Chen NaisiNAISI CHEN (Labour): This bill will be remembered in this House as being a bill that's brought out many ironies. First of all let's set the record straight. Jonathan Young was the chair of the Economic Development Science and Innovation (EDSI) Committee when this bill was referred to select committee—Melissa Lee: Good chair.NAISI CHEN: Maybe not as good as you Melissa because what happened was he had six months to write the report and he had six months to direct the work of that select committee to finish this report on such an important bill but did he? No he did not and unfortunately for him my good colleague here has taken over the good electorate of New Plymouth and so we have an even better chair this year Jamie Strange chairing the EDSI Committee making sure that we stay on schedule.This bill had six months in select committee. What happened was that they did not arrange for the submitters to make their oral submission in time before the time that this bill was due and what happened was that our officials from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) had to end up writing the departmental report for this bill. What they did—and credit to them—they actually went through all of the written submissions and actually included their opinion into their departmental report which we have at the moment. There had been already 20 oral submissions that Jonathan Young got to but there were still a lot left. But what happened was that they did submit written submissions so we have them here in the departmental report here today.You know what I said—that this would be a bill that brings out many ironies. I was actually reading Hansard about a month ago on this bill. Do you know what Jonathan Young said when he got up to speak—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Not me. Order! Order! Not me.NAISI CHEN: Excuse me Madam Speaker. When Jonathan Young got up to speak on this bill in the first reading he said I am so pleased it's coming to the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee." and then—blah-blah—"We have had such a light workload"—blah-blah-blah—and then he said "he can have assurance that we will do the job unbiased. We will do it professionally." Did he? No he didn't. He had six months to complete this bill to hear all of the submitters. Technology's an amazing thing—we did go through COVID—he could have called them on Zoom. He did some of them but he didn't finish all of them. What I would like to turn to now is actually the substance of this bill. Like I said irony prevails in the way that the National Party has handled this bill. I still remember my colleague Dr Deborah Russell when she first spoke on this bill. She said it was incredibly ironic how the National Party would not be voting for a bill that actually supports small businesses here in New Zealand. This bill was designed so that small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) would have a fair opportunity to do business here in New Zealand so that they didn't have to stand up to the big companies and actually be bullied into contracts that were unfair for them. So this is a situation where we find often small businesses in the situation of David and Goliath—when they had to take a contract because maybe the bigger company was their sole supplier it was their only source of business.But we want to make sure that New Zealand remains one of the best places to do business in the world. We've retained that reputation. We want that to continue to last into generations and so that is why we have to legislate this bill to make sure that businesses in New Zealand can do it fairly so that they're not bullied like in the report where we've seen that 45 percent of businesses get bullied when they're actually doing business. We know that they are. SMEs are the fundamental foundations of our economy as we look at recovering from COVID-19 and what a great Budget we have to do that to lead us into that. We need our small to medium enterprises to be able to feel safe while doing that to be able to write and get into fair contracts while they're doing that. They need to make sure they have the support of this House of this Government. That's why I am proud to be in a Government that looks out for small businesses to make sure that no one gets bullied when they're just doing business in this country. There's a third part that I think is really really important that I would really love to talk about which is the doorknockers or the people that come up and do door-to-door selling. As someone who comes from a migrant community can I just reflect on a very personal note that they are actually very scary for people who might not speak fluent English. They don't know who's at their door. They might not understand the whole entire context of why they're there. And often the tactics they use in order to sell their products are quite pushy or sometimes even quite abusive. And in that way I think this bill will actually set the safeguards for all communities to be able to feel safer in their own homes so that they will not get bullied into buying things; so that for fear of their own safety they will not have to agree to spend ridiculous amounts of money in order just to get someone away from their front door. We've heard of the example of encyclopaedias. I'm sure many who are listening to Parliament TV tonight will be looking at their collection of encyclopaedias at home and reminiscing about the time when they were forced or they were bullied into having to buy that set. So today as we talk about this bill as we get on with actually legislating this bill we are looking out for consumers in New Zealand so that they actually feel safe in their own homes. We know that in New Zealand doing business is extremely important. That's why in this bill we have to actually achieve the right balance. We've talked about that and MBIE our department has done so well in trying to balance that and we know that that balance will be further achieved with all of the Supplementary Order Papers that the Minister will bring about because we are actually trying to do the hard mahi that was left out by the select committee of the last Parliament. I think this bill is really really important in terms of protecting our businesses protecting our consumers protecting everyday New Zealanders but also protecting our economy so that we have the right climate for businesses to be attracted to New Zealand—even for the incentive to actually be able to start off businesses because we all know that businesses start off small. Every business even the large ones that we see that have prospered in New Zealand they started off small and we want to make sure that they have a fair go in our economy and we want to make sure that the law actually protects them and makes sure that they get given a fair chance. And so that is why I'm commending this bill to the House."