Waititi RawiriRAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Pāti Māori): If anyone needed more proof that this Government has corporations in its pocket they should look no further than this bill the Business Payment Practices Act Repeal Bill. The legislation this bill is repealing was designed to help ensure that small businesses are paid on time when supplying goods and services to large firms. It did this by establishing a disclosure regime to create transparency around businesses' payment practices across the economy. Let's take for example the supermarket duopoly. The Commerce Commission concluded in 2020 that major supermarkets made a profit of $430 million but now they can delay payment to those who are providing the goods and services to those particular organisations without them being paid over a four-month period. Nobody wants to pay another extra small fee to go and see whether those big businesses pay that money or not because they haven't even been paid for the goods and services that they've provided for those particular companies. Apparently expecting wealthy corporations to pay their suppliers on time is too big an ask for this Government. They've taken away whatever negotiating power small businesses have as a matter of urgency. This bill is just another example of who this Government represents and who they are willing to sacrifice. Over 97 percent of all businesses in Aotearoa are small businesses. We have always known that this Government represents the 3 percent. We are currently seeing the largest transfer of wealth in a generation from ordinary people to banks landlords and corporations. The richest 10 percent now control 50 percent of the country's wealth. The poorest half owns a mere 2 percent. On top of that average people of Aotearoa are paying 20.2 percent in tax while the wealthy are only paying 9.4 percent. Our tax system is doing exactly what it was designed to do—take from the poor and give to the rich. Before anyone accuses me of getting off track this is all connected to the Government's economic agenda that inspired this bill. This is part of an economic agenda that values the profits of the tobacco industry over Māori lives. So far their approach to poverty and wealth inequity has been to give $3 billion in tax cuts to their wealthy mates while passing legislation under urgency to make workers beneficiaries Māori and now small business pay for those tax cuts.Most Māori businesses are small business. Repealing the business practice legislation will mean that if a local fruit grower enters a contract to supply a large company like New World New World has all the negotiating power in that arrangement—New World which is currently seeing record profits with record food prices will be allowed to put off paying invoices upward to 120 days. That's four months. That's a long time for a small business to go without payment and it's long enough to put them out of business. They don't have the luxury or the entitlement of a thousand dollars for a living allowance that calculates up to 52K a year.In fact extending payment terms is a tactic that big companies have used since 2008 after the global financial crisis which led to a lot of small businesses failing. Making business payments for firms earning over $33 million per year transparent and publicly available was such a small change that made all the difference for small family-run businesses. Requiring big businesses to publicly report on their own payment practices particularly late payment not only helped small businesses make decisions on who to do business with but encouraged larger firms to do better at the risk of their reputation. It was a small step to empower small businesses and bring some balance to their negotiations. It was a small step to prevent big businesses from exploiting and ripping people off so of course this Government is repealing the legislation. We will not be supporting this bill.