Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to be talking on the Business Payment Practices Bill first reading. I've got to congratulate the Minister: you read it with some passion this speech. He didn't quite make 10 minutes but he did a valiant effort tonight.Now I thought it was interesting the Minister's talked about how he formed the Small Business Council back in 2018. They came back with a recommendation in 2019. But in 2022—sorry just let me check: 2019 2020 2021 2022—three years later he comes out with this bill. What has happened to you Minister in the intervening time? Have you not seen that small businesses have been suffering in New Zealand? And why has it taken you three years to come up with this little bill that is not that significant that was recommended years ago and that Australia and Britain have already put in place. I just have to ask the Minister why he has been so tardy or whether he has shown sufficient interest in how small businesses are operating. Of course small businesses account for 97 percent of all businesses in New Zealand. So I think it is a shame that we have had to wait all this time to go through this little bill. This should have been passed years ago Minister.Hon Stuart Nash: A lot of consultation.ANDREW BAYLY: No consultation. Hon Stuart Nash: A lot of consultation.ANDREW BAYLY: I can hear my colleagues on this side scoffing at that one. So if the Minister really had been worried about small businesses why haven't we heard more from him as this Government has steadily set about making it harder for small businesses to operate in New Zealand? Only in the weekend I had someone say to me Look you used to be able to set up and run a company in New Zealand so easily." Now it is so difficult because that lot over there have over the last five years just kept imposing lots more compliance and costs and a whole lot of other stuff on small businesses. What have they done? Well I think the most damaging thing they've done actually is the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act. I think that's probably done more to ruin the building and construction sector. Rising interest rates—because gee we've got a Government that loves spending and of course it's just roared through the economy and of course business owners are now facing much higher interest rates because that Government doesn't know how to contain itself. But where was the Minister about public holidays? Didn't hear a chirp out of him. Where was the Minister about doubling of sick pay? Didn't hear a chirp out of him. Where did we hear the Minister about fair pay agreements? Didn't hear a chirp about him did we? Because we don't worry about small businesses in New Zealand because they only account for 97 percent of our business activity! And then what about the sharp rises in minimum wage? We didn't hear a chirp about it from the Minister. And what about the immigration bottlenecks; did we hear a chirp about it from the Minister? Not a whisper—not a whisper—but hey we're saved. We're saved because we got this bill. And when is it going to come into force? He has asked for a response to get it back into the House in April next year. Now my reckoning is we're going to have an election sort of later next year. We go into that period three months at least for the election period. Gee you'll be lucky to get it through before he goes and starts electioneering Minister. Why wasn't this done all those years ago? Anyway that's enough about that. We will obviously engage in the process and we will support it to first reading. But some of the areas that we will want to hear about and we will be asking the officials about is first of all the $33 million threshold. Now I know that relates to the external reporting framework. Interestingly Australia has a $100 million threshold. So the big question is: why $33 million? The second one we are concerned about is whether there should be a much more tailored approach—for instance if a customer has $33 million of revenue but only has one or two customers do they have to go through all this compliance cost? I think we need to be cognisant of making sure that we get the right outcome out of this. Maybe this is going to be some of the carve-outs that the Minister might have the opportunity to do. But of course the Minister didn't talk about that tonight so we don't know where the carve-out might apply in that situation. But we need to make sure that if we're going to go down this regime that we take it in a practical manner and we do not just end up imposing costs. And I will say that the National Party actually had a proposal of establishing a small-business payment guarantee scheme. So we're not against it but we want to make sure that it is tailored to the situation and leads to a better outcome.The other aspect of this is looking at the other options. And of course where the Government and the Minister have gone is for the big king-hit: let's regulate it let's put it through a legislation big tick I can look like I'm doing something. Actually the officials put up three options. The first option was a non-regulatory intervention only and that meant making sure that Government procurement in particular—there was a requirement for prompt payments. Those are all good things that should be done and unfortunately this bill doesn't seem to be talking about that. Just to ask people to report if they are over a certain revenue target does go some way but it's not the whole way. Procurement is the major issue and of course that's not only central government but it's local government and major companies. So we want to make sure that procurement payment periods are captured as well. We want to make sure that Government supplier arrangements are captured. One of the things about this bill and I heard the Minister talking about this saying that the Government entities will be captured in this bill if their revenue exceeds $33 million if I understood the Minister correctly—and he is nodding to me—my argument and this is something we will be testing in select committee is why don't we make it apply to all Government sector entities? Why not? What's so special about our Government sector? Government sectors should be leading the fray in terms of prompt payments—Hon Stuart Nash: And they are.ANDREW BAYLY: —and I'm not sure—the Minister says they are. And I know the Government wrote to some of the organisations large organisations encouraging them—with inverted commas. But why not to all Government sectors? Why not to everyone? I think that is something we'll be wanting to make sure because if there's anyone who should be showing leadership it should be all Government departments. The third option was a legislative maximum payment times for businesses—i.e. a normal payment term to 30 days and that was another option. But of course the Government and the Minister have gone down this route of requiring this disclosure and this is where we do have a problem to some extent. For instance the bill requires for an appointment of a registrar—holy Toledo!—we're about to have a debate about the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) managing all the different registers because they haven't been able to account for them properly and have been misappropriating money and spending it on other registers so we're having to do a legislative fix which we are going to oppose actually. But here's another register run by MBIE good on it. And of course then the company is going to have to keep information for seven years. Why in the dickens do you have to keep information for seven years? This is officials gone mad. That's when we should have had a Minister saying to officials "That is a silly recommendation." And then the fines: $500000 up to some extreme case or $50000 for not filing some records or not doing it on time. Wow! I just think we need to make sure this is tailored and fit for purpose because I suspect that this is an overreach in some regards. But we do support the principle of making sure that Government departments and companies in general pay small businesses promptly and on time. But wow! Let's get the old sledgehammer out to whack a walnut."