Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to be speaking on the second reading of the Retail Payment System Bill. And I hope it gets better than this for the Minister because whilst this is a good step for small businesses it is just a minor bit when you compare the over $3 billion worth of costs that the Labour Government has imposed on small businesses across New Zealand. Just hammered them with stuff—holiday pay 10 days' sick leave all of that sort of stuff. Three and a half billion bucks' worth and yes we're going to save them a bit of money—wow! But I've got to say yep for retailers who are hard done by because the public servants won't come back to work because the Government won't tell them to come back to work—councillors and council officials are still at home working from the home who don't come back into our centres and help places help our town centres help our small-business owners help our retailers; all those operators—that's probably the more important issue. But I will congratulate the Minister for pushing through yet another piece of legislation and hopefully he'll make it back into Cabinet because he is so keen to push this stuff through and yes I know it's an election promise for Labour and it will give a little bit of benefit but gee if I was a small-business owner I'm not sure I'm going to go Yes I'm saved!" because I just don't think it's going to help that much. Anyway let's talk about some of the detail. I think not everyone will understand what this bill's about. What it does it basically sets what's called the interchange fee. This is the fee that's charged between a provider of credit facilities and a financial institution—so to give an example VISA Mastercard American Express (Amex) with the fees that they'll charge the bank. As the Minister said that is most of the cost when people are starting to use their credit card when they go to buy something from a retailer. And what this does is allow the Commerce Commission to have oversight of that process and to make sure that the fees are capped and at the moment roughly about 80 percent of the total fee is relating to this interchange fee. Under the new arrangements they're going to be set for 0.8 percent on credit card transactions which is in line with Australia; 0.6 percent for online debit and credit cards—I see you are watching me very closely Mr Speaker because I know you are a heavy user of your card or maybe not you but your partner is—and 0.2 percent or 5c per transaction for a contactless debit. Of course what the Commerce Commission will have the ability to do is to review those fees to make sure they're appropriate. And generally you know there is a reasonable amount of support by Retail NZ the Restaurant Association but not everyone thinks this hard nut of writing a new piece of legislation is actually required. In many cases other jurisdictions have looked at just making sure that the regulations around this are appropriate without having to go to the extent of spending Parliament's valuable time ramming through this piece of legislation. A number of the banks were of that view. It's interesting to note and the Minister did talk about it in his speech that since we've seen the advent of COVID 24 months ago we have seen quite a decline that has voluntarily been put in place by VISA and Mastercard in terms of the fees that they've chosen to reduce to make it more acceptable during the period of COVID when most people—and certainly people if you were going in to try and buy some groceries or whatever—didn't want to see cash didn't want people to deal in cash and therefore many people were relying on their credit cards or their debit cards to be able to pay for their goods or services that they were trying to buy. So I think first of all we should acknowledge there has been a decrease in fees quite substantially already but the background prior to that is New Zealand retailers in the main have been paying too much and this will lead to a decrease. There's talk of probably about $13000 for a retailer on average—although I'm not quite sure whether that is pre or post the recent declines in the voluntary reductions imposed by VISA and Mastercard. All that's good stuff and we will be supporting it on that basis. What I want to just talk about is a couple of little things—first of all the exclusion of Amex. The Minister did address that in his speech. At the moment it refers specifically to Mastercard and VISA. Amex has not been included. It has been included in Australia and they realised that it needed to be included. Amex has quite a smaller market share—we were informed it was less than 10 percent—and the view is that Amex could be captured by this Commerce Commission if it so chooses. There's a big question why it's not included at this point in time; albeit it is a relatively small market player but it's still a reasonably important market player and the reason why we've excluded it yet Australia has deemed that it should be included—it raises some issues around that approach.The second thing relates to what is termed about rules and this is covered under clause 19 of the legislation which I'm desperately trying to find. These are the rules around when there is a change to the rules that may be imposed by the Commerce Commission what is the process for actually doing that? And I can't find my—oh yes I can. So we were very concerned about this because if you think about it organisations like Amex VISA and Mastercard are large global players. New Zealand is a very small part of their global business and the thought that the Commerce Commission could be imposing new rules in New Zealand that would lead to a situation where VISA or Mastercard would have to change their entire global protocols to fit for New Zealand was an unlikely proposition and actually going to lead to some real issues. On that basis we thought it was appropriate that there was a slightly softer approach in terms of how the Commerce Commission should go about making those changes and the requirement to be in consultation with those providers of those services so that there was no unnecessary imposition on those operators because the last thing we want is to have some of those major global operators pull out of New Zealand because that would undermine the ability to provide credit facilities to New Zealanders when they're buying goods and services. So there was a change to clause 19(1)—we took out paragraphs (b) and (c) and just slightly changed the issue around how the Commerce Commission was required to consult with them. The other thing is the timing of changes. The bill provides for the changes being made within six months of the bill coming into law and becoming an Act. Providers particularly VISA and Mastercard are concerned about this because if the bill goes through committee of the whole House and then the third reading in the next month or so—if you put six months on top of that what we'll end up with is actually entering the stage of blackout of IT services a common term where banks and large institutions choose not to make substantial IT changes. Of course that would be during the Christmas period—late November through to late January—and so this bill's timing actually may lead to an issue where it cannot be executed and actioned by the very people it is required to. So I think we will be putting up some Supplementary Order Papers about looking at the delay of this bill depending on when it passes through the House and of course that's up to the Government to decide that framework. But as we say we will be supporting it but it is not going to largely change the cost structure of small businesses in New Zealand."