Weenink Vanessa; Bidois DanDr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula): Thank you Madam Chair. I can see that my colleagues on this side are very enthusiastic and have got more questions to ask which is great. There's some—CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Just make sure they are questions and new ones. Dr VANESSA WEENINK: Yep. There are some areas that we haven't traversed very much at all and we'd just like a little bit of clarity around them. This is a really important issue for some of us who have those cards sitting in our wallets. Like Catherine Wedd explained really eloquently during the second reading she told a great story about how her husband had a way of trying to make sure that they actually used those gift cards. He stuck them to the inside of the wardrobe to try and see whether or not they could actually use those gift cards. So people are trying all sorts of things. Now one of these—CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): So which clause in the bill does that relate to? Dr VANESSA WEENINK: The clause in the bill that I'm going to ask the question about is about the transport and utilities and ask why it was that we decided to exclude those ones because some people like to have pragmatic gifts and sometimes a pragmatic gift might be to have a Snapper or an AT HOP card. I think generally from my perspective anyway gift cards are a poor choice of gift—the extremely unromantic choice—so that was one where I'd ask why that particular one was excluded. The other thing was that I just wanted to get a bit of a fine point and clarity on from the member was that we were talking before about the infringements. There was a clause inserted—clause 9—and basically that makes it an offence under section 40(1B) of the Fair Trading Act and says that there could be infringement notices applied by regulation. So you were just talking about this before in your previous answers about the infringement notices being $1000 and my understanding of that is that each instance of infringement would then incur that amount of money or a fine not exceeding $10000 for an individual or $30000 for a body corporate. With some of the ways that infringement notices are applied how we can actually see that that is enough of a disincentive because other people have just this afternoon pointed out some really egregious examples that we've heard as this was going through the select committee process. One was where a $1500 gift voucher was allowed to expire and actually the company that it was provided by was asked to back that up and to actually honour that but it chose not to honour that gift card. It was of quite a high value and much higher than previous examples like the member for Rangitata with his $150 gift voucher—James Meager: Oh very generous. Dr VANESSA WEENINK: —though it's still a very significant amount of money. I'm just wondering whether the member thinks that those infringement notices are enough given that we do have quite big potential fines for people which do not exceed $10000 or $30000 for a body corporate. So this is asking around the purpose of that and asking what effect we think that has—whether it's a big enough effect—for the size of the impact that this has on people's lives and also just say a little bit more about the transport and utilities and we did keep out of that during the select process. DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): I wish to thank the member for Banks Peninsula for her constructive questions. The first was around why we excluded transport and utility services cards from the definition of a gift card and essentially it goes back to the purpose of the bill. The purpose of the bill is really around gift cards that are purchased normally for the gifting to other individuals so it was felt that typically when you purchase a transport card like an AT HOP card normally it's for yourself or an individual in your family and it's for your own use. Yes you can in fact gift it on and many do but the primary purchase is actually for individual use. So that is why we excluded transport and utility gift cards from the definition. The second area the member asked about was the infringement notices and yes the member is right that there are infringement notices that can be offered and issued to organisations that are found to be in violation of the expiry date law. They are $1000 for an infringement notice issued and that gives the authorities the ability to quickly issue notices of an offence. But if there are infringement offences under the Fair Trading Act then there is a process for the Commerce Commission to get involved and for the authorities to issue a fine of up to $10000 for an individual—which is hefty but again it is up to"—which will be assessed on the basis of the size and the nature of the offence and it is $30000 for a body corporate. Just going back to the previous question from the member for Whanganui Carl Bates who asked the insightful question about the application of this bill to overseas organisations. Of course this bill only applies to businesses inside New Zealand's borders—for example to gift cards sold in New Zealand. So that is a clear way for the bill to apply only in New Zealand. If they're offered to New Zealanders online then that is part of the legislation but it does not apply to overseas organisations as a result of this bill."