Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Madam Chair. I'd like to respond to some of the earlier comments of the Minister in the chair Kris Faafoi. Before I do that I just want to respond to Mr Jones' contribution where he was talking about Countdown supermarkets his concerns and how the Government—apparently nothing happened. Well Mr Jones must have a very short attention span because in February 2014 the Commerce Commission announced it was going to undertake a study around those allegations and on 20 November 2014 they reported back.Just to make it clear their chief executive said the allegations … against Progressive … were serious and the Commission had undertaken an extensive and thorough investigation into those allegations." They also remarked "The Commission [did] not believe that Progressive has breached any of the laws it enforces and it will not be taking any action against Progressive." So for Mr Jones to suggest that the laws were somehow inadequate or the Government somehow didn't do anything is patently incorrect and in no way supports this bill or its provisions because what the Commerce Commission did there is it used existing powers to investigate a single market participant. Market studies are not about single market participants; they are about entire markets and the Commerce Commission have been absolutely clear on that. In order to undertake a market study they will have to study the breadth of the market across all participants—large medium and small.So when Mr Faafoi made the remark that he thought small businesses would welcome this change—small businesses are the ones who are disproportionally going to be impacted by the imposition of these studies. The commission have acknowledged that they'll have to include them in the study in order for it to be a market study and those businesses have fewer resources to deal with them. But all businesses whether they're small medium or large can only respond to the impost of a market study by seeking to recover those costs against their consumer base. So it won't help bring prices down. Unless it finds some egregious findings and recommends changes in law it's not going to bring prices down and actually the undertaking of the studies themselves is going to put upward pressure on prices.Look I don't think Mr Faafoi also understands the impact that small business can have on a market. I think that for the consumers it's actually very positive. For instance if he had spoken to people in the fuel services industry—petrol companies—he might realise that for instance in the Auckland market one of the fundamental drivers as to why that's such a competitive price market is not actually Gull—it's not actually Gull. It turns out that over 1200 of the 1500 service stations around New Zealand are mum and pop - type operations and in Auckland it is those small independents that drive price movements in petrol and diesel across the city. It is people who buy their petrol from a supplier and make their own decisions on how to price it that drives the price down. Then they have the big players reacting to them.So what's Mr Faafoi's answer? "Oh I'm going to penalise those small players—I'll undertake a market study."—huge cost impositions on them having to provide the same data that BP and Z Energy and Mobil have to provide. So Mr Faafoi your proposition here is not going to protect those businesses; it's going to put cost impositions on them which is all the more reason why it should be Cabinet through the responsible Minister that has the final say as to whether or not a market study is undertaken because Cabinet will as its elected members—it's their job it's their fundamental reason for being to understand what any decision will mean for constituents for people in our communities for businesses for business owners and of course for consumers.The other point Mr Faafoi raised: he said in the first 15 minutes of this Part 1 debate that National Party members had not mentioned the consumer once. Well that's troubling because for some reason Mr Faafoi doesn't understand that a well-functioning market is good for the consumer. That's what people on this side of the Chamber were saying. So when he claims they weren't mentioning the interests of the consumer the whole comments from this side are in the interests of the consumer.Mr Faafoi might want to read his principal Act again because the objectives of the Commerce Act make it clear that it is about protecting the interests of consumers not just through prices—no—but through innovations from business. Mr Faafoi businesses that are being smacked with extra regulation and extra cost not only don't have that spare profit to innovate with but quite frankly it will erode business confidence even further and the likely outcome from that is that business will be less likely to innovate. It will be the consumer that suffers. Support the SOP Minister."