Tabuteau FletcherFLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): It is a pleasure to take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on this Commerce (Cartels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I would like to just remind the Committee of our history with this legislation. We very much supported this process to the Commerce Committee and I acknowledge the words of the previous speaker the Hon Clayton Cosgrove around the comprehensive engagement and lots of discussion with industry and I agree that that has been what has happened. Where we differ—and it is unfortunate to see Labour's position on this—is that there has been a substantive change to this legislation with the removal of the criminalisation of individuals when they undertake cartel activities as defined by this legislation.We went in completely agreeing that we needed a refresh. Industry wanted us to move down this pathway. It seems to me to be quite honest that the reason it has taken us 4 years and four Ministers to get to this point is that none of them was willing to take on what has become a terrible piece of legislation. Cartels and the undertaking of good business in an economy are a balancing act. What we had here was a conversation about the fact that good businesses were being prohibited from cooperating. It is fair to say that businesses should be able to cooperate with one another in an endeavour to provide a service or goods to the end consumer in such a way that those businesses profit and that actually the consumer is better off for that coming together of business. So that conversation was important and New Zealand First supports that. If the end consumer is better off then more power to them.But then we get to the point of the intent of the legislation and so the conversation becomes asking where cooperation ends and collusion or cartel activities begin.Hon Simon Bridges: This is a very jurisprudential sort of address.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: Oh thank you Mr Minister—yeah yeah yeah. That is the conversation that needs to be had.Up until the point that the Minister removed the criminal nature of sanctions or actions that were available to the Government New Zealand First supported it. What the original conversation was was alignment with the practice in Australia. That also made a lot of sense. But Australia maintained the criminal sanctions—the ability to hold individuals to account. What we are doing here is allowing companies to go down a pathway where it is permissive—it has become permissive. And in doing that you need to make sure that the options available to you for those who are not acting in good faith and in fact are engaging in cartel behaviour very much allow them to be held to account. Whilst institutions or businesses can be sanctioned in this legislation we say that the bill has been compromised completely with the removal of the criminal sanctions and we cannot support this going forward.My understanding is that Mr Cosgrove has put a remedial Supplementary Order Paper of that nature to the Committee which I will speak to momentarily. If that is the case and if we can get agreement on that then New Zealand First would support the bill as a whole because there are some good things here. There are technical alignments. There are efficiencies to be gained. As has been said the industries have made good submissions and have had good conversations with the Government. There is a lot of good here but we cannot now go down that path of a permissive framework and then not have the legislation to back it up if things go awry. Thank you.