Shearer DavidDAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): Well for those people watching this debate who are not commercial lawyers or accountants let me just start by saying that I have a lot of respect for that member Dr Shane Reti and the work and the argument that he puts up. But part of the role of this House and certainly of the Opposition is to scrutinise bills particularly members' bills and to look at them as to whether they will enhance or in some way assist in making New Zealand a better place. This is a bill that I just get the sense is a solution looking for a problem. I really cannot find any real problem out there that people have identified that means that the House's time should be taken up with this change in this bill.What I have found when I looked at the amendment to the Consumer Guarantees Act that has been suggested by the New Zealand Initiative—this is on page 16 and is one of the things that it has put forward. It seems to me that it is more about trying to in a sense limit consumers' rights and enhance the rights of lenders and particularly finance companies rather than do what I believe is the right thing to do which is to stand up and look after consumers. So I have a problem here.I suggest that perhaps what this member has been given is one of those bills where when you come into Parliament somebody says: Here's a member's bill. Put it in the ballot." Unfortunately for Dr Shane Reti it got drawn out and then he has got to get passionate about it and lie awake at night and worry about it when in fact it does not seem to me to be something that you need to be worried about at all.Look the guts of this bill is really that if I go out and buy a good and I need finance and I arrange for finance through the seller of that good they are linked together—the person who is the lender if you like and the seller. Shane Reti's bill does not as I understand it change that relationship. But if the lender is a different organisation that is out there and I have a problem with that good—I buy a good from Dick Smith Electronics for example and I have a problem with it—I can go back to Dick Smith Electronics like anybody can but I also at the moment can go to the financial organisation that arranged my finance and that finance organisation has some accountability in terms of the money that it lent to me in respect of that good. Dr Reti wants to take away that degree of compliance and accountability—take that away.So as a consumer am I better off or worse off? I am actually worse off because I have less ability to seek redress for a faulty good. If a company for example goes under and the good is still faulty I am left still paying the finance company for that good that is no longer of any use to me. So suddenly I am in a very difficult position. I have a good that is useless. I have a manufacturer or a seller that cannot give me any redress my finance company is demanding that I still continue to pay the bill and that finance company is let completely off the hook. That is how I see this bill in words of one syllable or less rather than the account that we have just heard from Dr Reti.So for that reason—and I am willing to be proven otherwise—I believe it is something that is (1) not really a problem; (2) ideologically driven; and (3) I do not think that it lives up to protecting the consumer as Dr Reti says in terms of the change that is necessary. It actually advantages finance companies to the disadvantage of consumers and it is taking away some of the rights that consumers have at the moment. There may be a little bit of confusion in and around those definitions between lender and trader etc. but that is not insurmountable. But what we are doing with this bill is taking away some of those rights that consumers have. I believe that that is wrong.Secondly it also does a couple of other things. I think it introduces a degree of vagueness. Let me give you perhaps another example. Car dealerships often have their own financing. I am unsure about how a franchise relationship would affect the mix so if I buy a car from a Hyundai franchise using Hyundai finance this may not be a related-party transaction. In other words although it seems to be related in terms of the car that I am buying and the organisation that is there the franchising makes that rather vague. So actually rather than introducing greater clarity as Dr Reti is suggesting it introduces a greater degree of confusion.There is a third reason why I think we should oppose this bill and that is what is often referred to as the "Henry VIII" clause; that is bringing through Parliament issues that should be resolved in Parliament by statute rather than by regulation. The definitions that Dr Reti is using within the accountancy bill here which are from International Accounting Standard 24 mean that the definition is not explicit in this bill but in other words is being brought in by another means. It is not good form and it is not good practice and that is why it is called the "Henry VIII" clause because Henry VIII changed things according to what he wanted to do rather than actually taking them through the proper process.But I come back to the main point that I made at the beginning: this is a bill that will disadvantage and take away some of the protections that consumers currently enjoy when they buy goods the goods turn out to be faulty and they take them back. If the trader or the manufacturer is incapable for whatever reason of being able to give the consumer satisfaction in terms of a replacement or a repayment or whatever the consumer at the current time has the ability to go to that finance company that financed that good—if in fact that was what the consumer did get financing—and if that financing company is disassociated from the seller is not linked to the seller at all then that finance company has at the current time a responsibility to give some redress to the consumer. Under Dr Reti's new bill that link will be cut.I actually believe that if you are a finance company or you are lending money to a consumer there is a right of doing due diligence and looking at the ability of the borrower to pay and looking at what that borrower is wanting to buy with the money that you are lending. I actually think that that is good practice. What we are doing here is letting the finance company completely off the hook. I believe that that is not good practice. It is not advancing consumer guarantees and consumer protections which as Dr Reti says this bill purports to do. In fact it takes some of them away.It is for that reason—I am sure that the bill will pass because I am sure that he will have the numbers in the House—that we are not supporting this bill. I say this because I have looked at it quite closely and as I say I respect the word of the member there but I just do not think that this bill stacks up in terms of giving consumers better safety protection."