Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well thank you Madam Speaker. We are here under urgency debating the third reading of a Government piece of legislation called the Fuel Industry Amendment Bill. Although I didn't have an opportunity to sit on the select committee and hear submissions from interested parties I have been listening very carefully to the debate this afternoon across the Parliament and I want to pick up on a point that my colleague Todd Muller made about this bill. Innocuous as it might at first seem it actually is a marker of a fundamental philosophical difference between members of the parliamentary left wing—the Government the Green Party—and members on this side of the House: the ACT Party and the National Party who have a completely different approach to free enterprise to markets to capital and to how to encourage an economy to thrive grow and to be contributing to the welfare and wellbeing of all New Zealanders. So this is a piece of legislation that listening to the Minister giving her speech leading off this debate my colleague Stuart Smith said sounded like almost she was lulling the House into a sense of a sweet lullaby—almost a bedtime story—that this was a bill that was designed to be sweetness and light and everything was calm and lovely and nice. Actually nothing could be further from the truth. This is a piece of legislation that essentially creates a regulated market intervention of the sort that we know from experience all around the world does not work. The number of situations both in history and current today where Governments have sought maybe with good intentions maybe with the best of motives to intervene in market drivers—simply doesn't work. In fact not only do interventions of this sort not work they don't create the level playing field or the benefits for consumers that the perpetrators of legislation like this seek. In fact more often than not perverse outcomes are generated by market regulatory intervention of this sort. Now it's worthwhile going back just a little bit in the history because there was a period of time towards—about this time last year actually when fuel prices were dramatically increasing and the Government realised that they had a massive cost of living crisis on their hands. So they intervened in the arrangements relating to our emissions trading scheme (ETS) to artificially change the impact of the ETS on fuel prices by removing the fuel excise tax—reducing it for a period of time. Now they were able to sustain that for the best part of a year or so and people who bought petrol at the pump received a financial benefit funded by all taxpayers using borrowed money which only actually added to the inflationary pressures that the Government finds itself still in today. A fundamental misunderstanding about how economies work and how intervention of this sort impacts on it. So they created inflationary pressures within our economy already under pressure under stress and today we've seen the impacts of it with a non-tradable inflation rate of 6.6 percent. Remarkable—6.6 percent—Hon Louise Upston: Ouch!Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Ouch—my colleague Louise Upston says Ouch!" and she's absolutely right because that hurts consumers. This piece of legislation as feel-good as the Government may want it to be hurts consumers because intervening in a market in a regulated way ultimately will create perverse outcomes that will be detrimental to consumers and nothing good will come from it. So on this side of the House we stand opposed to the legislation not only on the basis of principle but on the basis of practicality as well. What we don't know from this piece of legislation are some of the very basic questions that need answering. So what does unreasonable pricing mean? Who decides what is unreasonable and what's reasonable? Is that simply a creation of a Minister sitting on the Labour Party's current front bench or is that a reasonable test that is decided by market players? Or is that a reasonable test that is decided by consumers who are free to make decisions for instance whether they want to drive a fossil fuel driven vehicle or not? There are some like myself who choose not to. So petrol pump prices are actually quite irrelevant. One of the great things about driving an electric vehicle is that suddenly—suddenly—petrol pricing becomes utterly irrelevant to your life in every respect; it becomes utterly irrelevant. So there are a range of options for consumers to adopt and adapt to should they wish. But no here is a Government determined to act upon their philosophical base which is to put their sticky fingers into the marketplace and then give it a good stir and hope that their intentions will result in what they think will happen.Well I've got news for them. I think that the opportunity for perverse outcomes is very high. So we come back to questions that need answering. So who decides the point at which this intervention will be made? Who decides what's reasonable? Who decides what the pricing will be and how is it going to work in practice? These are questions that are superficially addressed by Government members. They don't seem to be addressed in any detail. I find it hilarious that Government members should stand up and then proceed to lecture members on this side of the House about the economy about economics and about how markets work or they don't work because what we know for absolute truth is that the current Labour Government like all socialist Governments around the world have no understanding about how economies work. They have no understanding about how markets work and cannot resist the opportunity to meddle in them. So we think on this side of the House that this legislation as well-meaning as I think Government sincerely believes it to be but we think on this side of the House that this is really a solution looking for a problem. A solution looking for a problem that the Government hasn't identified can't control and will not be able to resile from once it is imposed. So ultimately our opposition to this legislation is not so much with the Government's intent because I think everybody has an intent to try and make things better for consumers. But by meddling in a regulated way in a regulated marketplace no good can come from that. No good can come from that at all. So on this side of the House we oppose this legislation. We don't support it and we think that the current Government should actually go back to school and learn a little bit about how economies work learn a little bit about proper economics and get on to a better understanding of what damage they've done to our economy what damage continues to be done by this Government and how a re-elected National-led Government in October is going to have to get the country back on track."