Smith Damien; Clark DavidDAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Thank you Mr Chair. The Government could today as ACT suggests add some real value to this bill by instructing the Overseas Investment Office to consider retail grocery to be in the national interest and to approve every application to build a new grocery store. That would be the element that would drive this—not just covenant removal which we agree with or the duopoly managing their estate. But it has been known for 10 or 15 years that those practices have gone on and no Governments have addressed that. In terms of questions for the Minister I'd like him to consider that instruction to the Overseas Investment Act because it can happen next week. We've been looking through the research to quantify any impact which restrictive land covenants specifically ought to be having on the course of groceries and we can't make that direct correlation. The excessive profits that the Minister talks about are 20c per day per New Zealand citizen. The other question that we have is: how many reports if any has he received on new market entrants choosing not to enter the market due to restrictive land covenants? And will the Commerce (Grocery Sector Covenants) Amendment Bill really reduce costs further for the squeezed middle New Zealanders? We also can't find any quantifiable estimations of the effects of removing covenants so we are suggesting at the ACT Party that we need to make grocery retail competition as open as possible. Why would you come to this part of the world? No grocery business would consider entering a small market as far away as New Zealand under the restrictions that we have and that the Commerce Commission has identified. So let's say we deal with securing sites and we deal with opening up the market the question is: why can't we bring capital in really quickly through a national interest statement which will allow us to actually build supermarkets fast? Otherwise it will be three years' time and we won't have another player here. So I'd like to plead to the Minister that there's still time to do that and that we would actually add value to the bill by doing that. And he knows that from the Act's perspective it's got to be less hard to do business here and there's got to be less regulation which involves also addressing local councils under instruction with the Resource Management Act to make this a reality. So there are several elements here that could be added which would actually fast track this time frame. And as Mr Robertson said OK tomorrow or when we pass the bill people can simply and quickly get on at looking at sites." But that's not going to satisfy a business plan given the restrictions we've got around the competitive wholesale market and alcohol and liquor provision and actually then getting through the local council quagmire. So I'd like the Minister to consider the Overseas Investment Act instruction and to bring friendly capital if it necessary from overseas to be in the national interest immediately.Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you Mr Chair. With your blessing I would like to address the member's questions although they are obviously outside the scope of the bill. The Official Information Act has just recently been reviewed and that review has been completed and so the commission recommended that that be kept an eye on and Treasury indeed will be monitoring the performance of the Act. As to whether there should be a national interest allocation you know that obviously is quite outside the scope of this bill and I'm not convinced as the member seems to be that foreign direct investment finds that particular barrier the one that's a bridge too far to coming here historically. Indeed even under the current market conditions before the Government announced its response and before we've seen the change we've seen Costco has very clearly indicated its intention to come to New Zealand and indeed I believe the subscription that Costco's had in New Zealand is the biggest they've had anywhere in the world prior to opening. So that is an outfit that is already coming here—quite before any of the change that we're contemplating now. And the member—and others have too—and I myself also have in the debate referenced the wider work that's happening. This bill itself is focused very much on the restrictive leases and covenants question and that question is something I have had conversations with supermarkets about and they indicate it's one of many factors. So I completely accept the argument there are other factors that need to be worked through. That's why we accepted the 12 recommendations that the commission rejected too because we wanted to go further. It is why we think that a whole market change is required in order to create the optimal environment to ensure we have good competition. Now whether that competition comes from domestic operators expanding or whether it comes from overseas participants—and the degree to which it comes from overseas participants—is yet to be seen and I think the most important thing though that we can do is as a House promptly pass this piece of legislation which gets one important piece of the puzzle sorted. And I look forward to the member's supporting the further legislation that comes to the House this year to address the other recommendations that the Government has agreed to from the Commerce Commission report."