Leary Ingrid; Tuiono TeanauINGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I'd like to just take a moment to talk about the use of urgency and I raise this because the Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing himself raised it in his contribution. I think for the benefit of those watching from home it's good to pause and look at what is happening and has happened over the last 97 or 98 days in terms of the use of urgency and what that means. We've got a little bit of time to do that and this bill again is being passed under urgency but there's not a lot of knowledge out there about what urgency involves. What it does Mr Speaker as you well know is it extends the hours in which we can sit but it is also something that is passed by a simple majority. So there are no real checks and balances to the use of urgency apart from perhaps the media—the fourth estate—picking up and questioning it or apart from people at home questioning why a Government would want to put things through urgency which diminishes the checks and balances through the democratic process. Urgency enables a block of work to be finished. We've heard that the Government is wanting to finish its block of work under its 100-day plan—its coalition agreement—but that is no justification to be using urgency to move bills that do not speak to what was campaigned on in the election. To contextualise this that includes really significant pieces of legislation like the Resource Management Act reforms like the smoke-free reform like Te Aka Whai Ora. We've just heard announced at an event today that there is going to be fast-track consenting bill introduced to the House tomorrow. This bill that we are looking at now sits in that suite of bills that have been where urgency has been used and what that does mean is obviously there won't be a select committee process. That means also that today over the next few hours we will see this repeal bill go through; normally that would take a minimum of four days. So the reason I'm raising this is because we are not going to have a select committee stage here for this. It means we are not going to hear from the voices of small business which is why so many people on this side of the House have been bringing that voice into the House because once again we don't have the opportunity to hear directly from those businesses that would have supported this. I can say that as somebody who has owned a small business and as somebody who knew what it was like to lose sleep at night not knowing if I could pay contractors because somebody in the video industry supply chain that I worked in when I made TV shows had been late in paying me and had not put me on notice of that I would lie awake at night thinking How am I going to pay my contractors? Are they going to want to never come and work for me again if I'm late? Am I going to need to get some bridging finance?" I had no certainty as a small-business owner and that is really what we are talking about today. We can take out all the window dressing as Rawiri Waititi has said but at the end of the day this is really about paying people on time and giving them certainty and nobody needs certainty more in the business environment than small business. Cash flow is absolutely critical. When we applied for funds from Creative New Zealand there had to be a cash-flow template and that was worked out really carefully so that we as small-business owners could manage the cash flow and could meet those payments. That was all very fine in theory but if somebody in that supply chain was late in their payment it had a knock-on effect right through the whole system all of whom were really small players apart from the big TV networks. So it was a really perilous perilous industry to work in and my heart goes out to those who do run small businesses and do have to deal with that uncertainty on an ongoing basis. I question the Minister: when he talks about a voluntary code I'm deeply suspicious of that code because as Helen White pointed out we don't have the infrastructure in place yet for it to be implemented. There is no certainty that the code will attach the reputational risk to big business that is available to them in the current Act and when we speak about big business we are speaking here about big tobacco big pharmacy big fast-food business and those who want to pay their employees just the minimum wage. So in my final moments I also just want to say to the Minister that we had both agreed about proportional approaches to regulation. That's what I believe the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment was doing in this situation. It's a shame he's not giving them the opportunity to do that and I cannot support this bill. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): The member's time has expired."