Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to talk principally about the reporting elements of this and the Minister having the ability to have regard to or to follow those or not. But before I do I just want to make a point to Minister Faafoi who stood to say that the Commerce Commission in a market study may choose to talk to a broad range of participants or may choose to talk to small or medium sized businesses or may not. Well in actual fact in the oral submission for the Commerce Commission at the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for this bill in response to a specific question about would a market study require the commission to talk to participants small and large across the breadth of an industry their response was yes; in order for it to be a market study they would have to talk to a broad range of participants. That by definition means they will have to talk to smaller and medium sized businesses—not all of them but at least some of them—in order for it to be a market study. So the Minister might want to reflect: did he mislead the committee when he said that they have the choice of whether or not they might talk to small or medium sized businesses? In order for it to be a market study they will have to or otherwise what they undertake will be something of a sort of market study. So is the Minister actually suggesting that a market study may not be a study of an entire market but it may be just whatever the Minister or the Commerce Commission might want it to be on any given day of the week? In their submission they were clear it should be very comprehensive very long very resource-consuming and with a broad range of participants.The reason I stood to take this call—my final call on this part because I know I am limited to four—to talk about the reporting is that it was offered as a protective mechanism. It's this idea that well the Minister doesn't have to or Cabinet doesn't have to accept the recommendations that the Commerce Commission may make as the outcome of a market study is somehow in itself providing a protection for industry. And that is true; I mean the Minister won't have to necessarily adopt any or all of the recommendations that might flow from the study but the problem with that is that the study's already been undertaken. The impost the cost on the taxpayer and the cost and impost on all of those businesses will already have been felt because of course by definition the report of findings can only happen after all of the investigative work has been undertaken. That is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff to use an analogy. My Supplementary Order Paper 139 is the fence at the top because it provides a level of governance to ensure that the potential benefit that can be foreseen from the study warrants the total cost—not just the cost on the budget of the Commerce Commission but the total cost of the impost on all of the New Zealand businesses across that market; large medium and small—and that it is worthwhile placing that impost on them because the benefits which might come from the study and its recommendations warrant that. To wait and see until the end if actually the study that was undertaken was worthwhile because it actually uncovered some things that should be changed is leaving it all a little bit too late because if the commission doesn't find anything of great substance that somehow warrants a fundamental change to that market then there will have been a huge amount of cost imposed on particularly—my concern obviously is for small and medium sized New Zealand businesses because they are less in a position to deal with that. But actually even for the larger businesses you know they by the nature of their businesses and their shareholding will look to offset the cost of these studies against their customers somehow through prices. It may be deferred discounting. It may be that a price that would have gone down this year won't go down because of that additional cost elsewhere to their business. But fundamentally if you go through an entire exercise and there's nothing of great substance required to change at the end of it that can have an incredibly high impost not only of taxpayer spending because of the consumption of that Commerce Commission budget and Commerce Commission resource—because they told us they won't be hiring additional full-time people and dedicating them to market studies. These are coming out of existing resource. So for that period of time there'll be other things they won't have been doing because they'll be doing the studies and if at the end of all that we get to the point where there's nothing that really needs changing then there's a huge impost on New Zealand and on the taxpayer for no real benefit. So I'd implore the Minister one last time: place the fence at the top. Place a level of governance over the top and have ministerial approval for self-initiated market studies.