Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Mr Chair. Oh I was waiting for Minister Clark to complete his speech—he was just talking before the break of course.The first thing I think ought to be clear is that National still opposes this bill. I will acknowledge that there have been some improvements to it and I also acknowledge Supplementary Order Paper 173 by the Minister which has been tabled in the House. But the reality is this is a bill that's still looking for a problem to solve. We do not believe that this bill is necessary because the regulator of financial institutions—and this bill covers basically banks and credit cards and non-deposit takers—just foists on the industry who are already highly regulated another set of codes or responsible lending criteria. What's interesting if we look at the landscape that the Minister's overseeing we've got these regulated financial institutions—and that's the technical term that covers those groups—most of those institutions are already regulated heavily by the Reserve Bank. And of course the Reserve Bank is for all its faults a good regulator of financial institutions.Stuart Smith: Guided by Tāne Mahuta.ANDREW BAYLY: So—guided by Tāne Mahuta that's right. So that's the first piece of oversight. Then we've had that dreadful piece of legislation called the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA) which imposed further requirements on responsible lending codes—Hon Dr David Clark: Yet you voted for it.ANDREW BAYLY: And—no we did not. And what we saw in it unfortunately is the Minister had got hoodwinked by his officials because that CCCFA legislation provides a framework for a responsible code that has as its overseeing bodies the Commerce Commission and the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE). And of course the Minister got hoodwinked because rather than do what the intent of the bill was which was to focus on high-cost lenders what he did is he extended the code of responsible lending from 64 pages to 105 and put in whole lot of stuff about how a bank is supposed to lend to its customers including—on I think page 28—a requirement to review 90 days of transactional history. Now the Act already provided for a differential approach between our licensed financial institutions like a bank and other types like high-cost lenders. But unfortunately our Minister had got hoodwinked or he didn't know enough about it didn't ask enough searing searching questions and passed through regulation which didn't come back through this House—Hon Dr David Clark: Point of order Mr Chair. I wonder whether the member could actually address the bill in his first contribution. He seems to be off on quite a different tangent—CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Order! I'll be the judge of that thank you.ANDREW BAYLY: So passed a code of responsible lending that went from basically 60 pages to 105 pages and imposed all these regulations administered by Commerce Commission and MBIE. Now we've got what is called the conduct of financial institutions and guess what it's about! It's about imposing another code on responsible lending. And who's this going to be administered by? Well actually the primary organisation is going to be the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). So if you are one of those banks or non-deposit takers you're subject to the Reserve Bank the Commerce Commission MBIE and then if you're going under another code you're now going to have the FMA.What is the Minister doing? The first thing we will have to do when we get back into power is deal with how we get one set of responsible code of lending so we don't end up with multiple codes and we don't end up with multiple jurisdictions. Because the first question with this bill Minister is how do you deal? How's a bank for instance going to have to deal with the issue of having two competing codes? And by the way if you want to make sure unemployment is low just make the banks and other types of financial institutions go out and hire a whole stack of people to deal with the additional compliance that this bill imposes on them. That is what is wrong with this bill. It is a bill looking for a problem and it doesn't need competing regulatory authorities looking over and administering responsible codes of lending.