Auchinvole Chris: Business Law Reform Bill — First Reading 
Auchinvole Chris: Business Law Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:632;Page:4248] 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Speaker. National is supporting the introduction of this bill this omnibus bill which makes a number of changes to commercial legislation suggested by Government officials lawyers and some business people as we are told in the foreword. I have as a member of the Commerce Committee already had an opportunity to listen to Minister Dalziel speak of the bill’s intentions. I have had the opportunity to discuss the matter with my National Party colleagues and mentors—experienced people and people especially experienced in business matters. We have decided to support this bill on the basis that it will reduce some compliance costs boost law enforcement efforts and protect New Zealand’s name. I am rapt at the revelation just given—but alas the previous speaker has gone—by United Future that it now wishes to involve itself in some of the finer aspects of National’s tax reductions. We look forward to seeing that member at the Commerce Committee and getting from him a bit more detail. Having said that one then has to say that so much still remains to be done in this field of reducing compliance. 
Bob Clarkson 
: So little time! 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: So little time—but oh my goodness how fed up to the back teeth small business is of living with Labour’s lust for regulation! It is relentless. Labour lusts after the chance to impose regulation. It cannot wait for a chance to do so. Sadly it is apparent that Labour members have only a surface appreciation amongst them of what really constitutes day-to-day activities at small-business level. Members of the present Government seem to think that business owners and operators actually enjoy dealing with regulations. To those guys I say sorry—they have got it very wrong. 
Hon Member 
: They’ve lost the plot. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: They never knew the plot because they have never been in business just as those on that side of the House get so many other things wrong. 
Last Friday I attended two meetings in Nelson related to Motueka and the top end of the West Coast - Tasman electorate. 
Brian Connell 
: Oh stop name-dropping! 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Well I have to mention it. 
Tim Groser 
: Did you meet a pieman? 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: I did not meet a pieman but brought to my attention was the need for small businesses to meet the often pettifogging puerile and pathetic requirements of the sort of bureaucracy this Labour Government revels in. One small-business owner in particular who approached me personally was torn between being totally distressed by how much of her time was required in meeting endless obligations and being reduced to a fury by some of the disembodied communication that attended those requirements. She said that some of the letters she got added insult to injury. 
Tim Groser 
: What was she insulted with? 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: I will come to “consulted with” later because that is a wonderful phrase the Hon Jim Anderton uses—to death. “The industry was consulted”—but we will come to that. 
Tim Groser 
: Insulted. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: I see—insulted. But “consulted” is what the Government keeps saying. Let me give an example. A small-business operator who writes to me frequently to keep me up to date with what is happening in the small business world wrote to me to say that he had “registered an RMP with the NZFSA.” For those who may not be quite familiar with that an RMP is a risk management programme. It is something whereby members on that side of the House make sure that a school etc. having a barbie offering sausages etc. has a programme to manage risk or the organisation is not allowed to do the activities. 
Pansy Wong 
: A mission statement. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: That is an earlier piece. But then after filling in the form and registering the risk management programme with the New Zealand Food Safety Authority my correspondent was charged a further $80—wait for it—as he had omitted to include on the form the fact that he was the plant manager. The authority wrote to ask who the plant manager was. But his is a one-man business. He wrote back to say that he was the plant manager and—bang—$80 was charged to add that information to his application. Being a one-man operation of course he was the plant manager as well as everything else but we have a Government that does not really have too much sympathy for small business. 
I hear regularly from bee-keepers. They are not happy people either. 
Brian Connell 
: What’s the buzz? 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: They are not happy with the lack of action in the biosecurity field but they are also a heavily legislated group. Honey has been found in the pyramids and found to be quite edible. But more and more bee-keepers have to have risk management programmes to conserve the quality of their pure honey. The Ministry of Agriculture has started to add all sorts of costs. The Hon Jim Anderton wrote to bee-keepers saying that a levy on bees being exported would be imposed in 2003 after—and here is the kicker—consultation with the bee-keeping industry. Apparently when my correspondent checked with those in the bee-keeping industry who had been consulted he found they were all against it. They were consulted they said they were against it but the levy was imposed. 
Bob Clarkson 
: And then they were insulted. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: And then they were insulted; Bob is quite right. So much for the value of the words “in consultation with”. Another of the limp legacies from Labour is not just over-regulation; its worst crime I think is to have rendered previously meaningful words meaningless. Consultation without mitigation is less than a waste of time; it is insulting. The Government slaps small-business owners in the face frequently in that sort of way. 
Brian Connell 
: But they’re reducing compliance costs. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Indeed they say they are reducing compliance costs. Does this bill do that? I do not know. There are so many compliance costs. Antique dealers are already required to be licensed in association with the sale of second-hand goods. That is sensible and fair enough. We do not want them to be an avenue for stolen goods. But now I understand and I was told the other day that they have to register their employees. It is an expensive exercise. One business owner queried the need for his wife to be registered as she only ever dropped into the shop to give him a short lunch break a couple of times a week. But no there are no exceptions under this Draconian Government and she has to be registered as well. 
The trick though is to set up all these regulations find they do not work—because regulations do not work; regulations beget regulations—and then tell small businesses that they should come up with wait for it the identified problems and also the solutions. Let me quote the Minister for Small Business Lianne Dalziel when she addressed the select committee. She said that small businesses are invited to identify the problems and to propose the solutions. The difficulty with that approach is that again this Government is placing itself in a remote position distancing itself from the realities of what it clearly regards as a humdrum existence for business owners whom they obviously think have little to do other than to offer solutions for the Government’s mistakes. 
It would be easy to detail a huge list of seemingly small issues that I have no doubt the present Minister would dismiss as insignificant as did the previous three Ministers for Small Business. They were on a lottery. Whoever got the job lost it and it was given to someone else. 
Brian Connell 
: They were dismissed as well. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: They were dismissed as well. However seemingly small issues accumulate to become predatory activities consuming the wealth-creating time of small and medium-business owners. 
This bill is a tiny step forward so we commend it but it does not address the big issues of regulatory burden like the Resource Management Act the tax laws and the employment law. We have to wonder what it will take to make the present Government realise that clinging closely to ideological claptrap simply to placate unions will not work for business. Business works successfully with risk but it cannot work with uncertainty and that is all this Government provides for small business.