Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker—pleased to take a short call on the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill. Everyone needs access to nutritious and affordable food. The Green Party is certainly supporting the moves that the Government is making to reduce the duopoly that we have with the dominance of Foodstuffs and Woolworths in Aotearoa because the current situation is deeply deeply unbalanced and leads to really poor outcomes for everyone particularly those who aren't able to afford healthy food and for growers and suppliers who are increasingly having to pay for fees like putting their goods on the shelves and issues with the prices that they are getting. In the meantime if you've got the ownership of a supermarket you're probably likely to be on the wealthy list in Aotearoa.So prohibiting these covenants—which I think the Commerce Commission found more than 90 of these restrictive land covenants where supermarkets were using them to prevent their rivals opening stores on that land and some 60 of these had a term of more than 20 years. Most of them obviously were in the main metros—Auckland Wellington and Christchurch—and there are also these exclusivity covenants which are able to prevent related businesses butcheries bakeries even hairdressers in some instances opening in those premises; so all designed to reduce competition. So this bill is a significant step because it will have effect from the day it becomes law in ensuring that these covenants can no longer operate. It has been encouraging to see the voluntary efforts of Foodstuffs and Woolworths in recognising that the law is going to make them and are actually moving to disengage from some of these covenants.Giving the Commerce Commission more powers particularly to request and get information from the supermarkets will assist in monitoring and enforcement. And that's been a really useful addition that the select committee has made to the bill. The Resource Management Act (RMA) has sought to prevent trade competition being used as an argument by supermarkets against their rivals seeking a land use consent to establish a new store. There've been changes to the Act to try and strengthen these provisions because of the frustration at how rival operators would attempt to tie up the establishment of a new supermarket by objecting to the resource consent but they haven't been totally effective in ensuring that the other member of the duopoly couldn't make submissions because the courts did look at the indirect effects in terms of the retail distribution effects. So the RMA hasn't been the answer and that's why we have needed this bill.It is only part of the way there. We need much more comprehensive work to raise incomes to make changes to the tax system to increase benefit payments. We need to make it easier for local grocery shops to establish in residential areas so that households can walk and buy bakery butchery and greengrocer products as we used to do when I was growing up. When you had those services in the neighbourhood you weren't forced to drive a car to a big car park and a big supermarket. But this bill in the changes that it makes to ensure that these covenants are regarded as anti-competitive measures and can immediately be acted against under the Fair Trading Act is a very useful step.I commend the Minister for the other initiatives that are being taken but we do need to make those much-wider changes to increase people's incomes in recognition that grocery prices here in Aotearoa are the fifth most expensive in the OECD and we spend per capita quite a lot on groceries compared to other countries in the OECD. So it's certainly a step it is a useful step it is one that the Green Party supports but we need those much-wider changes around incomes to ensure that everyone has access to affordable food. Kia ora.