Smith Damien; Clark DavidDAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Minister with regards to this bill we're about to pass a bill where there's no actual definition of the term that is at its very heart. I've found it interesting that the financial markets conduct bill actually has a definition of fair trading yet we can't seem to come up with a definition of what unconscionable behaviour is. Now I don't know what your advisory team is doing but I've just found one in Australia.As Russell McVeagh says this is a very serious move which will transform the landscape of consumer law in New Zealand and this will result in people either going to jail or losing lots of money and at a practical level there is some doubt whether the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment in its research actually proved the case that this was actually needed in the first place. Now with my learned colleagues' assessment of oppressive behaviour the famous matrix has been pulled out of the pack of papers which does show that oppressive behaviour is probably more formed and designed than unconscionable conduct.Now with unconscionable conduct we know that business dealings and consumer dealings—this is effectively a conduct-focused response. Now with conduct leads to all sorts of anomalies and leads to all sorts of misinterpretations. We think this bill should go back to the select committee for more work—it's not too late. We believe that it's not made it in its current context and we'd like to get it right because of the implications that it has on New Zealand consumer law.So the perfect example of this would be to have a regulatory standards bill where this would be filtered through it and it probably wouldn't pass the sniff test at all. We believe at the ACT Party that the Minister has given his intention to proceed with option 1A and in relation to that it's not much better than doing nothing or the status quo which his own advisers have pointed out. So why are we doing it? Option 2 extends the protections to businesses with a value cap of $250000. We request at the ACT Party that this be raised to $450000 to help the transport industry where a lot of cases of this nature appear and are defined. So it's not just a case to just cover the market; it has to actually cover real transactional and commercial law disputesSo we are a bit confounded with regards to why some laws can have a definition. You're asking us to pass a law which has no definition in the area of law in this country i.e. consumer law and commerce law which actually is the most definitive and tightly webbed knitted together set of laws that we actually have. So we believe that it's going to lead to relative uncertainty in the courts. We actually know from the definition of your own matrix that there is no case law at all at the moment to provide for this although it is creeping in as a term but it's not clearly defined. So we need to go hand-in-hand with New Zealand take them along with us on those two questions. To conclude from the ACT Party's point of view we'd have liked to support this bill but we can't because we can't get a definition of unconscionable" and that cap needs to be raised because in this day and age $250000 is not a huge sum with regards to those disputes. We'd like potentially for the Minister to just embrace those two points and see if there's any common ground. Thank you.Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I thank the member for his contribution and I would note that we may end up agreeing to differ on these points. We are determined to be on the side of consumers and small businesses and as a Labour Party we are concerned that unfair practices shouldn't disadvantage those groups. The member be asking for a higher cap that protecting the interest of bigger businesses or may have a more liberal approach to what's fair or unfair. We believe that the majority of businesses want to behave in a fair and ethical way and they shouldn't be stiffed by those businesses that want to behave in an unfair way. That is why we're changing the law."