Twyford PhilHon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): I want to acknowledge Minister Andrew Bayly one of the more thoughtful and amusing and entertaining members on that side of the House. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): That's a compliment. Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I had the pleasure of serving alongside him on the Finance and Expenditure Committee last term and we did a lot of good work together. This is an interesting debate because on the face of it if you take the rhetoric at face value there's some level of agreement across the House and the Minister when he spoke was at pains to make the point that he agreed with the problem definition. Of course everybody wants to see small businesses paid on time and I would submit that there is a lot of agreement that small businesses play a critical part in the economy. They account for 97 percent of all of our enterprises they employ vast numbers of New Zealanders there's half a million or more small businesses and I would say everybody in this House recognises that the people who start and run small businesses work incredibly hard. They are workers as well as owners and entrepreneurs and they take enormous risks often with their family assets in order to start small businesses. So they deserve all of the support that our Parliament and Governments can give them. The Minister also recognised if I heard it correctly that big businesses have routinely been late payers and so there is a problem that needs to be solved and what I heard him argue was that he just has a different way of solving this problem. Now Ingrid Leary my colleague made the point that for small businesses security of cash flow is one of the most important things and I think everybody can see that. When people don't pay on time it puts on huge stress and puts those businesses at risk. One way to think about it is that you've got some of the largest most powerful corporations in the land routinely late paying small businesses because they know they can get away with it and they're either doing it deliberately to look after their own cash flow using small businesses effectively as a bank taking advantage of no-interest loans from struggling small-business owners.The Minister says he has a different way of doing it so what's his plan? He told us that he's working on getting Government departments to step up and do their bit and pay on time. He is pledging to consult with Crown entities—we don't know how long that will take—he's talking about a voluntary code of conduct for large corporations and he's talking about incentivising e-invoicing. But is that a credible plan to deal with this problem? Hon Member: Yes. Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Is it? I don't see it. We're talking about an entrenched behaviour by large private corporations systematically late paying to the detriment and disadvantage of struggling small-business owners from one end of this country to the other and a voluntary code of conduct? These companies are getting massive financial benefit from this errant behaviour and a voluntary code of conduct is intended to change that behaviour! There's a word for where you profess sincere concern for a problem but actually your actions don't reflect that. There's a word for it and it's gaslighting. I can't help but conclude that that is what is going on here. There's a professing of concern or feeling that these small-business owners are being ripped off but actually what does this bill do? It takes away a public disclosure regime that would name and shame the large corporations that are ripping off small businesses. It takes that away and replaces it with a voluntary code of conduct. We've heard a lot from members on the other side about compliance costs and red tape and how terrible compliance costs and red tape are. Yes it's true that the legislation that's being repealed will remove compliance costs for our large private corporations—it will—because they will no longer have to comply with a public disclosure regime. But if there wasn't a problem to be solved in the first place we wouldn't need to ask them to comply with a disclosure regime. I'm afraid to say it but this is an example that we see so often with the National Party and that is a deference to powerful vested interests. The National Party loves to say it's the party of small business but time and time again they actually line up and defend the interests of large private corporations of big business and that is transparently what is happening here. They don't want to impose a cost on the largest and most powerful corporations in New Zealand in order to create a more level playing field and a fairer and more competitive environment for our country's small businesses and that reveals something about this National Party that is in their DNA. It always amuses me that the self-styled party of free enterprise is very very rarely ever willing to use the levers of Government to actually make the economic environment more competitive. Late payments by big companies are anti-competitive. They are taking money out of the till of small businesses: the garages the barbers the suburban accountants the shop owners and the small entrepreneurs. It is anti-competitive. It makes it harder for small businesses to become medium-sized enterprises. It is inherently anti-competitive and yet the party in Government—the National Party—don't seem to care about that. They don't. Let's judge them by their actions not by their words. They are not willing to use the powers of Government to make a more competitive economy and it gives the lie to the idea that they are truly the party of free enterprise. If they looked to their ideological inspiration in the true advocates of free-enterprise capitalism in the United States they would see in the United States a much more full-throated commitment by even parties of the right to use law to use policy and to use the institutions of Government to drive good competition policy to make markets work for everybody. Instead what we see is this deference to self-interest.The choice here is very clear: is this House willing to impose a cost on the largest corporations in New Zealand in order to create a more competitive market and give struggling small-business owners a break? That's the choice and my colleague Reuben Davidson was right when he bridled against the suggestion from the other side of the House that small-business owners somehow didn't have it in them to look up on the web a public database that showed data on whether companies are good payers or not—a name and shame database. Somehow they are not capable of using a search engine and looking at a public database. That is kind of insulting and it disrespects the people whom the legislation that's being repealed today was designed to protect and support. My colleagues are also right that this is yet another example of this Government using urgency and using the time of this House to repeal legislation without any clear or credible plan to replace it. It is the theatre of the politics of revenge—that's all it is—and I'm afraid to say that it actually doesn't do justice to a party that claims to be a Government for all of New Zealand.