Ryall Tony: Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Ryall Tony: Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:618;Page:14273] 
Hon TONY RYALL (National—Bay of Plenty) 
: 
 I do not know whether it has escaped other members’ attention but it is very obvious to members on this side of the House that every Minister of the Government who has spoken on a bill this week has given some defence of the Government’s management of the law and order system in New Zealand. Every single one of them has ponied out the tired old myth that the crime rate is coming down in New Zealand. The fact is that violent crime is going up and the chances of people being bashed mugged or attacked by someone on parole are the highest they have ever been in this country. 
I would like to talk about the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Bill. I must say that at the Law and Order Committee it was a most interesting bill on which to sit not so much because of issues related to second-hand dealers but particularly because of issues associated with pawnbrokers. For those who have not had much experience with that subject I can tell them it was fascinating to learn about the role that pawnbrokers have played in the history and development of the world. Indeed Christopher Columbus’s exploration of the Americas was funded by the Spanish royal family pawning their Crown jewels. That raised sufficient to enable Columbus to go to the Americas and bring back great wealth and prosperity to the Spaniards. 
It was also fascinating to hear about the sort of people who use pawnbroking services. We discovered that it is not necessarily poor people under significant financial pressure who use those services; it is often people who just need some assistance with their cash flow. We were told of people from a wide variety of social groups who for example would bring in some jewellery or watches to a pawnbroker for a very short period of time in order to assist themselves with their cash flow. It is clear that pawnbroking is a service used by many people in the community. 
Select committee members spent a lot of time in trying to assure themselves that the compliance costs that would burden second-hand dealers pawnbrokers and those running community craft markets and flea markets involving people who sold second-hand goods would not be significant. We are confident that the changes made should not be an excessive burden on people involved in those businesses. 
The National Party would like recorded that it has an amendment in respect of clause 54 and I draw members’ attention to that clause in the reported-back bill. The provision requires primarily that pawnbrokers who have pledges they wish to redeem should redeem those at auctions. Now why do people go to auctions? They go to auctions because they expect to get a good deal—a cheap deal. So what we are doing in this clause is saying that the pawnbroker in order to redeem a pledge must take it to an auction and even if the price is hopeless the pawnbroker still has to accept it—it has to be the price. If the pawnbroker gets no price then the pawnbroker can look at other options. But if someone goes along to an auction expecting to get a cheap deal gets a bid accepted and gets the price of a cheap deal then that is the residual price or value the pawnbroker gets to defray costs and the person who owns the asset—the pledger—gets the net proceeds. We do not think that that is good for the people pledging their assets. 
We think that many pawnbrokers actually want to act in the interests not only of themselves but also of the people who have pledged with them because they want those people’s repeat business. We think there should be an option that says to pawnbrokers that if they reasonably believe they can get a better deal by putting those pledged assets for sale on shelves in their second-hand shops or at their pawnbroking businesses then they should be able to do that. Auctions are great for cheap deals but they are not necessarily great for getting the best net proceeds for people who have pledged their assets. So we have an amendment to introduce in respect of that provision and we look forward to support from other parties for that amendment. 
I say in conclusion that the National Party is happy to support this bill. We participated strongly on the select committee to get amendments to a number of what we thought were unworkable and burdensome provisions in this bill. I think those have been tidied up. We still have some concerns but we think the bill goes a long way towards addressing what is an important concern. At the end of the day the best way to prevent stolen goods from being sold through second-hand dealers in pubs or off the backs of lorries is for the community not to buy them. While that may be easy to say I believe that it would be the best way to actually end those trades.