Tisch Lindsay: Fair Trading Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Tisch Lindsay: Fair Trading Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:609;Page:6847] 
LINDSAY TISCH (NZ National—Piako) 
: The points that Dr Lockwood Smith and the Hon Tony Ryall have brought up concerning the commencement date are very important ones. We are trying to add value to the bill. We are supporting the bill and we think we can improve it significantly by allowing the amendment in my name to go ahead. For the notice of the Committee I want to make very clear what I am talking about. My amendment inserts after the word “assent” the words “except section 8 (1) which will come into force on a date to be appointed by Order in Council.” What is significant there is that as the bill stands at the moment the royal assent could in fact take place on Friday because the bill will pass through all its stages today. We will have the third reading later on and the bill will come into effect. But there is absolutely no provision that takes account of clause 8—and new subsection (3) in particular—because the point that has been made in new subsection (3) is that the provision there now is that: “proceedings under this section may be commenced at any time within 3 years after the matter giving rise to the contravention was discovered or ought reasonably to have been discovered.” 
So if this provision were to come in in its current form—and it is absolutely retrospective—we do not know the impact that that would have on business. There could well be a contingent liability and a business would be faced with something that might have happened a couple of years or 3 years ago that it knows nothing about today. We are saying that that is unfair. There could be huge compliant costs associated with an action of 2 or 3 years ago because of this clause—[ 
Interruption 
] Well the member over there says that they are taking care of business compliance costs with the ministerial panel. We have a Minister for Small Business who I would like to think might take a call on this matter because I do not know that the ministerial panel on compliance costs has considered the impact of a contingent liability under new subsection (3) inserted by clause 8. As I said National is supporting this bill and trying to make it user-friendly. We want a win-win situation that does not put business in a conflict situation—because this bill could well do that. We want to know whether the provision is about action or discovery. It is our view that if a contravention was discovered it means we could be dealing with something retrospective that business does not know about today. 
As the Hon Tony Ryall has mentioned there are so many different penalty regimes in place out there at the moment and in this case the fines are increasing from $10000 to $200000. That is a huge increase in fines—100 percent. The question would be: “Why have they doubled?”. If we looked at the consumer price index since December 1986 we would see that the increase on that index is only 54 percent. Yet in this case these fines are being doubled—from $100000 to $200000. There are so many penalty regimes out there at the moment and we are asking for an account and review of what they are. We could do that if we were to make sure that when this legislation came into force it would be on a date appointed by Order of Council not on a date—as it says in the bill at the moment—that could be early as Friday. We say that that is unfair. 
We say that from a business perspective there needs to be some transparency. There needs to be some consultancy over this. We need to know whether these businesses will have a liability because of new subsection (3). That is the real concern we have about that provision which states: “proceedings commencing within 3 years after the matter giving rise to the contravention was discovered.” That is the issue and we say that that needs to be reflected in the commencement date. As I have said and I will repeat it we are supporting this bill.