Kuriger Barbara; White HelenClauses 1 and 2CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Members we now come to our final debate on clauses 1 and 2. This is the debate on the title and commencement—so we were straying a bit into that territory before. If we can have not a repeat of the questions that the Minister has already answered: title and commencement.HELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you Madam Chair. I would like to really take some time on this part because in fact it's at the heart of this bill really. We have a situation where as I understand it Minister you've got concerns that are based on the Australian research and when you were going through the process Minister of participating in the select committee of the Act that is going to be repealed today as is your proposal it was stated by you that you considered it might be better—CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The Minister" rather than the word "you".HELEN WHITE: —stated by the Minister in his capacity as a member of that select committee and in this House by way of a Supplementary Order Paper that a preferable approach would be to trial this process which is just about to get under way for two years. So there's a Supplementary Order Paper to that effect. I can see that that would allow the process to be actually trialled to start it—up and running and get it going—but it would also allow a window in which some of the amendments which members on this side of the Chamber have not actually had an opportunity to speak to could be trialled in addition. So there could be a window of opportunity there to put the best foot forward in this situation to learn from the Australian research and to add to it. So I would like to ask the Minister about that. For example one of the amendments which wasn't spoken about is adding a clause which is about allowing interest for a default so that when payments are not made by a big entity there is an automatic interest rate that would apply. So it's giving teeth to the Act that is about to be repealed. I can see the trial period amendment working. So extending out the period before this bill is repealed—CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Can I just point out to the member that it has already been mentioned that it's hard to add amendments to an Act that's going to be repealed because it won't exist and that the debate really around here is around the title and commencement? HELEN WHITE: Yes. So—CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): So if the questions could be around that thank you.HELEN WHITE: Thank you Madam Chair. So the suggestion is not that—obviously the amendments belong to another section but the ideas are free for everyone. So extending the bill—having that is absolutely in scope of this point Madam Chair because we're talking about extending the time period before the Act is repealed. So extending it—it's about enforcement. Allowing that window of opportunity of two years which is actually the very window proposed by the Minister in the earlier Act—so it's exactly in line with that. It's also exactly in line with what the Australians did in terms of reviewing their own legislation. Then in that period you would still have the Business Payment Practices Act in force. It would still be in force because we would extend the period out. Now we're absolutely up for time frame differences but two years seems the minimum for doing that. So for 24 months we would try this and we could add to it some of the things that are lessons learnt so we could give it the best possible opportunity of working. We could add things like actually having a sting in the tail if the people hadn't paid because one of the things that's been happening is that there's been a calculation of this behaviour by big businesses and it actually is worth money to them not to give over the money that is paid to small businesses and not to pay those invoices. So we could trial that in that period that big amount of time—two years. We're almost up and running already. We could do that. We could give it a go and if the Minister was not satisfied with the results at the end of that two years he could pull the trigger because it would already be happening. So we wouldn't be wasting any time; it would already be there that this bill was about to be repealed.CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): The member's time has expired."