Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much Madam Assistant Speaker. I was sitting in my office working away for the constituents of the Epsom electorate and I caught in the background Meka Whaitiri asking the question: What does the National Party think about this bill? Are they in favour of the bill and are they in favour of competition studies or are they opposed to it?" And then I listened to Jacqui Dean speak and I got even more confused because she said "This is the worst thing ever. It's going to destroy business confidence. It amounts to a choice of socialism over free markets and private property rights but I thought of it and I'm going to vote for it." Well I want to tell my friend Meka Whaitiri and you Madam Assistant Speaker that the Opposition is opposed to this legislation.Then I want to tell you why. It comes down to a very simple choice. The choice is this: do we believe in a society with free markets and private property or do we believe in a society where a bureaucracy attempts to answer questions that it cannot possibly answer? Questions like: how many competitors should be selling fuel in a unique island nation in the middle of nowhere on a rocky outcrop 1500 kilometres long mountainous and with fewer people than Sydney? How many petrol retailers should be competing in a market in a country like that? Who will the Commerce Commission compare New Zealand with?You see there are already lots of rules in the Commerce Act that prevent people from abusing market power. There are already rules against withholding trade simply to prevent a new entrant coming into the market and they can already be enforced if there is a complaint. But that's not what this bill is about. This bill is about the Commerce Commission being able to—off its own bat or with the instruction of a Minister—go into an industry with greater powers than the police to request information and basically poke around and try to come up with questions of what the market structure should be and how much money people should make even though they have no way of knowing the answer to that whatsoever.It is a simple choice: we either believe in free markets and private property rights and competition under well-understood rules or we believe in another layer bureaucracy and bureaucrats poking around. But there's another issue here. F A Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom to the socialists of all parties and tonight I know how he feels because there's another issue. The National Party say "Well we don't think that bureaucrats should be able to initiate these studies because that is an invitation to corruption. We don't trust bureaucrats to decide which industry to target but we trust a politician—a Minister seeking re-election—to initiate such a study." Well where's the logic in that?The fact is you can imagine the scene: a Minister or a Commerce Commission bureaucrat on the canapé circuit here in downtown Wellington on a windy winter's evening and he's got everybody around him terrified that their industry will be next if they don't do the right favours. That's why it's an invitation to corruption. The Commerce Commission—whether it's at the behest of a Minister or the head of the Commerce Commission—will use these powers to request information or potentially intervene in a market adding another layer of bureaucracy that won't make anything cheaper or better for consumers but it will make New Zealand an even more bureaucratic place. The fact that the Prime Minister has already told us what the outcome of the first study is going to be when she said that consumers were being fleeced just confirms all the worst fears that people have about this particular bill.I stand proudly in opposition to this bill because it's not going to solve the problem of petrol prices. The problem with petrol prices by the way is the price of oil's gone up 6 percent in the last year in New Zealand dollars—both things that the Commerce Commission has no way of controlling whatsoever. This bill is not going to control that but it will make life in New Zealand just a little bit more bureaucratic at best and a little bit more corrupt at worst. So I'm proud to tell Meka Whaitiri that the Opposition will be opposing this bill."