Bidois DanDAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): Madam Speaker—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just for the clarity of the House—no this is actually a full call. So for the clarity of the House Te Pāti Māori have chosen not to take their split call on this bill so that call will be given at the end of the debate. So apologies for any confusion.DAN BIDOIS: Thank you. Tonight is a good night for this House and for New Zealand for many reasons. For the passage of my colleague Stuart Smith's bill the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Winery Cellar Door Tasting) Amendment Bill. It's a good day for New Zealand with the announcement of the tax relief package that comes into effect. It is a good day for New Zealand with this bill that I'm sponsoring coming one step closer to law. It's also a good day because it's my wife's birthday and she's watching at home so I'd like to just say a very special happy birthday to my wife Courtney: I love you. I'll give her a gift card later on.It is a pleasure to rise and take a call on this bill—the first call for me in this debate. I'd like to start out by acknowledging the Ministers who have gone before me who actually brought this bill to the House. Melissa Lee has been mentioned—I would love to acknowledge her contribution. But this bill actually goes way back before her to Jacqui Dean from the great electorate of Waitaki. She initially brought this bill forward Melissa Lee then took that upon herself and shepherded this through and it is my role to shepherd this through the House on their behalf. So thank you to those members past and present.I certainly want wish to acknowledge Miles Anderson at the moment the current member for Waitaki—my thoughts go out to him and his family at this time.It's also a pleasure to thank the select committee that I'm on the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. We've got some hard-working members here: Vanessa Reuben and other members of the select committee who have—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can we just use the last names of members in the House. Thank you.DAN BIDOIS: Thank you very much. Reuben Davidson and Vanessa Weenink—great hard working members of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee and I thank them for their contribution.But this bill is not going to solve the world. It's not going to—you know it doesn't solve the big challenges that we face but it does solve a very small challenge for many out there. Many consumers have no doubt bought gift cards and seen them expire. It is a small issue. As is often the case when speaking to member's bills they're not game-changer issues that turn New Zealand upside down and improve it overnight but they are small improvements. This is I think a great example of a small improvement for the country.So what this bill essentially does is change the Fair Trading Act to require that gift cards have an expiry date of three years. This bill really is about consumers. It's around empowering consumers and empowering them to make the best choices that they can and to make sure that they can redeem the full value of gift cards. My colleague Tanya Unkovich mentioned that actually about one out of every five gift cards in this country expire. So this bill seeks to address that by standardising the expiry date and providing an expiry date for which consumers can in fact redeem their cards in the full value.As a member of the select committee I just want to run through for the House the issues that the select committee dealt with. The first issue was round encapsulating the true and fair definition of what a gift card is. So we spent much time talking about what is and what isn't a gift card. We got to the point where there were very clear definitions on what a gift card is and what isn't a gift card. For example Mr Speaker if you're selling a gift card for charitable purposes that's not included in this bill. If you receive a gift card for substitution for returned goods—for example you take your clothes that you got from your birthday back in and you get a gift card voucher—that is not under the definition of this bill. If you go to an event—for example in the East Coast or great electorates around the country—and you get a gift card or a voucher those gift cards or vouchers won't be included. If you get a gift card for utilities or for Auckland Transport—you know using the public transport—those are the types of things that will not be included in this bill. So what we've done is make sure there's a very clear and narrow definition of what a gift card is.The second issue was around the length of expiry. We did consider varying the length but I think we've struck a balance—a balance that is right—for three years for expiry. There will be clear rules for businesses around the display of expiry on the gift cards themselves. There's going to be an infringement process for businesses who violate the—Hon Member: A stiff one.DAN BIDOIS: Yep it's quite a stiff penalty as my colleague mentioned for not actually adhering to the rules of this legislation.Finally we talked about the transition time and I did want to just mention this for businesses out there who will be thinking about when they have to comply with this. We did consider seriously the submissions that were made from businesses and from business associations who raised concerns about the length of time it will take to get their IT systems up to speed to train their staff and to get new gift card stock. So we have put in a transition time of 18 months which we think is fair and reasonable for businesses to respond to this piece of legislation.It is very encouraging to see that almost all parties have signalled that they're supporting this bill through the House. The only party is not is the ACT Party. I would encourage members who are good friends in the ACT Party to reconsider. The ACT Party—what is it called? It's called the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers—consumers". If I think of the great architects of the ACT Party the Roger Douglases the Derek Quigleys the Richard Prebbles they would really want to support pieces of legislation that empower the consumer. So I would love to encourage my colleagues from the ACT Party—come on you can come join the waka.This bill is pro-consumer. This bill is actually free market. Now most of you—this House Mr Speaker—doesn't have necessarily the best grasp of economics but one of the biggest things you learn in economics is that free markets require the power of information and perfect information. This is actually about clarifying information that will help markets improve efficiency. This bill is necessary for proper regulation.One of the points that was raised by the dissenting ACT Party was around the impact that this will have on businesses. Actually businesses support this piece of legislation. They support it because it actually helps manage their financial liability. It creates a lower and upper bound on their financial liability for their accounts. So I would encourage once again the great members of the ACT Party my friends my coalition partners to join the waka to get on the phone to their leader and to see if we can come to a unanimous unison of perspective in the House this evening.I just would like to say finally thank you to the submitters for those who took the time to submit. There were some great submissions from various businesses who provided light on their support of the bill the impact of this bill and how to make it work in a practical setting. I'd like to thank again these members of the select committee who actually provided some really good frank and cross-partisan commentary. I would like to thank the Ministers once again. We all stand on the shoulders of science or the shoulders of those who have gone before us. No doubt it is my role to simply shepherd a great idea that has come before us. So it is on that basis at the second reading that I commend this bill to the House."