Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak on this Commerce Amendment Bill. I didn't have the pleasure of sitting on the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee which heard the evidence on this particular bill but I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on it because I certainly have had some dealings with the Commerce Commission in terms of that—Hon Member: Oh.STUART SMITH: Yes which is quite a long story which I won't go into but—Hon Members: Aw go on.STUART SMITH: Oh OK. If you want to know I was—SPEAKER: No let's stay with the second reading of the bill.STUART SMITH: I'm coming to that and I'm giving some—I was going to give you a bit of detail and that was in regard to an allegation of fixing the market. And I was alleged to have fixed the market because I had advised grape growers that if they grew too many grapes they would suffer some market consequences. I perhaps foolishly but wisely put in an estimated number that would be quite acceptable that the market could accept. And lo and behold they actually produced that amount of grapes. Therefore the allegation. Fortunately it was so spurious and actually the people investigating it had no idea about what they were talking about. And I thought that's what really worries me about the Commerce Commission when they get to the point of investigating it. I advised them to charge me I said Charge me" because actually it would be so much fun tearing them to bits because they had no evidence to back up what they were talking about. And so I thought if that happened to me what's happening in the real market out there? And I think that is what we've got to be concerned about.So I'm absolutely against as I think my colleague has just mentioned and gone into great lengths about that there should be an imbalance of power here. There is always an imbalance of power in the market. I think we have to accept that. Anyone who's been in business will know that—you're either on the right side of it or you're on the wrong side of it. It depends on whether you're a desperate seller or one who's not that keen to sell. Either way you have more power or less power than the other party—by definition. That's how it works. But we have to ensure we do as much as we possibly can to ensure that the market is as fair as possible whatever your definition of fair happens to be.I think it ironic that this has come forward at this time in some respects given that we've just gone through a period of lockdowns where very large market players that is supermarkets were being criticised by the Government—they had a short inquiry into whether they had too much market power or not—while at the same time the Government drove the market to them by shutting all of the butcher shops and all of the greengrocers. So that had a completely opposite effect to what this bill is supposed to do. And I think the Government members might want to reflect on that. I think it's a point that is not lost on the public.But to this bill my colleague mentioned the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that we want to bring forward and I think that that is absolutely needed to do that. I think there are different things; the effects test is a valid test but I think we have to be careful—well that's been struck out. We have to be careful that we don't end up with the rule of opacity where you get a disconnect between the conduct rules—and I'm sure Dr Webb would have a lot more to add on this than I have—which is relatively obscure whereas the decision rules are quite not knowable to the general public. We have to ensure that the way this is interpreted by the powers that be is something that can be understood by those in the market every day—those businesses that will rub up against this one way or another either as someone who is a complainant or those that are being complained against in terms of their market power.I think one of the SOPs we'll do is on that effects test and we use an example here of the market power of a large truck manufacturer that gives discounts to the big companies that—obviously the largest companies but the effect of that is that a small company goes out of business. And of course the truck manufacturer didn't set out to put the small operators out of business but the effect actually was just that. So we feel that needs to be taken in account of and so we'll be putting an SOP up on that one.The other one is a legitimate business justification defence should be included. I think that that's also a very good one that we should be looking at. So for example refusing to supply a downstream customer for reasons perhaps of their credit record or outstanding debt or otherwise that may well put them out of business: how is that affected by this particular bill. And I see Duncan Webb taking some notes now and he's getting really fired up ready to go and I'm pleased to see that because we need these sorts of things to be explored. And when we get to the committee of the whole House and we table our SOPs I'm really looking forward to having that debate. I wasn't on the select committee I don't know whether these things were covered or not in the detail that I think they need to be but it appears to a certain extent that they weren't.The reinstating of intellectual property safe harbours—I think that is something that has to be looked at and that's what we're going to be putting an SOP in on. We've got to be careful that we don't discourage the innovation that goes along with intellectual property. If you can't protect that intellectual property why would you do it in the first place? Intellectual property is a difficult thing for many people to get their heads around. It can be as simple as an idea effectively that you are trying to protect and I think that we need to ensure that that is taken care of. We could be making New Zealand an outlier an international outlier as the United States and the European Union allow the enforcement of intellectual property rights. So we can't be out of step with our international trading partners because this is such a mobile world nowadays particularly with these low-weight products such as digital products. All the laws that we have today really were set up to deal with manufacturing businesses of heavy goods such as vehicles all sorts of things like that.Nowadays we're moving more and more to that digital-type economy albeit that New Zealand is almost being propped up at the moment by the agricultural sector in terms of our exports. But it just shows how we need to protect all of those other assets because a lot of our technological assets now are coming out of that agricultural sector where the research is going in to innovate to make agriculture a more efficient and world leading—although it already is a world leading—sector. So a lot of those innovations are around things like climate change and reporting and verifying the practices that primary producers claim to make and also—Hon Member: What about Australia?STUART SMITH: Well what about Australia? Yeah. I think that the Minister alluded to working across the Tasman with the Australians and having some parallel and accepted standards between both countries. That's a very good and laudable goal to have and we do support this bill. But we see three areas that need SOPs to bring it up to scratch and we will be arguing very forthrightly for those in the committee of the whole House. So with that I commend the bill to the House."