Bayly Andrew; Webb DuncanGROCERY INDUSTRY COMPETITION BILLIn CommitteePart 4 Enforcement and dispute resolution and Schedule 2 (continued)ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Madam Chair. Well I'm slightly disappointed that the Minister didn't actually sit down and work out the figures. A quick Google search revealed—while he was talking because I thought he was going to come up with some numbers but he didn't. The revenue based on what's in Google of Foodstuff's North Island group in a 52-week period—i.e. a year—was $6.7 billion. So I'm sure the Minister is very good—I know he's an excellent lawyer but he's also an excellent mathematician I'm sure! But 10 percent of 6.7 billion is a big sum. And so does he still think potentially—true that was just one example; Countdown and the Woolworths Group New Zealand obviously will have a very large turnover as well. So is 10 percent in his view an appropriate figure? Because that is a significant sum that potentially—and I take his point: that's a maximum cap but none the less the maximum cap dwarfs the $10 million figure. So again I'd just like the Minister to just think about the actual numbers and whether that figure is actually appropriate.The second thing—I'm going to sit down and hopefully the Minister is going to take the opportunity to respond to that because I want to ask some further questions. Obviously he's not. Hopefully if you need to calculate I can give him a calculator if that's useful. Maybe someone on the Labour Party has got a calculator because you know there's a Budget coming up this week and I know they're good at spending money but maybe not calculating them. So moving along hopefully the Minister's got his phone on him because he can go 6.7 × 0.1 and he might get an answer.I want to just turn back to clause 149. The issue here is that the supplier or wholesaler customer may refer certain disputes to a dispute resolution scheme. One of the questions that was considered by the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee and I'm interested to hear what the Minister has to say is whether in fact the regulated grocery retailers should in fact be able to refer matters of dispute to the arbitration process. And the argument for that of course was in the essence of trying to get speedy resolution and therefore dealing with disputes quickly promptly and equitably and using a scheme that was cheap—relatively cheap compared to a court case—why the Government thought it was not appropriate that regulated grocery retailers should be able to refer matters to dispute provided they for instance were less than $5 million etc. etc. Why did they think that it was appropriate and why does the Minister believe it's appropriate that the supermarkets shouldn't be able to refer matters and therefore their only approach was either through negotiation which would be unlikely to go through some arbitration dispute process which is not compulsory or and more the reality is to take those matters to court. Why was the differential approach adopted in the bill?Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Well thank you for that Mr Bayly. In fact you know I can do this in my head OK—which might not be as big as yours but it'll do! Look I wasn't going to respond on the revenue point because I think I covered it pretty adequately before. But I've been given some information which is firstly that it is really important when I said that is the highest level for the most egregious conduct. And even then if we go to the 10 percent figure the court always has discretion in the size of those penalties and if it was disproportionate you know I'm very happy for our skilled judiciary to address that. It is interesting that that is also used in the Commerce Act.In terms of the $5 million figure and why it's the threshold a lot of this you know has been drawn from the Australian framework and that's a similar threshold over there.In terms of why can't retailers access the dispute resolution scheme to be perfectly honest I haven't yet heard them screaming Bully-boy" because they're being pushed around by some fruit and vegetable operator demanding more for their lettuces. This is about redressing a power imbalance and making sure that—because the main obligations in the supply code are of course placed on the retailers on the grocery suppliers and that's where the rubber really hits the road. So that's why it's needed to redress that imbalance there. It's simply not needed and they can easily have redress through other dispute resolution channels."