McKelvie Ian; Smith StuartFINANCIAL MARKETS (CONDUCT OF INSTITUTIONS) AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingDebate resumed from 23 June.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): Members when the debate was interrupted Stuart Smith had the call and he had three minutes and 35 seconds exactly remaining.STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Mr Speaker and it was actually a great pleasure to give way to the Hon Kris Faafoi for his valedictory speech when I was so quickly cut down—Hon Todd McClay: See if there's anybody else who wants you to give way over there.STUART SMITH: Well that's right. There's a few potential valedictories over there if they get the opportunity to give them. So it is a great pleasure to speak on this particular bill because actually I don't like the bill. I think the bill's terrible. There's a bit of a theme here across a lot of these bills that this particular Minister brings to the House: he has a lot of solutions looking for problems. I don't begrudge the Minister and his enthusiasm but actually what he's doing with his misguided attempts to bring some legislative rigour to the commercial world—all he is doing is adding costs needlessly and a lot of red tape. Now I know Labour love red tape—they do that—but actually it's really slowing down the economy. It takes all the confidence out of the business sector and makes everything more expensive for Kiwis as we know who are living in the midst of a cost of living crisis.The Credit Contract and Consumer Finance Act legislation is a good example which is very similar to this particular bill. I think at that time they said it was only really going to go after the unscrupulous operators and yet it ended up impacting on all the mums and dads trying to get a mortgage who had to go in there and then they had all of their financial transactions in the last little while looked into and it became absolutely ridiculous. It was intrusive and it was completely unfair and it completely missed the whole purpose of the bill. I wonder what went on in the policy development of this particular bill because I do note that the Reserve Bank and the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) said they did not find major systemic misconduct like in Australia which is where this bill had its genesis. They're trying to copy what was going on in Australia.So the Minister is well-meaning. I think he's trying very hard but actually we'd be all a lot better off if he didn't try so hard and what he should be doing is looking right into every policy that comes his way. Whether he suggests them or whether they are from officials I don't know but given what the Reserve Bank and the FMA have said I doubt very much that the officials were the source of this policy's birth; I think it was probably the Minister. He's actually going to only bring in a lot more red tape and slow things down for the financial markets. He actually gave an example in his opening speech in this reading of an insurance salesman—how dare they actually try to sell something for a bonus? He thought that was a bad thing and he's going to stop that. He doesn't understand that actually sales are about selling things. They don't hire salespeople to not go out and sell. What is wrong with giving someone an incentive to sell something? If they're acting inappropriately or if they are committing fraud there are laws to deal with that. Those things don't need this stupid bill which I condemn to the House.