Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in support of this Commerce Amendment Bill but as at my first reading speech with some considerable reservations. We feel that if competition law is worth doing then it's worth doing right and that's why we'd like to give the Government another chance in the committee of the whole House stage to fix up what are some real difficulties in our view with this Commerce Amendment Bill. Central to the bill is the change to shift the onus on to a business to show that whatever it's doing doesn't have the—quote—likely effect" of lessening competition.Now if I was to point to two themes in the New Zealand economy that are holding us back one is the enormous amount of bureaucratic activity where instead of actually doing work and producing goods and services to provide for New Zealanders' needs we find time and again that we are spending more of our time either getting permission to do work under some regulation demonstrating that work's done showing that we're people that are allowed to do work—we spend a huge amount of time doing just about anything but actually doing work. I would argue that this change in interpretation where the law says you can't do anything that has the likely effect of reducing competition means that there's going to be a whole lot more time spent by businesses on the compliance side and Government on the administration side working out exactly whether or not competition is likely to be reduced by somebody doing something or making a business decision.The second big trend that I think is a real problem for commerce in this country is the creeping empire building of the Commerce Commission and this legislation—no doubt drafted if not by them then very closely monitored by them—will again increase the amount of work for the Commerce Commission. The repeal of safe harbours for intellectual property means there's a whole new cottage industry for the Commerce Commission trying to work out whether or not a particular business has too much market power because of the intellectual property they hold and that links back to our first big problem that more of New Zealand's activity ends up on rule-making administration and compliance of rules made and not enough on actually making New Zealand wealthier. So those are some serious problems with the bill that I would say need to be addressed and perhaps may be addressed by the Government in the committee of a whole House stage and that is why we support it only so far. To address those two themes first of all we have got—well actually let's start with the second one. We've got this trend of the Commerce Commission empire building and increasing the power that it has in the New Zealand economy. And let me give you an example. Not so long ago my good neighbour Paul Goldsmith was the commerce Minister and the Commerce Commission repeatedly—repeatedly—went to him and said "Minister we would like to be able to do what's called market studies." And Minister Goldsmith said "Well would you be responding to a complaint? Who would initiate it?" They said "Oh we'd would like to initiate these market studies ourselves." How would that work? "Well we would just go out to business or a sector and we'd start working out: well do we need more competition? Is there enough competition? How much competition should there be? And we'll probably produce a big thick report and then we'll tell people if the market structure is right and if there should be more competition and so on." Minister Goldsmith asked some very good questions—"How would you know?"—being one of them and they got knocked back. They got knocked back by Minister after Minister particularly Ministers like Minister Goldsmith—very well educated very sharp-witted and very thoughtful—and he said no. But then along came another Minister named Faafoi. Minister Faafoi came along and Minister Faafoi said "No problem. You can have your market studies." And so the Commerce Commission went off and did this market study the first one into the petrol prices. You see petrol prices were very high. Mr Speaker is holding up the bill saying "Can you talk about this?" I just want to be clear that this bill can't be understood without the context of a Commerce Commission that is behind it lobbying the Government to grow its power. And that's why some of the powers given to the Commerce Commission under this bill should be opposed. That's right Mr Speaker. And in any case the reason the petrol prices were high was because of the US dollar and the price of oil basically. They did the market study. Nothing happened. The oil price went down. The New Zealand dollar went up. No one was worried. Now the dollar and the oil price are appreciating for a variety of reasons and we're back to the same position. The problem hasn't been solved.So I make the point that this empire building by the Commerce Commission has a track record of failing to serve the interests of New Zealanders. And when the intellectual property rights safe harbour is taken out and when the Commerce Commission has the right as it does with the market studies—the last trophy they got—to go around saying "Oh I think this company has too much intellectual property and it's excluding other people from entering the market" even though overwhelmingly the markets move far faster than the Commerce Commission can ever keep up with and are far more global than the Commerce Commission's jurisdiction affects nevertheless people running businesses will have to think "How do we protect ourselves against the regulatory risk of being investigated or face a complaint in front of the Commerce Commission for our intellectual property?" And that goes back to the first theme: far too much time in New Zealand spent complying with rules making sure that you're covered against liabilities for regulatory risk not enough time actually generating wealth providing better goods and services so that New Zealanders can provide for themselves and their families and pay an enormous amount of tax that is necessary when a Government borrows 100 billion bucks to get through a very prolonged mismanagement of a global pandemic. SPEAKER: Order!DAVID SEYMOUR: Mr Speaker productivity and paying taxes will be impinged by this legislation. I think the connections—I think people have a right to hear what some of the ramifications of this legislation are. Then you come back to the question of what happens when people have to decide whether or not it is a likely effect of a particular business decision to reduce competition. Now we've heard from the Labour members that at the moment it's too easy to justify a purpose as being to do something other than reduce competition. So instead of just the purpose actually you have to prove that not only you had a purpose but you have to prove that you weren't likely to have the effect of reducing competition by making your business decision. Now if the Labour members think that it was too difficult to decide whether or not a purpose was resulting in a reduction of competition wait until the massive new array of jurisprudence we're going to face when people try to work out what are the likely effects of a business decision are. So again we're back to this problem that if this bill goes through we are going to find that there's going to be more time spent working out what the rules are arguing with officials getting permission from officials going to court producing internal documents in companies to protect from regulatory risk—all of that is going to be increased and yet actual productivity actual productive behaviour will reduce.Now that might not be a bad thing if the Commerce Commission had knowledge that was adding value to those decisions. If the Commerce Commission knew what the correct market structure was for a specific industry on a country that's about 1500 kilometres long in the South Pacific far from any other country quite mountainous with most of the population living in the top 400 or 500 kilometres of the island chain if they knew what the correct market structure in different sectors was then they could probably provide some helpful advice and information. The only problem is that they didn't and that is why we support this bill with great reluctance.Now Mr Speaker I noted on the weekend you said you didn't like members that just read out bill notes. You wanted people to make a wide-ranging contribution and I hope that I've done that for you and you've appreciated this Cook's tour of competition law in New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House for the second reading but if it's not fixed at the committee stage then wait and see. Thank you Mr Speaker.SPEAKER: I want to thank the member for his comments. He waved in the direction of speaking about the bill but a little bit of focus in reading it would have helped."