Chen NaisiNAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. I wanted to start my contribution to this bill today by looking at the end to which I see this bill as a means to achieving. I think we can all safely say that we came to this House in hopes that we would help New Zealand maintain a really really strong market in being a free market and that competition would freely flow through that market and always that we would offer the best products the best services and we would have the best businesses running inside of that market so that our consumers would get the best in the whole entire world.So with that vision in mind I really want to commend this bill because this bill is fixing some of the loopholes that we've discovered since its enactment in—and I remember this because it's way before my birthday—1986. This is quite an old bill and I think today we're patching up some of those loopholes that we've since discovered one of them being the section that primarily this amendment is speaking to—section 36 which is to do with competition. In this competition space I think it's really important that we look at how fair our rules are right now for the players in our market. Right now we can see that incumbent dominating players are given an advantage to keep new players out of market and I think that is absolutely unfair.Also I just wanted the House to note the decisions made by the two Justices Justices Blanchard and Tipping—this reminds me of my law school days—in their statement saying that Anyone asserting a breach of s 36 must establish there has been the necessary actual use (taking advantage) of market power. To do so it must be shown on the balance of probabilities"—and we all know that that's actually quite a hard test; it's very subjective to the judges that are presiding over that case and also the lawyers that are arguing it—"that the firm in question would not have acted as it did in a workably competitive market; that is if it had not been dominant." So there's a lot of presumption there's a lot of room for argument and we know that this case in particular—the Commerce Commission v Telecom in 2010 in the New Zealand Supreme Court—failed because it was really hard to argue up to that standard. This is I think a waste of taxpayers' money in terms of having to go through the Supreme Court which is a really lengthy legal process to hire lawyers and to argue this when what we're trying to achieve is just better competition in our markets.So I thought this amendment to this bill would be really really good to see more effectiveness and more efficiency come through our system especially through our Commerce Commission and through helping consumer affairs in New Zealand to be better. I thought this is really really amazing in terms of actually making the whole process more simple. This is giving more assurance to the players in the market to all of our firms and businesses who are participants in the market that they are absolutely sure that what they will do will or will not get them into trouble with the law. So this is giving really good clarity so that they know what they're doing won't harm the market because we all know that once we go through the court system and once they get a result from the court it's already too late: the harm has already been done and the inefficiency and the ineffectiveness has already happened. So that's almost like the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and what this is doing is making sure that that anti-competitive behaviour isn't happening in the first place. So this is I think a really really good place for us to start fixing this loophole. I also wanted to note that while I just mentioned at the beginning this Act was enacted in 1986 there has been a recent history from both sides of the House of comments and commitment to make changes and to look into possible changes of this Act starting in 2014 and I recognise that there was a different Government then and also in a statement made by the Hon Jacqui Dean in terms of her commitment to re-examine this Act. She states in her media statement that "These proposals would include empowering the Commerce Commission to undertake market studies and improve its enforcement actions without having to go to court" and I think that also speaks to what I just mentioned in terms of making the legal process a lot easier and giving the Commerce Commission a lot more power to make policing the market a lot clearer.I just wanted to really tautoko what my colleague Jamie Strange spoke about just before me saying that competition brings innovation. I want to recognise my work with him recently on the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. I love how Parliament has put these three different subject groups if you like or titles together into one select committee because it is about that. It's almost in one area that we recognise that there's flow-on effects and synergy and harmony in that. So there's economic development science and innovation and to bring about innovation I think it's really really important that if we have a really good innovative competitive local market here in New Zealand it actually helps our firms to put out better products on to the international market as well and so that our firms our products from Aotearoa New Zealand become much more attractive on the international market. I think that helps as well to make sure that our consumers here in New Zealand get the best first and we also export and show the world that we have the best businesses and the best firms as well.I would also like to turn your attention to intellectual property (IP). I thought that was really important as well that we address that intellectual property should be seen as a normal property right. Just because a firm has IP over a particular idea or particular technology that doesn't automatically give them market right. We see that with a lot of the drug buyers the pharmaceutical companies when we see IP and they have IP and it gives them an unfair advantage in the market. We see that creates a lot of problems. This bill and this change of removing intellectual property as being a safe haven from being prosecuted for anti-competitive behaviour gives our market a really good chance—like Jamie Strange has just mentioned—to bring about more competition so that we have better incentives to encourage our firms to innovate. I think that's really important because in New Zealand as a small country not only do we start on the back leg in terms of our size our quantity in our economy we have to be smart about the way that we place ourselves in the global market as well as setting up our domestic market. So fresh new ideas that really would be high value are really important and innovation I really think is the key road in terms of achieving greater economic success for our country and achieving greater welfare for all of us who live in Aotearoa New Zealand.I also just wanted to recognise the Hon David Clark the Hon Kris Faafoi and—like I said before—the Hon Jacqui Dean for having contributed in different ways to this bill so that we finally have it here in this House today. I do really look forward to hearing all the submissions on it through the select committee process. And could I just thank as well the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and the Commerce Commission for all the work that they've done throughout the years. I think we've commissioned a lot of reports from them in order to give us the insight that we have today as I stand here in this House looking at all of the market research they have done to really show us what we can do to make New Zealand a better market for all of our competitors for all of our firms. But like how I started this speech ultimately it's to be a better market for all New Zealanders living here. So on that note I commend this bill to the House. Thank you Mr Speaker."