Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you. It's a pleasure to be talking on the Commerce (Criminalisation of Cartels) Amendment Bill's second reading. Well that member who just resumed his seat Tamati Coffey could get three minutes out of this—amazing. You know this bill actually is essentially a National Party bill which the previous member didn't really seem to understand although this Labour - New Zealand First Government wants to put that littlest extra twist into it—that criminalisation stuff. And I tell you what it's the same issue that we discussed last night around the Commerce Amendment Bill: this is a Minister the Minister of this bill Kris Faafoi who is a soft touch—a soft touch. Because we've now had three pieces of legislation where all these little twists that the Labour - New Zealand First Government want to make are the extra bit that all our former Ministers on this side of the House went so far to make the changes—and you've nicked all our bills—but you then just accepted willy-nilly what the officials have said to you. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Just to remind the member: I didn't nick anything.ANDREW BAYLY: Yeah. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. So let's have a talk about what a cartel is because I didn't hear that from the previous speeches. So a cartel is now defined as a situation where two or more businesses agree not to compete when engaging in one of the following activities: price-fixing restricting output or allocating markets. And the thing about cartels is that currently it's a criminal offence. In fact it's quite a substantial criminal offence. We're very careful at the moment about making sure that cartels do permit—you can undertake certain arrangements which are collaborative arrangements vehicle supply arrangements and joint buying and promotion. So all this is bona fide—you're able to do that. But the cartel where we have this price-fixing and restricting output—we all agree with that. We agree that that should not occur and we agree that the Commerce Commission should do that. That's a given. But at the moment we have severe penalties for activities that involve that and they are civil. It's absolutely incredible in terms of the extent of those. For instance the sanctions at the moment: if you're an individual you can be fined up to $500000; if you're a corporate you can be fined up to $10 million—$10 million if you're a body corporate. So the issue around this is that we've already got very significant civil penalties and very few people actually want this. In fact not even the Commerce Commission wanted this change which I find quite remarkable—that the Commerce Commission didn't want it. But let's see who else didn't want it. I think they are fairly august and well-known organisations: Buddle Findlay quite a significant law firm; Business New Zealand; Franchise Association of New Zealand; Horticulture New Zealand; Institute of Directors; Matthews Law—he does competition law based in Auckland; New Zealand Certificate of Building Association—they're a pretty good body and I've had a lot to do with them; Russell McVeagh—again well-known lawyers; Simpson Grierson—yeah pretty good lawyers too I must admit; and the business New Zealand Initiative. Not a bad sort of cast of people who are saying Let's not do this. Let's not do this. Let's not move into the criminalisation aspect." And I think that is a pretty weighty group who are saying there are good reasons not to do this. I think the issue around the criminalisation is that you get into uncharted territory. First of all there's no proven case why we should be moving into criminalisation but the thing is—and this is where the Government just goes where no one else wants to tread—what the Labour - New Zealand First Government has done in the last 48 hours is pass a whole range of bills that basically say "We do not worry about commerce in New Zealand." The Minister talked about consumers last night. He's also the Minister of commerce. He should be concerned about commerce in New Zealand. He should be protecting and making sure that they're operating correctly—and we all have that concern—but what he's doing and what you guys over the other side are doing is putting in place these arrangements that take it a step further and put us into an area where it has a chilling impact on people on businesses and on commerce in New Zealand.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'll just remind the member that I'm not doing it."