Salesa Jenny: Commerce (Supermarket Adjudicator and Code of Conduct) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSalesa Jenny: Commerce (Supermarket Adjudicator and Code of Conduct) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8540. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for the opportunity to speak on this bill. I would like to address comments from the other side of the House.The UK has 12 or so supermarket chains so there is far more competition than what we have here in New Zealand. Here we have only two major supermarket chains and yet the Government does not want to introduce an adjudicator. This bill would amend the Commerce Act 1986. It would require supermarkets to establish an adjudicator and we on this side of the House believe that this is a good thing. An adjudicator according to this bill must in turn establish a code of conduct and then he or she would be able to resolve issues that may arise between supermarkets and their suppliers when and if the code of conduct is breached. This bill would prevent and mitigate restrictive trade practices for the long-term benefit of consumers and suppliers.I welcome this legislation. We believe on this side of the House that it would address the power imbalance between our limited number of supermarket owners and their suppliers. Labour has been concerned about the issue that this bill would address for quite some time. We have been working for a number of years on a bill that would look at options for developing a code of conduct for the supermarket industry. So we are pleased the bill that Mojo Mathers has introduced will actually look at developing a code of conduct and one of the key tasks of this bill would be to introduce an adjudicator.The Labour Party has also been pushing for section 36 of the Commerce Act to be reviewed because we would like to ensure that companies with substantial market power cannot continue to dominate the market unfairly. We believe that the bill we have been working on is tailor-made and even though we in the Labour Party support this member’s bill going to the select committee we will be introducing amendments if it gets to that stage. Establishing a code of conduct and an adjudicator to oversee compliance with the code should have beneficial flow-on effects to both local producers and local consumers. New Zealand is a small country. We have a comparatively small population and the fact is that some of our consumer markets lack competition. Certain industries such as supermarkets have been dominated for too long. In fact having only two dominant chains that have a 90 percent share of the market shows that we should have an adjudicator to actually address that issue of control of the market; it leads to higher prices particularly for families and end-consumers.The most recent Colmar Brunton poll reveals that the top issues concerning our Kiwi families are wages and the cost of living affordable housing—or the lack thereof—and unemployment. Thousands and thousands of families across this country are struggling just to survive. They are struggling just to make ends meet. Allowing local producers as this bill would do to survive in the supermarket arena should bring local benefits to our local communities and a code of conduct could possibly put a brake on any attempts to price gouge or to price fix what is charged to our consumers.A lot of our people are in South Auckland and when they have jobs that does not actually give them fixed hours does not actually guarantee them a fixed income per week and does not even guarantee that they can earn enough money to pay large sums of money to childcare providers to assist them so that they can go out to work. We believe that we need a bill like this. However as I said earlier on if the bill gets to select committee the Labour Party will be introducing several Supplementary Order Papers. Thank you so much.