Cosgrove Clayton: Consumer Law Reform Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCosgrove Clayton: Consumer Law Reform Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 December 2013. Volume:695;Page:15186. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): I just want to take a brief call again on the theme which a number of us have spoken on this evening of unconscionable conduct. Within the commentary on the Consumer Law Reform Bill as I referred to before it talks about unconscionable conduct applying where courts consider it is “unfair or inequitable (or ‘against good conscience’) to allow a party to enforce its contractual rights against another party who is detrimentally affected by an oppressive bargain.” In case the Chair may think that I am wandering away from the bill the words I want to concentrate on directly for a moment are “oppressive bargain”. I am going to illustrate the point by another Government decision two parties to which—and you may have been distracted Mr Chairperson. I am referring directly to the words “oppressive bargain” in the commentary and I am going to illustrate that with an example.The example is one of Rio Tinto. There were two parties to a transaction a contractual arrangement yet one party negligently stupidly negotiated a deal paid a lot of money gave away a number of components and got nothing back for it. The question I would have for the Minister in the chair the Minister for the Environment because she is a lawyer and she will know far better than me is whether that would be considered enforceable given that Rio Tinto—not through any nefarious means but simply through good management good negotiation and smarts—worked out that the Government had nailed itself to a time frame to sell Meridian Energy and therefore waited waited and waited until that time line was almost going to be breached and it sprung the trap.The deal as I am sure you and others will know was that there was going to be job protection and all sorts of other things—benefits to Southland and New Zealand—were going to rain from the sky and the deal was done. The deal was a halving of the notice period a decrease in the power price for Rio Tinto and 30 million bucks thrown in for good measure. That was the deal. The question is whether that could have been deemed to be an oppressive bargain given that one side got everything and the other side got nothing. And we know that before the ink was dry on the $30 million cheque Rio Tinto had through theSouthland Times indicated that maintenance jobs were going. We know now that there was no guarantee of those jobs encompassed in the deal and further we know that the Minister negotiating the deal Mr English never asked for a guarantee. That is the detail of a transaction—Dr David Clark: Never asked for it?Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Never asked for it. So the question I would have for the Minister in the chair is whether this consumer concept of unconscionable conduct where a bargain could be considered oppressive applies to this particular transaction. It seems to me it would because one side gave away not just the kitchen sink but the kitchen and the lot—the whole house—and got back zero. That party could have been stupid negligent or incompetent or all of the above.I have never seen a transaction or a deal done where one side gives so much and gets nothing—absolutely nothing—back in return unless you count the fact that the Government managed to do the deal and tried to pump up the price of the Meridian Energy float so that it could get it away. I suppose you could say the Government got that out of it. It cleared the decks on that. But for 30 million bucks a decrease in the power price no jobs guarantee and a halving of the notice period the question I would have is what we the Parliament on behalf of the taxpayers got for that. I would call that an oppressive bargain. I do not blame Rio Tinto because Rio Tinto’s job is to get the best deal that it can for its shareholders and to quote the Prime Minister if it is “dealing with a bunch of muppets” which it was through the Minister of Finance andnegotiators then so be it. But I would like to know from the Minister whether that particular transaction 30 million bucks would constitute an oppressive bargain and in doing so unconscionable conduct.