Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party and as a member of Parliament for Southland to speak on this bill. Note that National Party opposes this bill. As I noted in the second reading of this legislation unclear law is bad law. Unnecessary and unneeded regulation only stifles New Zealand's productive sector. Now there's nothing scarier than a Government saying You've got nothing to fear as long as you do the right thing—but we're not going to tell you what the right thing is." And that's essentially what I heard from the Minister. The Minister said "I haven't gone with a definition because I don't want to limit the circumstances in which it can be used. So look don't worry. If you're doing the right thing you'll be fine. But we're not going to tell you what the right thing is." We're talking about small businesses here. And look if I look at the penalties here—the maximum penalties of $600000 for a body corporate and $200000 for individuals—now if I'm operating a small business I'm going to be worried. I'm going to want to know what the definition is so that I don't contravene it. So I don't become liable as an individual for a $200000 fine and my business doesn't become liable for a $600000 fine. Unfortunately the Minister has just said "You've got nothing to fear if the business is operating the business in a fair way. But I'm not going to tell you what a fair way is." The Government has an obligation and a duty to provide certainty in the law that it creates. Certainty is what businesses need especially right now in a very uncertain environment.One of the biggest things we're seeing across our communities and certainly in my electorate of Southland is a lack of workers. That leads to my next question if you don't have certainty about what these rules are you're going to need a workforce to interpret what these rules may or may not mean and how they apply to your business. Now we have a huge shortage of workforce. We have even a shortage of lawyers. So this is a boon for lawyers as my colleague said before. But we have a shortage of lawyers. So good luck finding a lawyer. And we saw in this House only a few weeks ago the Auditor-General had a shortage of auditors so the Government had to extend the time for the Auditor-General to report back to the House by two months. We're talking about small businesses. Small businesses don't have the benefit of the Government that it's going to extend the time that they need to work out what unconscionable conduct may or may not mean and try to find the workforce to interpret that for them and make sure they don't become liable for a $600000 fine or a $200000 fine for the individual.This is bad law. It's uncertain law that creates uncertainty in a difficult trading environment and it is not well thought out. It is unfortunately in my estimation not responsible for the Government to bring this piece of law in as it stands. After three readings multiple reports and a brief survey of Australian case law we remain none the wiser and have no greater clarity or certainty about how this legislation may be applied. Ordinary small business people cannot have any certainty or clarity by looking at a statute and what the definition of unconscionable conduct would be. I note there are some subjective parts of the way that this may be interpreted in terms of what the court may have regard to in terms of "whether an affected person was able to understand any documents provided by the trader." Well good luck to a trader trying to determine whether or not an effective person was able to understand the documents they provided to them. That is a subjective matter for the court to determine and it's going to be very difficult for businesses to try to work that out.But I emphasise that we already have laws in place which can be used to hold those to account who try to exploit vulnerable consumers. Even if we take the Minister's argument at its highest that this bill improves market conditions for consumers such a proposition fails the sniff test. Again if we look at Australia—which has a much larger and more complex trading environment—since the unconscionable cultural trading legislation which passed in 2010 11 years ago they've only had 16 cases that have been brought to their courts. The bottom line: this bill is a solution in search of a problem. The problem has been clearly defined and the definition has not been clearly defined. It fails to provide the certainty that is the responsibility of Government to provide to our business community. So with that I would say I do not recommend this bill to the House."