Wong Pansy: Fair Trading Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Wong Pansy: Fair Trading Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:609;Page:6849] 
PANSY WONG (NZ National) 
: Some good questions have been raised. Even though the National Party supports this bill we do want to make sure it is being implemented properly. One does have to question why the bill has to be passed urgently right now and take effect maybe in a few days’ time. Has some news come to the attention of the Government that there are some rampant pyramid schemes or other mischievous schemes out there that need to be unravelled as soon as this bill is passed? I call for the Minister to reconsider the decision not to be receptive to the suggested amendment to the implementation date. My colleague Lindsay Tisch has made some good suggestions about having a fixed date such as August or September for implementation. I am quite sure that the business community particularly or people who will be affected by this legislation have not become aware that the legislation has come before the House will be passed under urgency and will take effect immediately. How are they going to learn about the impact of this legislation? 
If I might just take an example let us say clause 3 in Part 2 where we see that instead of the wording Falsely represent” the amendment bill will substitute the words “make a false or misleading representation”. We all know what lawyers are like. They know how to interpret words that seem clear to a layperson like me. They seem to be able to read a lot more into those words. I think the business community will need time to understand the difference between the expression “falsely represent” and “make a false representation”. Sometimes it seems to us that expressions mean just the same but in my past experience in this Parliament what we thought were obvious clear precise English words might actually mean something quite different just through the order they present or the context. So people who are likely to be affected by this legislation need to have a very precise time frame as to when it is going to come into effect. Then they could approach Business New Zealand or the Auckland Chamber of Commerce to conduct seminars so they can fully understand whether very minor changes on the surface of a particular clause will affect them. 
But of course there are some major concerns that have been very capably raised by my colleague Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith about how to interpret this limitation period. When is the 3-year period going to start from? Is it after this bill has been passed or is it on the original date the particular action was taken? These are important and serious questions. This Labour Government is well known to be hostile to the business community and it would show a lot of grace and goodwill by accepting an amendment to have a fixed date so that the business community would have some certainty rather than not knowing how those two changes I have just raised would impact on businesses. 
Some members may not remember—or perhaps they were not in the House because I am sure it was in the last term—when the Labour Government was caught out very badly by refusing to accept the National Party’s suggestion on the Commerce Committee of providing for a transitional period during the passage of the Commerce Amendment Bill which led to a court case that the Government subsequently lost.