Simpson Scott; Rurawhe AdrianHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): It's really interesting listening to Government members talking about business because nothing is more obvious than actually they know very little about business. They don't understand the basic way businesses work the way capital works. They don't understand how customers are motivated. They don't understand supply. They don't understand business. This has been a failing of socialist Labour Governments in New Zealand and around the world for years and years and years and this Labour Government this socialist Labour Government is absolutely no different.But on this bill we will support this piece of legislation not because it is a piece of Labour Party ideology but because actually there is a time when occasionally small regulation is required and this is one of them. But Labour's great plan is actually to regulate business at every opportunity to issue proclamations from the Beehive about every aspect of individuals' personal lives—how they live their life how they spend their money—and particularly when it comes to business. This is a Government that just loves to tell people and businesses how to operate their business. They like the grand gesture but my colleague Andrew Bayly so clearly and loudly articulated to the Chamber earlier this evening that actually this is only a very very small step a very modest step by a Labour Government that usually likes to impose far bigger restrictions and costs on businesses and regulate in a far grander way than just this.If this is the only way that they were deciding to impose regulation upon business well then maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing but over the last few years businesses have had to endure enormous extra cost foisted upon them by this Government for very little reason other than ideological ideals that are more from the textbook in academia than they are from the practical commercial or business world. Those extra costs have added nothing—zero zip nada nothing—to the productivity of New Zealand businesses and actually have done exactly the reverse and the statistics are very stark.So when this bill goes to select committee the select committee will need to be cognisant of the fact that pre-Delta something like 12000 New Zealand businesses have ceased to trade—and that was pre-Delta. Goodness knows what the number is now after what someone has just reminded me is the 70th consecutive day that Auckland has been lockdown. There will be literally thousands of businesses—many of them small businesses—where people have put in their capital they've mortgaged their home and they've put their entire life savings into that business and then through no fault of their own a Government that is cruel and heartless has seen fit to provide extra cost on variety of parts of their business: an extra week's sick leave rapid increases to the minimum wage an extra public holiday and a whole range of other things—and fair pay agreements are coming very shortly. All these extra costs that businesses have to absorb and without any increase in productivity are simply something that they either pass on to their customers or try and reduce and often—too often—the way they reduce costs is actually by reducing the labour component in their business and that means putting people off. So 12000 businesses ceased to trade in the last year before Delta; goodness only knows what it is after Delta after 70 days of lockdown.One thing that COVID has taught us is that cashless forms of payment have become more common and there's actually nothing wrong with that. There will be many many small businesses who have had to absorb the cost of the fees that are associated with cashless payments and this is a bill that's designed to at least create an even playing field. But we should never forget that we are a very small market place and when we regulate even in a light-handed way it has consequences. We are a small market place something smaller than the size of metropolitan Sydney which we should never forget and we are a nation of small businesses. There are always going to be winners and losers when consequential regulatory reform of this sort takes place and someone will pay and ultimately it will be customers. Someone will pay because those costs don't disappear; they just get moved around and shifted somewhere else within our economy.So look we'll support the bill. We'll have a look at it at select committee.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.