Boyack RachelRACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on the Fair Trading (Gift Card Expiry) Amendment Bill. Can I begin by congratulating Melissa Lee on having her bill pulled from the biscuit tin and I look forward to seeing this bill go through the House and submissions on any particular changes that may be needed for this bill.It's been interesting just during my colleague Stuart Nash's contribution myself and my colleague Glen Bennett have had a bit of a chat actually about a couple of scenarios which I'll get to soon which I think could also be considered for the bill.I have a recent example in Nelson of someone purchasing a voucher at a very very very high amount and having a very short time frame on it and losing out. So as you may know many charities around the country will often have auction nights. We had one last year for the Cancer Society and very generously a travel voucher—quite a significant travel voucher—had been provided for the auction and someone bid on it and spent quite a few thousands of dollars. A bit of chatter went around the room when we were at the same auction this year when someone started bidding on the same auction prize this year and it turned out it's the same person because they bid on it last year and the voucher expired. So they literally spent thousands on some travel vouchers and they expired. And they were so generous that they came back for round two. But it does speak to the need for this bill that there needs to be an element of fairness in how long those vouchers can expire.There should be a limit at some point although I would note if you've bought a voucher for $100 now in 10 20 years' time it probably won't mean so much to the retailer. I imagine if someone picks up a voucher in their office like Mr Nash did that might be 20 years old it might only be a $10 voucher so it's not going to be as big a deal is it? But this bill is really sensible and Mr Bennett and I were just having a quiet conversation here—we weren't of course speaking over my colleague while he was giving his speech—about what would happen and I think this is something that would be interesting for the committee to look at what would happen if the business changed hands. And actually that exact situation happened to me. A friend of mine very kindly purchased me a voucher for my birthday and it was for a beauty salon. They changed hands within about a month of purchasing the voucher so really soon. So the voucher had a one-year expiry on it but the business changed hands pretty much immediately after it was purchased. I'm interested about that because they were really really good the new business honoured the voucher which was great and they've now actually got a loyal customer out of me and I've been going back.So that probably is something I think that needs to be looked at—in fairness to the new business as well because they would need to know that there were a number of outstanding vouchers available. But you would expect for a business like that it should be something that gets built into their business model an expectation. Something like a beauty salon that is an area where people will often purchase vouchers that if there is a change of ownership that there perhaps could be some acknowledgment of that in the bill. So I encourage the member and the committee to look at that particular scenario because it is one that crops up.So this is a really good bill. We do see a real anomaly in the law here a lot of people will in good faith go and purchase a voucher. In my family it's quite common. I'm one of eight children so it was the common Christmas Eve rush around the mall looking for gifts for each other and often the easy gift was to get a voucher—and then sometimes we'd swap with each other if someone got a voucher they preferred to somebody else. Very common gift item in my family.It is frustrating though when you've bought something for someone—actually with kindness behind it and wanting to purchase something nice for somebody—and then to see it's only got a three-month or a six-month expiry. I think we've probably all had that experience ourselves where—I certainly have had the odd-voucher where I have gone to look at it and gone Oh three months." and you wouldn't even have thought that. So I think three years seems like a good kind of fair time frame for me. I'm sure there will be submissions through the committee on that exact issue and I think it will be a really really good bill to progress to protect our consumers and to introduce more fairness into the system. On that note I commend it to the House."