Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. The previous speaker Jamie Strange made a comment about the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee saying how it was a hard-working select committee and that we worked really well and I have to say that actually we do. However the issue at hand is that the Fair Trading Amendment Bill which is now currently before the House at its second reading has not even completed the due process. Earlier my colleague the Hon Todd McClay took a point of order to try to return this bill to select committee because what had happened was that when the select committee in the previous Parliament was considering this bill we had—I think Jamie Strange mentioned—more than 50 submissions on this bill. Not all of the submissions were even heard and the select committee did not even consider the departmental report and I am unsure how the Minister can actually claim that this bill has gone through proper process in this House. This House is about listening. This thing that I'm talking about is democracy and there is such a terrible injustice when good people in New Zealand make submissions to select committees for a particular piece of legislation—they want their voices heard. The Minister has actually said that there will be lots of SOPs—Supplementary Order Papers. What that means is that he himself recognises that this bill does not fit what a good bill is supposed to be. That means there are major issues with the bill that is currently before this House that we are debating if it has to have Supplementary Order Papers. One of the questions that I'd like to ask the members opposite is that since the last election we have now had six months of House time: why could the Government not have returned this bill to select committee so that we could have had plenty of time to go through the process of actually examining the bill looking at the submissions talking to the officials examining the departmental report that they were going to produce and actually considering making changes to the bill? In the previous incarnation of this House the Commerce Committee worked really well and that was before the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee when members of the Opposition as well as the Government—all of the parties—were involved and I have to commend all of the members who did that. Through the submissions process there were some suggestions that a certain bill actually get changed and the thing that was really lucky was that the Minister who was responsible for the communications portfolio was the Hon Amy Adams. I as the chair approached the Minister and said that there was a submissions process and there were some suggestions through the submissions process by submitters that certain aspects of this bill change and she was really open to it. She had given the select committee the opportunity to completely redraft the bill and that was one of the major highlights of my chairing a select committee. I think every single member who took part in that process from right across this House would agree that that's how a select committee is supposed to work. The process in this particular instance—I will read the email that I received from the former clerk who said and I'm quoting part of it that The Fair Trading Amendment Bill has now been discharged from the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. This is because although the original scheduling for the dissolution of Parliament meant that the bill would be eligible for reinstatement in the 53rd Parliament"—that means we didn't actually finish the work and it would have been reinstated when Parliament resumes. But because there was a delay in the process of the election the actual end date for reporting back came up on 12 August. That means that that had actually passed and that means this bill had to be returned to Parliament and it doesn't have an opportunity unless this House sends it back to a select committee and it should have been sent back to a select committee. There are aspects of the bill where this bill amends the Fair Trading Act of 1986 and I think Jamie Strange mentioned something which talked about how as a member of Parliament we also doorknock and if there was a sticker saying "Do not knock" what would that actually mean to us as a member of Parliament. It actually shows that as chair of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee he doesn't actually understand the bill either and it should have been sent back so that all of the new members could get to grips with this bill. We are not opposed to protecting the consumer rights. We are wanting to protect consumer rights but the thing is that this bill should have gone through the right process so that it could be examined properly and returned to this House for recommendation so that the bill could have been changed. Now we have to deal with it as an SOP and I haven't seen the SOP and I'm not sure if we can actually support it. One of the submitters Business New Zealand said—and I will quote what they said—"It would be fair to say that addressing this issue has been a lengthy and repetitive process and we have consistently made the point there must be clear evidence of a significant problem before any of the changes proposed are enacted. At no stage during the process—now lasting around 16 years—have we had any clear evidence yet despite this issues apparently already dealt with have now resurfaced. This raises the obvious question—what has fundamentally changed? Despite exhaustive issues and discussion papers over time we still remain perplexed as to why these same issues keep coming up when no legitimate problem has been clearly identified." One of the things that I am really confused about in this bill is when they talk about a specific terminology—"unconscionable conduct"—which most submitters actually objected to because the bill does not define what unconscionable conduct is. Nobody wants people to be cheated out of their good savings or anything but the thing is that it has to be narrowly defined in my opinion. Unfair conduct such as the use of pressure tactics deception or targeting vulnerable people which some of the other speakers have talked about is something that we certainly do not want in New Zealand and we need to protect the consumers. But we already have laws that protect them and these laws are already in place. I don't think that this law this piece of legislation is good enough work and I oppose this bill. Thank you Madam Speaker."