Ryall Tony: Fair Trading Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Ryall Tony: Fair Trading Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:609;Page:6839] 
Hon TONY RYALL (NZ National—Bay of Plenty) 
: In speaking to the title clause of this bill I would like first to cover the fact that the National Party wants to raise with the Minister a number of concerns about this bill. In particular there are four areas of concern that we will be debating during the Committee stage. My colleagues and I will be seeking several calls on each. We are concerned about increasing the level of fines in an ad hoc and non-comparative way. It is clear that the Government has been doubling the fines involved in this legislation with no reference to any of the increases or lack thereof of similar fines in other commercial legislation. 
We are concerned about the criminal limitation period—that it may inadvertently lead to greater contingencies for business. We do not support exempting the Commerce Commission from the consequences of over-zealous actions by its officers in applying for interim injunctions and we are concerned about the increased compliance costs from demanding certain information and documents from those people that the Commerce Commission or the appropriate authority is investigating. We want to say to the Minister that there is no regulatory impact or compliance cost statement attached to the bill and that is a breach of the Government’s own guidelines. 
We have moved a number of amendments to the title of the bill. We do not think the title is a fair reflection of what is contained in the bill. Our amendments include incorporating the fact that some action will be taken on pyramid selling through some subtle word changes that will widen the ambit of the bill. However we do think that it fails to recognise some quite considerable additional changes that are being proposed in the bill. 
This Parliament needs to realise that this is not just an inconsequential Fair Trading Amendment Bill; this bill proposes to change the limitation period from 3 years after a breach or otherwise may have happened to 3 years from when it was discovered or ought to have been discovered. We think that that has some risks. For example if someone advertised a product in an inadvertent way or in a way that had since been corrected then an aggrieved consumer could raise a number of issues through the judicial process that could lead to significant costs for business but also because business will not know when its limitation period has expired it will be required to carry considerable contingent liabilities resulting from any warranties or any advertising that may have occurred. We think that this has not been thought through by the committee. We think that the title of the bill should be amended to reflect more correctly the fact that a number of enforcement and procedural provisions are incorporated in the bill. For example the bill will require companies to provide documents and information— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: I remind the member to keep to the title debate. 
Hon TONY RYALL 
: Madam Chair I am sure you were listening to my speech because what I actually said was that the title of this bill does not fairly reflect. It is very easy for people to jump in and say to speak to the bill but if people were listening to the debate they would know that I have been speaking to it. The point I was making before I was interrupted was that this bill requires companies to provide information and documents that do not exist. That is why the title should be amended to include the fact that enforcement and procedural provisions that are quite draconian in nature are included in the bill. I draw the Committee’s attention to the amendment to clause 1 in the name of Lindsay Tisch that covers that very point. 
The concern is that if the commission requires a company to provide documents or information that do not exist then that is a considerable expense to business. There is no ability for those businesses to recover the cost of generating documents and information that do not exist. In other procedures in the bill the Commerce Commission will be excused from having to reimburse or carry the cost for some of their decisions. That is why we are proposing amendments to the title of the bill.