that a claim is false. That is costly and time-consuming. Reversing the onus on to the company to provide evidence that its claim is true saves a lot of time and effort on the part of the Commerce Commission that would ultimately be a cost for the taxpayer. The Commerce Commission cannot investigate every claim and produce the level of evidence that is required to take it to court when claims are false. So by reversing the onus of proof it makes it much more straightforward. It is not like it is going to be a huge compliance cost—just do not make the claim. Do not make it if you do not have evidence for that claim.We were concerned that the Commerce Commission was not given the power it needed to be able to enforce unsubstantiated representation effectively. So we wrote to the commission and asked it whether the legislation contained sufficient powers for it to be able to enforce it. The commission wrote back and it said that yes it considered that it effectively does have sufficient powers—particularly since it can now request written evidence. The commission has information-gathering powers in the legislation that will give it assistance. We are hopeful that this legislation will work as it should on this clause. If it does not then we will obviously have to reflect on that further down the track as a body of case evidence appears.The other thing that it is very important to realise about this legislation is that it gives protection to consumers wherever they purchase a product whether that is online or offline. As we move into an age of more information technology it is incredibly important that consumers have that protection everywhere. Thank you.