White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour—Mt Albert): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. I will absolutely try and engage here in a way that is a genuine debate with the Minister with regard to this issue but I am yet to be convinced that what he is doing is what he thinks he's doing because what he is talking about is a purpose of a bill which is not the purpose of this bill plainly if you read the bill. The bill is a repeal. It simply takes away the one thing that is there now and replaces it with zero. There is nothing in replacement. It is a situation where the Minister accepts there is a problem. In fact he accepts there is a problem and has said so openly and yet what he is doing is he's letting big business off the hook. He's saying Government can do this." Well Government actually has been doing this—Government has been on a pathway to making sure that they do comply. This isn't about Government; this is about our biggest businesses holding it over our little businesses and it is a distraction to talk about Government. Government should do its bit—absolutely—but so should our big businesses when faced with the stories like Reuben Davidson told of his constituent. It's not good enough—absolutely not good enough—and what the Australian legislation review did was actually not talk about getting rid of a law like this and in fact their threshold was higher. It talked about adding and improving and I am up for that conversation today. So you will see amendments on the Table Minister which talk about adding to this the very tools that the Australians are talking about because yes we're all up for a conversation about prohibiting this behaviour for example. The IT system point I want to respond to because while the IT system has been talked about as a waste of time for these big businesses I'd like New Zealanders to think about what that would mean. It means our big businesses will be keeping a record of what they are doing out there whom they're paying whom they're not paying and how long it's taking them. That to me seems a really good use of money by a big company because what it's doing is it's holding itself to account. So when the Minister talks about how he's been in discussions about how we might get a voluntary code for these big $100 million operations he is talking about a voluntary code based on—what? No IT system and no reporting in this area? That's what I suspect. It will be in a vacuum of information. So I take the point from the New Zealand First speaker today that data is important—I agree. Data is important. Data is important and it's important that our big businesses keep this kind of data. They're big businesses; they're not little ones. They're absolutely capable of keeping this information and if they turn a blind eye to it it's because it's in their interests. It is in their interests at the moment to not pay people because they keep the interest as my friend Ingrid Leary talked about.So we have to change the dial and we shouldn't be dialling down and taking away the one tool that we've got here. We should be dialling up in this area. We should be thinking "What can we do more to add to this legislation?" So I say to the Minister that this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If you don't think this is strong enough Minister then it is time to add to this legislation and you can do that cooperatively with the Labour Party and the Green Party because the Green Party and the Labour Party and the Māori Party are all absolutely keen on seeing our small businesses not suffer in the way that Mr Davidson talked about. We would like to see more not less in this area. We would like to see these big businesses play their part in New Zealand society and not just skim off the top the interest rates by delaying payment. That has been going on and it still is going on but actually this legislation did make a change to the mentality of New Zealanders because I think New Zealanders decided that wasn't OK and I think even the National Party's statements on this which say "This is a problem we've got to fix."—they're influenced by this legislation and this discussion which said that it was not OK. We are halfway there and we will go the whole way. There will be amendments on the Table today Minister which I would urge you to consider. Those are amendments that are about improving this legislation not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.Now I wanted to make a comment about the earlier speech that the Minister made because he said that the last piece of legislation—this piece of legislation that has been repealed today—was rammed through the select committee. Oh if only we were so lucky to have had this legislation rammed through a select committee—I'd quite like to do that. I would quite like to have it rammed through a select committee so that the small businesses in New Zealand can have a say on what they think this is about and what they think the impact is because that is the process that they're missing out on here. It is possible for the parties in the Opposition to put up amendments and talk to the constituents they've got—and they've done a good job of doing that today and you will see the results—but that is not the same as our small businesses and our contractors coming to a select committee and talking about this stuff. Now one of the comments that I got from one of the Government members today was to correct me over what I was saying when I said that contractors were affected by this and talking about how it was just suppliers. That is exactly the kind of myth that I would love to see busted not by me but by the individuals who would come to a select committee and say "Oi! This happened to me. This happened to me for years and I lost a lot of money over it. I lost my house over it. This happened to me because I was tied in to one of our big very wealthy companies and they deliberately did not pay me." I take the goodwill that I hear from Andrew Bayly about recognising there is a power differential here and that perhaps just shaming the companies and reporting the figures isn't enough. Maybe we need to go a bit further and maybe it is time—maybe this is our opportunity to do it. So I invite the Government to think right now about the amendments on the Table that would add to this legislation would add teeth to it perhaps that weren't there and would recognise perhaps further the power differential between the parties which means that someone who is dealing with one of our big companies—and it is often a sole supplier or a trader or a contractor; all those people—isn't in a position to say no to these terms. In fact they are absolutely broken often by it and it is totally reprehensible behaviour.So I ask the Government to consider those amendments because these 100 days just seem to have been about tearing everything down and the focus has all been on supporting those big big companies. We've had things like the trial periods for employees go out to our big companies not our little ones. Our little ones were already in a different situation but it's our big companies that have been focused on. I'm worried about things like Labour's retention money provision in the building supply industry being pulled back as well because it's very similar. It's part of a raft of seeing a problem. What happened in that situation is so similar. Our big companies were holding retention money from our builders—our small businesses—and they were actually holding that money and using it and abusing it when the work had been done. That kind of rip-off is a parallel to this one. We changed that law and I was really proud of it. I would hate to see that as part of the next wave of changes because this Government is so focused on the big players and has some sort of myth that keeping the big players flush with the money from the small players is somehow good for our productivity. I say it is not. What is good for our productivity is getting small businesses like this paid on time paid when they've done the work and not waiting waiting cap in hand to be perhaps paid maybe when somebody wants to knowing full well—as the big businesses do—that the small companies can't take this matter to the court because it's too expensive. They can't afford to offend the person that they rely upon for their income.So I say let's make this a positive change today. Let's look at the amendments that we've made and instead of tearing down the house and burning everything that anyone's ever done that's constructive in this country let's make one of the actions in these 100 days be to build a better law to build more protection around our small businesses and to favour them for once over our big companies and actually change the dial in this country."