O'Connor Simon: Commerce (Supermarket Adjudicator and Code of Conduct) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Simon: Commerce (Supermarket Adjudicator and Code of Conduct) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8537. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I was going to say I am pleased but I do not think that is quite true—I am not greatly supportive of this Commerce (Supermarket Adjudicator and Code of Conduct) Amendment Bill. This is an example to me of bad legislation for a number of reasons.Paul Foster-Bell: It’s a monster.SIMON O’CONNOR: I would not go as far Mr Foster-Bell as saying it is monstrous. There are a few bills about which I might say that. I would probably ascribe that to Labour Party bills. This is not a good piece of legislation for a variety of reasons. The first is around its intent; and secondly even in the delivery tonight I think we are playing into the classic lines of sort of moralising and conspiracy to justify it and I will elaborate on that. We also have a thing about the fact that it is out of time and it is badly drafted. Although I always acknowledge and want to acknowledge members who bring bills to the House—I think it is good to do that—at the same time I find this is a deficient bill.I think primarily this is about interference in the market in a way that is not needed or required. I do not say this as an absolute total zealous believer in the market. There is a time and place. In fact from listening to the previous speaker I think there were some very good examples of where we want codes of conduct or codes of practice. One that was mentioned was in the medical fraternity. Absolutely there is a time and place for codes of conduct codes of ethics there. But actually you are dealing with a different kettle of fish—if I am not beginning to mix my metaphors—of what that is trying to do there.This bill is effectively a response to what I think could have been described previously as a political stunt. It is one of those political bills that came out of a political stunt. For those of us who were here in the last Parliament and obviously following this from outside of Parliament a member of this House came and made a series of accusations around one of the major players in the supermarket industry. I think many of us right across the House were quite interested in what was being said and why. But we were also looking for substance. Unfortunately as far as my memory serves me no substance was ever found to prove these facts.The Government I think quite rightly responded to that through the Commerce Commission undertaking an investigation to see whether or not there was any evidence—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: No no. Shane Jones put a complaint in not the Government.SIMON O’CONNOR: Sorry I have been rightly corrected. My memory even at my age is possibly not as good as that member’s.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!SIMON O’CONNOR: The Commerce Commission to be accurate chose with facilitation from a previous member to engage. The interesting point is that the Commerce Commission did not find any evidence of what was being put forward in the accusations. That leads me to one of the elements tonight. I talked about the debate being put forward as something that is moralising and as something that is conspiratorial. To use that latter part we have already heard tonight: “Oh yeah. We acknowledge that this report was done and we acknowledge that the report showed nothing but you know there is a conspiracy behind it because actually we know that people know that other people know what the suppliers know about what people might know in the supermarket industry.” That is just classic conspiracy. It is an attempt to deny proper process that has happened and proper results that have been given.The second element I touched on too which has tried to I suppose fuel this debate is moralising. Everyone likes to feel that they could save some money. We have heard in elements of the debate: “Gosh New Zealanders just want to pay less for their tomatoes their meat their vegetables for everything. They are just paying too much. Who would be against forcing the change?”. Well again I just categorise that as moralising. In fact the market does operate quite effectively in this space. When I think about the supermarkets and actually the variety of supermarkets throughout my electorate—I hear some members talking about two supermarkets. Fortunately I have always been able to count beyond two supermarkets. Actually when I think of my own electorate there are a good number of supermarkets. In fact Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi was talking about the number of options he finds in South Auckland which is the same as I find in east Auckland. So there is competition in the market.But I think the fundamental element here is that the bill is not necessary. We do not need interference in this market. The Commerce Commission has found that it is not required. I come back to my initial point. I just do not think this bill is needed or warranted and trying to build the reasons for it on moralising and conspiracy is not particularly helpful. I will not be supporting this bill going to the select committee.