Goldsmith Paul: Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: Electronic Transactions (Contract Formation) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 09 April 2014. Volume:697;Page:17103. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL GOLDSMITH (National):This clause 2 relates to the commencement of the bill and it says that the Act will—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: You obviously got briefed on this one.Kris Faafoi: Get on with it then son.PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well when you give me the courtesy of some quiet I will continue. It says: “This Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” I suppose the first point I would make is in reference to Royal assent. It is important to pay tribute to the Duke and the Duchess who are here in New Zealand with young Prince George. I am sure there is no question that all of us here in this Chamber hope that they had an enjoyable time with the Plunket kids and no doubt are relaxing and turning to this broadcast. We welcome them to New Zealand. Many arrangements have been made in the course of their visit through electronic transactions no doubt contracted over the internet in the age that we live in. It is interesting to contrast that with the Duke’s grandmother when she first came—1953—when most of the details would have been managed by letters.In terms of the commencement I am suggesting that the Act comes into force a day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent. The important point here is that I am not suggesting and have not suggested—and I will not accept any suggestion from anybody else that I have suggested it—that this would be a retrospective Act or come into effect retrospectively because I do not agree with retrospective legislation unless it is in the most extreme cases. It is such a sound principle that people should have certainty as much as possible about the laws under which they are to operate. From certainty comes predictability comes confidence and comes investment. So I have no truck with those who would argue that this bill should be introduced retrospectively. I think it should definitely come into force only on the day after it is signed and should not be applied by going back at any point.By the same token though I also do not think that there is any argument for—but I considered it at great length—whether we should delay the introduction of this bill or the commencement of it in terms of it coming into force say 1 year out after it had received the Royal assent because there was some thought given as to whether we needed to give the business community the opportunity to prepare for this change in legislation.Moana Mackey: This doesn’t do anything.PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well it is a very legitimate question to ask. You do not want to ram change through too soon. But my conclusion after thinking about this was that this legislation cannot come soon enough because at the moment we are in a period of uncertainty. At the moment we are not sure exactly when an offer is accepted when it is received by means of electronic communication. Is it when he or she receives the email or when it is in their in-box or when they open it up or when it arrives in the server if there is a gap before its arrival in the server? Similarly for text messages and other messages. So it may well be that it is best to include a definition of “receipt”. These were the sorts of circumstances that we were considering amending in the bill.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Is this the commencement?PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yes but the point I am trying to make Mr Cosgrove is that I do not think it makes sense to delay the introduction of this for a year given the fact we had an episode in February this year when Telecom cancelled the passwords of more than 60000 Yahoo!Xtra email accounts that were believed to have been compromised following a cyber-attack. So we have to be cognisant of the fact that people were not able to access their accounts for several days in that instance and that was just one instance; I could refer to many others. Presumably the emails had arrived in the server but they were not available.So it is that area of uncertainty that this legislation is hoping to resolve and that is why in my view it does not make sense to hold off for a year but rather it makes sense to focus on bringing it in the day after the Royal assent.I did give some thought as to whether or not it would be appropriate to have the Act come into force on 20 September. I did give some thought as to whether it should commence on 20 September but the thinking was that this could be a point of change or it could be a point of continuity. So after a while I thought well 20 September is an election day and there will be a lot going on there. It would not necessarily make sense to have the Act starting on 20 September but then another opportunity I thought might have been 15 January but—Moana Mackey: Are you going to go through every date in the calendar?PAUL GOLDSMITH: No I was not but if you would like me to I could. But the problem with 15—[Interruption] The problem with 15—[Interruption] Mr Chair?The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): They are being rather noisy are they not?PAUL GOLDSMITH: I am trying to concentrate. I am afraid I have lost my place. I might have to go back. It is a question of retrospective legislation. I do not agree with that as a general principle. What I wanted to say is that I had considered it commencing the day after the Royal assent and that is where we have fallen down at the moment. I would just be interested in the views of the rest of the Committee. Thank you.