Potaka TamaTAMA POTAKA (National—Hamilton West): Manuia le aoauli. Thank you for the chance to pass comment on this bill. It's suggested this bill will lead to businesses mitigating reputational risk by improving their business payment practices. We know that New Zealand Aotearoa is a nation of small to medium sized enterprises—97 percent of our companies. They're doing it tough coming out of COVID—that lockdown for years in Auckland—coming out of the regulatory chill but getting frozen along the way finding it tough to get staff with all the immigration bottlenecks in arcane Orwellian employment legislation. Unless you're a recruitment or consultancy practice in Wellington waiting for a call from your local bureaucrat business can be a tough gig right now.This piece of proposed legislation is out of touch out of mind out of control and demonstrates the wrong Kiwi SMEs. Apprentices paying for ute taxes for more Tesla subsidies—Helen White: You're going to cut those credits too aren't you?TAMA POTAKA: —especially in Central Auckland Helen. More tax for SMEs running their affairs through trusts. Now more compliance for business—effectively a new tax; what I'll call the B2B" tax.The real undercurrent of this bill however whānau is more control. Not only does this Government want us to suppress education aspirations or raise more tax from the hard-working people of Hamilton West it wants to take more charge on business payment practices in a potentially parasitic manner. Our various respective committee members have feverishly paddled the parliamentary waka in a multi-partisan manner and I appreciate there were some changes made at the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee—kei te mihi ki a koutou; massive thanks—but increasing the minimum threshold when companies are required to report was a great idea. I wish you all took it up further—to say $100 million.More compliance for SMEs is just not right and definitely not right right now. We could have just amended the Financial Reporting Act. Instead we've sent the destroyer to sink business with the omnipotence of the current Government's regulatory wave. With the power of majority Government—with 62 members—comes responsibility to be careful with overregulating everything in business. That responsibility and this piece of legislation has been wielded in an imbalanced manner and deserves more caution.Members if this bill turns into legislation it will worsen the cost of living crisis. The hard-working people of Hamilton West know it; ditto the people of Papakura whaea Judith; ditto Tauranga Moana Master Uffindell—two areas often referred as "Hamilton North" and "Hamilton Far East" respectively! And I caution the Government around going too far with the dictates of what is right and left—I mean wrong—with business. We've seen this in the environmental space the immigration space and the collection of injury information around Māori and ad nauseum we see it right down there in the weeds of business payments practice.My friends and peers hear ye hear me we're going too far yet again in telling business how to run business. The value of big Government is one that the current Government lives by. And I remind listeners this afternoon that limited Government is something to cherish and behold. But when you get an imbalance of Kāwanatanga with community and business when Kāwanatanga like the factory in The Lorax just keeps biggering and biggering we end up in a stylishly squishy and opaque situation never contemplated by my ancestors who signed up to the Treaty of Waitangi. Kao kei te hē. [No that's wrong.] Of all the problems that face SMEs this was not one to pick today. We believe SMEs need to be paid on time but we don't believe that this bill will achieve its objectives. We've seen recent international examples—Australia UK—where there's been no discernible improvement in payment terms by big business despite similarities in the regulatory impositions that are proposed today.The cost for firms $2000 or $3000 over in Aussie. Imagine putting those costs back on SMEs today here in Aotearoa—another cost; effectively another tax; I repeat the "B2B" tax. It would be a lot easier to use one of the credit assessment companies like Centrix to assess it in real time—33 bucks.Whānau big business should be allowed to run big business. Legislation and .govt.nz should not run big business. The Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) have stated they don't know the prevalence of the issue of delayed payment and whether practices are intentionally exploitative. I propose the question: should we be legislating without evidence of the benefits of legislation or whether the relevant agency is not aware of the scale of the issue?The MBIE proposal to build its own IT platform to employ people to collate data sounds like another recommendation from a consultant. Was it from one of the big four an IT consultant? Folks we can't even count the number of people in New Zealand on any given night let alone create another IT ether—like springing a leak in our multi-partisan waka and curtailing any ballast it might have had.Let's get New Zealand back on track people—back on track. Let SMEs use the funds directly and in areas like e-invoicing and technology solutions. Let's reduce the red tape. And as I said way back then in the days of Victoria University law school when my friend and colleague over there on the other side—I repeat to him today: stop the war on mums and dads stop the war on communities and stop the war on business. Kāti rā tēnā tātou katoa. Kia ora! [Well greetings to all of us. Thanks!]"