Coates BarryBARRY COATES (Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. I rise to speak about the cartels bill before us. I have heard the Government members say that they are relentlessly positive".Hon Clayton Cosgrove: That's us.BARRY COATES: Oh and Labour is "relentlessly positive" too. On this bill we see the only thing that is relentlessly positive is in the advantages for big business in completely gutting the most important provisions of this bill. We think that this bill is far too soft on white-collar crime and far too soft on fraudsters who rip off our economy and make consumers pay too much for their goods and services. We think this bill far from cracking down on cartels will actually enable cosy deals between dominant companies that disadvantage consumers and disadvantage small and medium sized enterprises in our economy.Let us go through a few things. Firstly this bill as it went through the Commerce Committee had the provision that cartels would be criminalised but only for hard-core cartels. The bill was very carefully worded to just identify that it was hard-core cartels that would be criminalised. Part of the justification put forward by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—echoed I should say by the Commerce Committee in its report—is that it said tough penalties make it easier to detect cartels. It said cartel members themselves do not operate cartels when there is a threat of jail time. It is a significant deterrent. And what we heard was that all OECD countries have criminal sanctions in their cartels legislation. We would be stepping outside of the regulatory framework of the countries that we should be operating with in order to share information and have a common regulatory framework that would get to grips with these insidious cartels which are so dangerous for the economy.In 2015 then commerce Minister Paul Goldsmith introduced a new Supplementary Order Paper that would remove criminalisation from the bill. So the Green Party tried to find out why that had happened. We thought that maybe there was substantive new research that might have come to light to say that criminalising cartels was not a good idea. There might have been some substantiation to the idea that criminalisation would not be in the advantage of the economy overall in providing fair competition. What did we find? We found that it had been a political decision—bitterly opposed I should say by Australian competition authorities who complained that this would bust a hole between Australia and New Zealand's regulatory regime around cartels.Where did this political decision come from? Well unfortunately there was all too little information. What we did see was the fingerprints of some very strong lobbying by big-business interests. Should we be surprised that this Government would cave in to big-business interests in weakening the provisions on monopolies and cartels? I do not think it should surprise anyone. That is what we have seen in what it has done over 9 years of Government. So we oppose the weakening of this legislation in other ways as well. New section 31(1)(b) inserted by clause 7 says: "the cartel provision is reasonably necessary for the … collaborative activity." So that means that you can set up a collaborative activity and you can have a cartel associated with that collaborative activity as long as it is "reasonably necessary" in order to support that collaboration. That is a huge gap in what this cartel legislation will actually be achieving.I think we can probably see the rise of collaborative activities that take advantage of new section 31(1) inserted by clause 7 or new section 31(2)(b)—that collaborative activity "is not carried on for the dominant purpose of lessening competition …". So collaborative activity is fine as long as it does not have the dominant purpose of lessening competition. It can be ancillary; it can lessen competition as a result of the collaborative activity as long as it is not the dominant purpose. In terms of a loophole in this bill that is an enormous loophole.Thirdly in new section 65A inserted by clause 12 there is clearance which means a free pass and a permission to engage in collaborative activity. Clearance will be granted if collaboration will not have the effect of substantially lessening competition. So it can lessen competition; it just cannot do it substantially—whatever that means.So in these provisions we have seen the Government drive an absolute truckload through this legislation. We have seen it gutted and from the Green's perspective we have supported this legislation from the beginning—right through the process. But at the time that National started gutting this legislation for the sake of its big-company mates we said: "No. It doesn't meet the minimum standards that cartel laws should."It is out of step with other countries internationally. It is out of step with what we should be doing in order to have decent laws on competition in this country. And I would like to pay tribute to Clayton Cosgrove who submitted a very good amendment to this legislation saying that actually one of the areas that does need to be fixed is section 36 of the Commerce Act and that we should be moving from a purpose test on a dominant market position to an effects test. That would have made a big difference. But did the Government accept that? Sadly no.Time after time we have seen the Government go soft in terms of big-company interest and the lessening of competition. What we heard Simon Power say in 2010 when this whole process started was that cartels protect inefficient producers creating a drag on the economy and a burden on businesses and consumers who buy their products. What we see is legislation that started out with a strong position from the then Minister Simon Power went through the Commerce Committee had the full support of all the political parties through the Commerce Committee and was then gutted. We will oppose this legislation. We do not think that this bill is worthy to go through. It is a slap in the face to the consumers to the small to medium sized enterprises and to the people who trust our regulatory system to stop abuses of competition. This is one of the reasons why our productivity is 30 percent lower than Australia's. It is one of the reasons why our workers get paid 30 percent less than Australians do. We have very very poor competition as is repeatedly said by the Productivity Commission. It keeps on saying that as a small society New Zealand needs to have very strong competition policy. The Government has absolutely failed to meet that test through this legislation. We will oppose it. The Greens will champion fair competition. We will protect consumers. We will support small and medium sized enterprises. We will stop white-collar crime and dirty money from flowing into this economy. Thank you."