Uffindell SamSAM UFFINDELL (National—Tauranga): Great to rise on a Friday afternoon to speak. I can see the excitement on the other side of the House. I might need a coffee though soon Mr Bennett. I hope you would bring your small business back to Parliament. I'd be very keen to entertain that. I'm not sure whether this bill would've actually benefited you because I'm assuming that the people that came along and paid probably—I don't know whether any of them would've been people that would've been captured by this. Whether that would've picked up on that I'm not too sure mate. But this is targeted at business above $33 million.I'll just go back on a comment I heard from Naisi Chen the third speaker today—Naisi Chen: Naisi—it's Naisi.SAM UFFINDELL: —Naisi sorry; it's Uffindell as well I'll add that in there—saying that this side of the House doesn't care for small businesses; we only care for big businesses. I would totally refute that and I think that's just another example of gaslighting by this Government. There's a lot of wastage of gas. You know you've closed the gas searching but you're using up a lot of it and I think this is another example of it because on this side of the House we really do care about small businesses because we understand and recognise that they are the engine of this country. As for saying we only care about the big end of town I would like to mention that just last week you allocated $140 million to a very big Australian company.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I didn't allocate anything Mr Uffindell.SAM UFFINDELL: In going back to this bill for a moment there you know we've heard the comments that this is not going to solve the problems that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has defined and it is noted that it will add substantial compliance costs. That's one of the reasons that companies out there small businesses are doing it so hard at the moment that they have had an avalanche of costs put on to them.There have been significant costs and we could look at the cost of living crisis. People out there—you know the retail hospo tourism businesses—they're not getting the customers coming through. When I go out there and talk to people and I do that every time I'm back in my electorate—I go around and visit the small businesses around the great electorate of Tauranga—they tell me that since about March this year there's been a real decline in people coming through their doors and a lot of them are wondering whether it's even worthwhile going on. That flows on: so they're not getting the money to pay their suppliers their suppliers aren't getting the money to pay whoever it is or whatever their costs are and it's just an onward flow that we are seeing under this Government.That's before you take into account the significant pressures that small businesses are being placed under. They endured a significant amount of time in lockdown—for my colleagues in Auckland where I am heading tonight. My mother spent a long time in lockdown—fortunately she's not a small-business owner because if she was she would've really felt the pinch as a lot of them did. Then you add on to that the other costs they've faced around public holidays and additional sick leave the minimum wage constantly rising and looking at small businesses like they're just people who have got endless pits of money and thinking that their job is to deny it from people. I totally refute that because small-business owners aren't rolling in cash. They don't have an additional $2000 or $3000 a year to pay to meet the compliance under this.And you look at what this compliance is going to do. Is it actually going to achieve what the intention of this is? I would significantly question that I really would because what you're getting here is a snapshot. You're getting two snapshots a year. People were looking at what accounts payable or receivable—and I think my colleague Andrew Bayly put it pretty well: are they going to go on to the MBIE website and look at a snapshot in time which may have been 5½ months ago and say Oh that's good. I've got a really good understanding of where my business is at and where my creditors are at or the people that owe me money or whatever it may be—my suppliers." I'm not sure that it will. In fact I'd actually be pretty certain that it wouldn't. An MBIE website that offers a snapshot in time from six months ago is probably not going to be the place that people will go to. In fact I think Mr Bayly put it pretty well: there are other avenues out there that businesses can already exercise for $33 to get the information that they need or they may just go and have a look at their own accounting software or you know what? They might pick up the phone and just communicate to that supplier.So I'm challenged to understand how this is actually going to improve the lot of small businesses. I'd actually say as I already have it's going to make it a little bit harder for them because they've got another regulatory regime that they need to comply with several more thousand dollars a year. You know you've got to allocate more time more cost and very little output at the end of it.We note that Australia and the UK have recently implemented schemes like this. Australia did it with a higher threshold of $100 million—ours is $33 million—and Australia is now looking to walk that back because they are finding out that it isn't actually achieving what it intended to achieve. Actually as Andrew Bayly said in his speech on a lot of occasions it's leading to slower payments. So well-intended; worse outcomes. When you see that you leave me with no option but to oppose this and I'm glad all the rest of my colleagues have.We also look at the operational issues around this. I mean this doesn't just spring up in a void; you've got to set up a new IT platform you've got to hire staffers you've got to keep the operational costs running. I think the initial start-up costs are about $3.5 million and then you've got ongoing maintenance costs of this regime at anywhere between $1.4 million to $2 million a year—just more money dribbling out of this Government and more costs being piled on to businesses.Glen Bennett: Who's dribbling?SAM UFFINDELL: Very good question. I didn't bring a bib but we could all get one soon. I will keep going though. You're not encouraging me to sit down when you make comments like that.But we're a nation of small businesses: 97 percent of our employees are hired by small businesses and I think it's really important that we enable small businesses to keep hiring these people. One way that you do that is that you don't keep lumping them with additional costs. That's ultimately what this bill is going to do and it's going to achieve very little to no positive benefits for speeding up the payments to these people. There are far better ways to do it. We have made our case pretty strong today. This reading will be passed through; we understand that but the National Party will oppose it—so do I. Thank you."