Williams ArenaARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Thank you Mr Speaker. This will be a brief call from me but I do want to extend the congratulations of this House to Dan Bidois for shepherding through what is a great bill here and to thank everyone for their speeches on this topic. It's been a really genuinely interesting discussion about how we can advance a pro-consumer agenda in New Zealand which benefits everyone because we're all consumers we all want prices to come down for ordinary New Zealanders and we all want to make sure that these kinds of conditions that make people harder for people that are so frustrating for ordinary people are something that the Government intervenes in and says Hey actually this isn't the way that we should be conducting business here. We're going to get some sensible rules around this and make sure that everyone's on an even playing field." So it's good to be able to have this discussion. This is a good size for a member's bill too. I commend the select committee for working through some of what were actually quite technical and difficult issues. I've read the report of the select committee. I've seen the work that has gone into it. It's a great example of where parliamentarians can get around the table and talk about these issues which we all know a lot about and want to make things better for people.I think that's the attitude we need to be bringing to this. Catherine Wedd who gave a passionate speech about how we need to make things better for consumers needs to continue to bring that passion to our work in this Parliament because these should be bipartisan issues. The idea that a Government can advance a pro-consumer agenda while at the same time growing the economy is absolutely the approach that advanced economies around the world at the moment are taking. We've seen the Biden administration working through a huge huge piece of legislation called the Inflation Reduction Act which has a number of these initiatives which are about making things easier for consumers making it harder for the large corporates that exercise a huge amount of market power in their market to be able to take advantage of ordinary people. That's good work for Government to be doing. It's not something that is blue or red; it's something that we should demand of our Government always and things like this.We've heard a number of stories around the House tonight about just how disappointing frustrating sometimes humiliating sometimes you can't talk to your partner about letting those gift cards expire because they make you feel rotten. It really is outrageous that we've had a situation in New Zealand where gift cards could expire in six months or a year for an experience that you couldn't book at the time or for goods and services that consumers have paid for. They're not paying to give a card and for that exchange of the card to be the thing that they think they're getting; they're buying products to be selected at a future date. That's why jurisdictions around the world as my colleague the Hon Jenny Salesa has said have set their expiry dates up to five years—in some cases seven; in some cases there are no expiries at all—and that would be an appropriate thing for I think New Zealand to move to in future where we can be sure that consumers are always going to be able to get the goods and services that they think they have paid for from these businesses. Protections for consumers in this way are a really good thing.But there's more we could be doing here. Labour's record on protecting consumers in our monopolistic and duopolistic markets is a good one. We made incredible progress on things like supermarkets duopoly in New Zealand which were all designed around giving the little guy the best go. The ACT Party have opposed this bill that we are talking about tonight for exactly the same reasons they opposed those reforms when Labour was in Government because having a swing at big business is not the end of town that they will be going for. But in this bill we are having a bit of a swing at business but we're saying that actually it's Government's role to make sure that consumers are getting a fair go. There will always be a role for Government in that to make sure that everyone is able to enjoy the things that they think they're paying for and getting a fair deal when they go through the checkout.Labour's record on improving things in insurance and lending is also a part of that pro-consumer agenda that New Zealanders expect from their Governments whether they are red or whether they are blue.I think there is more that we could be doing here on things like junk fees. Consumers across New Zealand's market are paying extra more than the ticket price when they're buying things like airline fees when they're paying for things like concert tickets and that is incredibly frustrating for consumers in exactly the same way that having an expired gift card is. You're just reminded constantly that some big corporate is taking a cut that you didn't expect to be losing out on. That's a problem and that's another way that Government can support consumers to be able to get a fair go.There's also an important piece of work here around the transparency of pricing in New Zealand's market. I put those questions to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs at his Estimates and asked him to continue to focus on that work that Labour began. I'd love the Government to continue that work and not for it to be something that is relegated to members' bills only not for it to be something that is popular to do—because a pro-consumer agenda is popular when they are in Opposition—but something that they are focused on in Government. So I commend those backbenchers who are raising these issues and I hope that they are continuing to raise the dialogue with their Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs."