Finlayson ChristopherHon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National): I'm delighted the Government filibuster stopped so that I could address this bill before the dinner adjournment. I thank Mr Faafoi for his excellent speech which unfortunately was devoid of any merit whatsoever which is why we are going to oppose the legislation. We say the legislation is unnecessary and secondly it will give rise to additional costs that cannot be warranted.The fact of the matter is that our competition law is working pretty well in this area. There has always been a jurisdiction on the part of the Commerce Commission to pursue cases involving price fixing and some of the penalties that have been imposed on various companies have been very large indeed. So for example I go to the wood chemicals area. Koppers Arch Wood Protection for example was fined $2.85 million for price fixing plus $750000 for exclusionary conduct jointly and severally. I think the ophthalmologists were done over a couple of years ago. In the air cargo area in 2011 the High Court approved a settlement requiring Air New Zealand to pay a $7.5 million penalty for price fixing in breach of the Commerce Act and the same applies in the freight forwarding area.So the civil regime—which Mr Goldsmith when he was the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs built on and Jacqui Dean also built on through the legislation that was passed last year—in my opinion works very effectively. This was a matter that has been the subject of—it could almost be a Homeric epic because it was discussed at such length within Government from about 2011 to 2017 and it was a good robust debate on these very important issues.Hon Kris Faafoi: And you still got it wrong.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: You don't know what a Homeric epic is—Mr Faafoi doesn't know what a Homeric epic is. It's a poem. He probably hasn't got beyond haiku.The second point I would make is that it adds considerable costs to the Commerce Commission. The Commerce Commission was before the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee last week. It is doing very well and when they go to court more often they win and win big. The committee was very impressed by their hard work. But if we impose this criminal jurisdiction on them they will of course have to instruct Crown solicitors. That will add to cost and expense in an area where I don't think too much more is gained. So I think there are questions of costs that need to be looked at but more than that I think that the current regime which was updated by the legislation passed in August 2017 is working very well indeed.The third point I would make is that the assumption that criminalisation of cartel behaviour is the norm is not necessarily correct. Of course we have the Sherman Antitrust Act which was passed in 1890 in the United States and I think Canada's had the ability to impose criminal sanctions since about 1889. But generally speaking across the globe while there have been some countries that have moved towards criminalisation it's not necessarily the norm. For these reasons the National Opposition is going to oppose this legislation.I find it extraordinary—this legislation is almost a metaphor for the legislative activity of this Government. They've got nothing really original to contribute to debate in this House so what they have to do and what they've clearly been giving instructions to officials to do is to scurry around and try and find something that can be brought to the House.Section 36 reform is a crunchy issue. Market studies reform as was set out in the brief to the incoming Minister is a crunchy issue. There are so many really good issues in competition law but this is not one of them. It's a makeweight piece of legislation in an area that is very well traversed and what I think we need to do for certainty in competition law is leave the law as it is. So with those brief comments I indicate that National will oppose this scruffy little bill.