Scott AlastairALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd like to ask the Minister a couple of questions in due course but much of this bill as has been stated is a good thing particularly my point around the most positive aspect as far as I can see: this compulsion to provide information to the Commerce Commission when requested. There's no point having an inquiry if you can't get the information to find results. So that's a very good step forward the compulsory data collection from those businesses.The problem that I'd like to pick up with the Minister is around when he said the Commerce Commission will initiate some investigations where the Commerce Commission might see the politicians not picking up an inquiry or perhaps the politicians don't see any issues out there but the Commerce Commission does. So my first question is who gets priority? Is it the list of inquiries that the Commerce Commission wants to take on or is it the list of inquiries that the politicians want to take on? I think and on this side we think that the politician must have the veto or decide. The reasons I say this is because—well first of all answer that question of who gets priority.I agree with Mr Jones when he talked about democracy democracy democracy. There's accountability if you make sure that the Minister is responsible for the inquiry and the decision making that the Commerce Commission is directed to do. For example I know Mr Jones would love to see an inquiry into the real estate sector. Now you know good luck to him putting that forward to the Commerce Commission and good luck to him for the public because you see the public can see straight through the idea that investigating the real estate sector would just be a total waste of taxpayers' money. We know it's an extremely competitive environment in which those businesses operate. So there's accountability because if Minister Jones did get that through and did say that real estate agents are going to be investigated—imagine the cost associated with that across all the agents that we have across the country and for no benefit. The accountability—which is my point—is such that Minister Jones will get voted out. I totally agree with Minister Jones. Minister Jones' point is that it's democracy democracy democracy.The other problem is we've got a Commerce Commission who has no accountability. They might decide to investigate something that—no idea—no one really cares about. So therefore if no one really cares about it it's not in the public interest to investigate it. So if the politicians haven't raised it why would the Commerce Commission even think that they could possibly justify an inquiry into something that for example Mr Jones hasn't thought of or Minister Faafoi? We here are much more interested in the public interest than the officials. The officials will struggle to demonstrate that they have the public interest at heart if a Minister can't do that because a Minister will have—and must have and needs to have—the public interest at heart because if he or she does not the polls will kick them out and that's the way it should be.So my issue here is around governance. At the end of the day the voter who's the taxpayer is paying and the taxpayer is able to demonstrate whether they believe the Government of the day is doing the right thing is putting the right things before the Commerce Commission putting the right inquiries before the Commerce Commission by their vote. Whether it's a real estate inquiry or a supermarket inquiry that the Minister might want to investigate I would suggest that would be a very silly thing to do because the public will rebel against that and that's a good thing.So that's the check and balance that is missing in this bill as it stands today which is why obviously Mr Hudson's Supplementary Order Paper 139 is an excellent one because it gives the power to the Minister to veto any silly inquiries suggested by the Commerce Commission. Remember they just want to stay in their job so they'll be putting as many inquiries—that's the incentive that's—[Time expired]