Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Delighted to take a call on the second reading of the Fair Trading Amendment Bill as the chair of a very very busy select committee. And just to acknowledge the previous speech there is a Supplementary Order Paper coming from the Minister. And to acknowledge what the previous speaker Hon Todd McClay said about the Minister's haircut the Minister has a very nice haircut and also a very cost-effective haircut as well.This Government is committed to protecting New Zealand businesses and working closely with New Zealand businesses; that's what we've done over the past four years and that's what we will continue to do—and protecting consumers from unfair commercial practices. So what I'll do is I'm just going to outline a little bit around what the bill does and maybe just use a few sort of anecdotes around that. Then particularly I wanted to focus in on the aspect around empowering consumers to direct uninvited sellers to not enter property. This bill addresses business behaviour that goes beyond what is commercially necessary—where the little guys have been taken advantage of and consumers are suffering.At times there is a power imbalance within the business world. Over 90 percent of businesses in New Zealand are small businesses—less than 20 employees—and at times those small businesses enter into negotiations with much larger businesses and there is a power imbalance. So what this bill does is basically builds on previous work that has been done to ensure that there's good faith discussions going on and the best outcomes for New Zealand consumers and the best outcomes for all businesses in New Zealand.The bill introduces three key changes. The first one is it prohibits unconscionable conduct in trade; secondly it extends protections against unfair contract terms to business contracts under $250000 a year; and thirdly it empowers consumers to tell uninvited sellers—whether that includes MPs we'll maybe find out in the committee stage—to leave their property including through the use of a do not knock" sticker on the door.So the reason we're making these changes is because there have been many stories of small businesses who have been bullied by suppliers or by business customers. I just want to give a bit of context around this and a few examples. So one example that we've seen actually is businesses waiting a long time to be paid for their invoices. Now the challenges for this are obvious in terms of cash flow. If someone is leading a small business then the cash flow challenges can be exacerbated because there's obviously less money within a small business than in a large business. The large businesses can basically bully the small businesses by not paying the invoices on time.A second example is businesses having contract terms changed without their knowledge or consent. Now this is obviously unfair. One of the fundamental philosophies that we have here in New Zealand—and all New Zealanders subscribe to this—is the aspect around fairness. We believe in a fair society where everyone should have an equal opportunity and an equal right to operate in our society. In this context we're talking about business and we're talking about fairness within business.And the third example that we have seen in terms of bullying is businesses being pushed into unfavourable contracts due to a lack of bargaining power or alternatives. And that basically goes to what I was saying before about the power imbalance. The power imbalance does exist—we have to be real around that in terms of we have a diverse range of businesses in New Zealand. And it's really great that we do but the reality is we're always going to have some small businesses some medium and some large. Like I said before the majority of our businesses are actually small businesses here in New Zealand.Businesses can experience stress interruption reduced profitability and are unable to focus on growth and we want our businesses to focus on growth. We want our businesses to have the ability to invest—the ability to borrow and to invest capital. But more than that we want our business owners to be able to lift their heads up and to be able to be visionary. We've seen a number of visionary businesses here in New Zealand and more and more are coming online each day in a whole range of areas. So we don't want our business owners to be bogged down in these sorts of challenges and particularly this bullying behaviour. If you look at bullying—I mean if I think back to sort of my high school days—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Not me.JAMIE STRANGE: No sorry they're my high school days Madam Speaker—I appreciate that. The bullying generally happens when there is a larger person bullying a smaller person. That smaller person then often loses the will to either come to school or to operate but more importantly to have a vision and we want our small businesses to have vision to have aspiration and we're supporting them to do that.As the chair of the select committee which like I said is a very busy and hard-working select committee I'd like to thank all of the submitters who submitted on this bill. Now as was previously raised the submissions took place under the previous chair of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee Jonathan Young so I'd like to thank Jonathan Young who is no longer a member of this Parliament for the excellent work that Jonathan Young did as the chair of this committee in terms of shepherding those submissions through and there were other members on the committee as well.The committee received 51 written submissions—so there was certainly some interest in this—and heard oral evidence from 20 submitters in hearings in Wellington and virtually over Zoom. Officials considered these submissions in the departmental report. Now just to highlight some of the submissions that we heard: so we heard a number of submissions on the unconscionable conduct. Some submitters wanted a definition of "unconscionable conduct" to aid clarity. The list of factors in the bill provide a principle-based approach to help determine what conduct could fall foul of the law. There were a number of submissions on extending unfair contract terms to businesses. Submitters had mixed views on whether the unfair contract terms extension is appropriately targeted. The protections only apply to standards from contracts which aren't subject to effective negotiation; this limit is for the protections to smaller and more vulnerable businesses who have poor bargaining power and don't have the resources to identify unfair terms.I'd like to move on to one other point as I indicated at the start which is the aspect of this bill around empowering consumers to direct uninvited sellers to not enter their property. So we currently have a situation—and I'm sure that many people who are either watching Parliament TV tonight or are listening at home have had this experience whereby you are sitting at home there's a knock on the door and somebody comes to sell you something at the door.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Me?JAMIE STRANGE: Oh Madam Speaker I apologise—to sell the people something at the door.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I don't want to buy anything.JAMIE STRANGE: No no no. I was going to sell you some encyclopaedias Madam Speaker! Ha ha! A wonderful set of encyclopaedias! And look in the 1980s and 1990s it really was. Encyclopaedias was sort of the cliché and the reality is I know a number of people who have a large range of encyclopaedias in their house because of the sales pitch.These days it can be a whole range of products but there are many examples of somebody sitting in their house and receiving a knock on the door and somebody at the door trying to sell them something. And then that person then basically says to them "Look I'm not interested; I'm a little bit busy." but the salesperson can often be quite pushy and it can create a really difficult environment and pressure is put on consumers and I've experienced that myself and I know a lot of people have.Sometimes these people can be obviously very well meaning and sometimes they can actually be charities. The charities often subcontract someone to do the selling for them. But the reality is that there is an aspect of pressure that is often not welcome. Sometimes that pressure like I said before can come from members of Parliament. I know myself when I've knocked on doors previously and I've seen the sign "Do not knock" on the door. What does that mean for a member of Parliament? I'm not sure. Maybe someone else might have an opinion on that. I actually have been bitten twice on a doorstep by dogs Madam Speaker not by constituents but I have been bitten twice by dogs—I didn't learn the first time but it is very important when someone does go to a door that they don't put extra pressure on the person who opens the door.I could tell a number of extra stories to illustrate what this bill does but I see that my time is coming to an end so unfortunately I will not be able to tell any further stories about the door-knocking aspect. I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The time has come for me to leave the chair for the dinner break and the House will resume at 7 o'clock.Sitting suspended from 5.59 p.m. to 7.00 p.m."