Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Well that was a brilliantly read speech by the Minister who's just resumed her seat. It was stunning really wasn't it?Hon Carmel Sepuloni: I like your cardigan too.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Oh she likes my jacket. Isn't that sweet? You see I can do green. Clayton Mitchell: You could do anything Ms Collins.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Clayton Mitchell you are such a charmer. Can I just say though—Hon Christopher Finlayson: But she wouldn't throw dwarfs around. Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Oh I think we're getting all a bit—Hon Christopher Finlayson: She wouldn't engage in dwarf-throwing competitions.Clayton Mitchell: You'd love to be one of the ones that'd be sliding down all oiled up wouldn't you?ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No you don't know that.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Right coming back to the bill I did however think that there was an opportunity there for the Hon Carmel Sepuloni to acknowledge the very good hard work of our dear colleague the Hon Jacqui Dean who was the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs who started this process when we were in Government last year when the world was a better place actually to be frank—and the sun shone more and everything was wonderful.So Jacqui Dean worked very hard on this and I know because I also worked with her. I undertook the first of the studies into the fuel market prices last year. It's taken this Government a year to sit on it; Cabinet last year approved—I think it was August actually last year—giving the Commerce Commission extra powers around market studies. But we did impose a caveat to that and that was to have a Minister decide whether or not there was a particular industry or area that needed to be looked at and studied. That was because we were very aware of the cost to business and therefore the cost to employees and therefore the cost to consumers of any overdoing of any market study powers because of the fact that an open-ended power can be incredibly expensive for an industry. What some people don't seem to understand is that the cost always ends up being paid by the consumer and that means that people who don't get choices about where they spend their money end up paying the most.So I think the Government has got very frightened and concerned about what's been happening with fuel prices around New Zealand. We've seen some incredibly interesting captain's calls today from the Prime Minister around fuel prices. That is very much around the fact that people are hurting when they are going to buy their petrol. And why is that important for this bill? It is because actually the work was started last year to deal with this very issue particularly around the domestic fuel market in New Zealand. There are basically four big players in it. There's Gull which is an independent. Their fuel is brought in already refined out of Singapore from memory. The other ones are Mobil BP and Z Energy and they all own the refinery at Marsden Point. They therefore have control of most of the domestic fuel in New Zealand—domestic and aviation fuel I should say as well—and they sell on to some of the independents like Waitomo Group and some of those very small players.I was always fascinated as the Minister of Energy and Resources and never really got a straight answer about why it is that companies like Waitomo could buy their fuel from the big three and still sell it cheaper. I did not understand that and I never got a satisfactory answer. I had some very interesting answers but they weren't satisfactory. Some of those answers were around—and I really love this one; this is one of my favourites which was Well Minister"—as I was then—"we sell coffee as well." Well I don't know where that one came from. And I said to that particular company—and I won't name them; some people might guess—"And you sell by the way very good coffee but if you can't make money on coffee and you're telling me that fuel is cross-subsidising your coffee then you're doing something wrong because I think I could make money on coffee."So we had an interesting discussion. The reality is that we have a market where we don't have as many big players where even though there is no cartel as such and the fact that three of the big players own the refinery and are shareholders and have information from that refinery about how much fuel is being refined quite clearly shows there are issues there around our market and the lack of competitiveness.We saw before we even undertook the study—but the study from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment clearly showed it as well—the thing called the Gull effect. One of the reasons that people in Wellington wonder why the fuel prices are higher even than other parts of the North Island is actually that Gull hasn't set up shop here. And I asked them that too and I know that the House will want to know and the answer was that Gull imports their fuel through Tauranga ports and that their model works on the basis of one day's tanker trip basically—they don't want to overnight. They don't want to have anything else. They have issues I think accessing storage facilities in Wellington at the ports and they've had issues trying to even sell into other parts of the country.So these are all things that I think can be looked at and I think it's a worthwhile thing to do—to find out about any issues around competition or lack of competition around access to storage at ports access to ports generally and also to understand why it is that people can bring fuel into New Zealand fully refined and sell it cheaper than anywhere else.One particular part of the country that seemed to have some of the best prices for fuel and still has is Levin primarily because it's one of the last places with all the big fuel players in it in quite a small area and therefore people can shop around.I don't think it's good enough to be able to say that if you've got a competitor like Gull or even some of the very small players like Waitomo who as I've said buy their fuel from the big three in your town that therefore all of the other prices are cheaper than they are in the town next door where there is no Gull effect. It's simply not good enough and it's not credible for the industry to say "Oh well there's more cost." I know that some of the service stations provide more service than others. There's not that much service to be frank on the forecourt of any service station in New Zealand unless it's privately owned or there's a particularly good—let's say there's a lot of competition from other service stations.I think the situation has become one where over the years Governments have found it very difficult to deal with because we are only small players in the fuel market as a country. There is nothing to stop the big players like for instance Mobil or others saying that they'll just exit our market and that certainly has happened—Shell has exited the market. But that doesn't mean I believe that that wouldn't open up opportunities for others as well. So we've just always got to remember the fact that we have a population smaller than Melbourne. We have a physical size and therefore all of those issues around transporting fuel storage and everything else—we're bigger than the United Kingdom physically—and so obviously we do end up paying more. But one of the big issues that the Prime Minister hasn't dealt with is the issue about all of the excise taxes on fuel. It is not fair I believe going into the future with more people using electric vehicles and more people with hybrids for the only people who contribute towards our roads through the fuel taxes being petrol users and through the road-user charges diesel users. It is simply not fair. There would not be many electric vehicles in my electorate in Papakura. There are not that many people who could afford them because they are significantly more expensive than the combustion engine.So I think there need to be ways of looking at this and just adding cost on cost on cost as this Government has been doing for the last year is not satisfactory. This is a sop at the moment because they could actually fix quite a lot of the problem right now by taking off that tax. Axe the tax."