Tizard Judith: Third Readings 
Tizard Judith: Third Readings 
[Volume:609;Page:6920] 
Hon JUDITH TIZARD (Minister of Consumer Affairs) 
: I move  
That the Commerce Amendment Bill the Consumer Guarantees Amendment Bill the Fair Trading Amendment Bill and the Sale of Goods Amendment Bill be now read a third time 
. 
The overriding purpose of this legislation is to create level playing fields. Firstly it corrects some anomalies that saw certain utility suppliers having no statutory obligation to deliver value for money and good service to consumers. This legislation ensures that the Consumer Guarantees Act applies to all products and services that are ordinarily supplied in trade for domestic consumer use now and into the future. Secondly it ensures that the consumer in the supply chain who is best placed to manage the risk of product failure is liable to the end consumers for defects. Until now it has been possible for some traders to contract strategically in order to avoid liability to consumers. Thirdly it ensures that the definitions of the Commerce Act the Fair Trading Act and the Consumer Guarantees Act are consistent with each other. That aligns New Zealand legislation and the definitions across all trade practices legislation as happens in the jurisdictions of our main trading partners. 
The legislation has been in train for a long time. The Consumer Protection (Definitions of Goods and Services) Bill from which these bills have arisen was introduced in August 2001. It was scrutinised by two Commerce Committees the first chaired by Kevin Campbell the Alliance list MP and the second chaired by Mark Peck. I welcome the legislation as an important enhancement that will make consumer law more comprehensive and give incentives to industry to manage and meet consumers’ legitimate expectations reasonably and sensibly. It is very robust legislation that has had a lot of work done on it. 
A number of questions were asked in the course of the select committee’s deliberations and I want to put to rest some of the fears that Opposition members raised. For example they were very worried about the cost of local authorities bringing their water supplies up to a reasonable standard. I tell them that the Ministry of Health officials who are working on the proposed Health (Drinking Water Standards) Bill estimate that the total cost for all local authorities across New Zealand to provide infrastructure to meet that bill would perhaps be about $400 million but that would be over time and they would have a 5-year lead-in period to bring services up to standard. 
I do not think anyone in this House accepts that local authorities are entitled to under-invest on infrastructure particularly infrastructure that is vital to our health like water. This is a sensible amendment and I urge those local authorities that have not done that—because of course most of them have—to get on with bringing their water quality up and to make sure that the service delivery is reliable. 
The other thing we had a great deal of debate on from Opposition members was the ownership that one has over software CDs or other things where intellectual property is involved. The interest that the consumer receives in software is no different from the interest received in any other intellectual property item for example music CDs videos and all those sorts of things. Consumers can use that and they can on-sell it within the licence that they have bought but they cannot reproduce it or sell multiple copies. 
This is good legislation. It brings all those Acts that we are looking at up to modern times but it also as Mr Franks pointed out retains the inherent good sense and clear language of the Sale of Goods Act. A couple of the amendments that went in use very ancient language. Just as New Zealand is moving to include far more Maori into both law and practice this language comes from the English common law which often used Norman French because those were the terms that had been tested in the courts and in common law. I think MPs will be mildly amused—and I know that Mr Worth would be—that we are replacing the word “things” with “choses” as in the French “chose”. So I think this is good legislation that looks at what has been good legislation over the years and brings it up to date. This is an excellent amendment. The Consumer Protection (Definitions of Goods and Services) Bill as broken out into its four parts will be a great addition for the protection of consumers in New Zealand.