Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Thank you. The Green Party is also supporting the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill. We support it because it is going to stop supermarkets from engaging in anti-competitive behaviour by putting restrictions on land to prevent their competitors buying up those sites or dictating the terms of leases in shopping malls and shopping centres where they as a major anchor tenant might dictate that that mall cannot have similar businesses like butcheries or bakeries or can't have another supermarket on the premises.I really congratulate the Minister firstly for getting the Commerce Commission to do that market study of the retail grocery sector and then moving so quickly to implement one of its key recommendations—and promising more action. Because as the Commerce Commission noted we've got a duopoly here with some other operators on the fringes. I think as Mr Bayly noted that they in their study found that there were more than 90 of these restrictive land covenants to prevent rivals opening up stores on that land. Around 60 of these had a term of 20 years or more—they're largely in Auckland Wellington and Christchurch. Similarly with the exclusivity covenants—there are around a hundred of those being included in lease contracts. So those are definitely anti-competitive.When New Zealanders spend $22 billion annually on groceries in supermarkets and grocery stores across the country we're talking about a big tranche of money and a million dollars a day as the minister mentioned in profits for the supermarkets. So anything that—Hon Dr David Clark: Excess profits.Hon EUGENIE SAGE: Excess profits. Even though this law is retrospective—because it applies to covenants which exist at the moment—and that's not something the Green Party would normally support; if it wasn't retrospective then the bill would have little effect.We also note we've got some concerns over the shortened select committee process but that there has been consultation by the Commerce Commission—it got the big grocery retailers to comment on its draft report before it was released. So there has been some consultation on the principles around this bill before it was introduced.The Commerce Act under Part 2 and restrictive trade practices already has provisions which prevent anti-competitive practices. So by bringing these restrictive covenants—the land covenants and the exclusivity covenants—within the scope of Part 2 then the whole panoply of the Commerce Act and the enforcement measures and those prohibitions will apply to them.Certainly there have been in the Resource Management Act since about 2009 provisions which seek to prevent the supermarkets using trade competition as an argument in their submissions against a land-use consent and related consents when a competitor seeks to get those from council. But the courts have allowed a bit of discretion there in terms of that. They certainly exclude the direct effects of trade competition in terms of the RMA process but they have considered some of the flow-on significant retail distribution effects. So the RMA as a planning tool has not been effective in preventing these restrictions on competition which is why we need these changes to the Commerce Act.The Commerce Commission in its report also suggested changing the Overseas Investment Act to make it easier for an overseas operator to come in. As with the previous speaker from the National Party I have some concerns about that. The fact that we have Foodstuffs—for example it is a cooperative and has New Zealand operators. That is one benefit. Having overseas operators enter the market—like Costco is doing—certainly that may lead to cheaper prices for consumers but it means of course that the profits go offshore. So it's not something that we should encourage.I note too that there's going to be some monitoring of land banking. Even if these restrictive covenants and exclusivity covenants are outlawed if supermarkets buy land because they're planning long term and sit on those sites without any real intention of opening a store there—that is also potentially reducing the ability of other entrants into the market. And it was making it easier for other entrants to get in and for existing competitors to expand their networks that the Commerce Commission was concerned about.When similar measures to these were introduced in Australia—I think it was the ALDI chain went from less than 200 stores to more than 500 stores. So these types of measures have been shown to be effective elsewhere. The Green Party supports this bill while having concerns about the truncated select committee process because all legislation benefits from public submissions and good comprehensive select committee scrutiny. Thank you.