Parliamentary debates: Saturday, 30 May 2026

09:00

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We continue to progress the bill to improve gas market transparency because there is nothing more important, when a nation faces scarcity in one of its vital energy resources, than that we have the information that policy makers, decision makers, and industry participants need to work out, firstly, how much gas there is and where we are going to get more gas from—whether it’s liquefied natural gas, a vital lifeline and link to the world’s energy network that allows New Zealand industrial gas users and electricity generators to have confidence that even if there are domestic interruptions or domestic challenges, we will always be connected to this very important source of energy; not just energy but molecules that get turned into products that we use and consume every day, like the plastic in this pen.

That is why it is important that we progress this legislation, the Gas (Market Transparency) Amendment Bill, and despite the histrionics and the bizarre pseudo-objections from Labour and Green MPs speaking in the House last night, we understand they will support the legislation, because they understand that if we have more information, we can make better decisions. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

09:01

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in this second reading. I think we learnt last night what violent agreement looks like. We all agree with this bill, but this is what noise and thunder looks like. We all acknowledge that we require good, timely, and complete information. That’s going to help, especially in a time when gas supply is declining at the moment, and that’s going to help everybody, whether you’re a supplier or a consumer of gas. It helps the electricity sector, and it helps the Government, in terms of how we do things.

I just wanted to mention this excellent regulatory impact statement that we have here. There has been quite a bit talked about by the Opposition about the decline in gas production since 2000, but if people actually look at the graph, there was a big drop right about 2000, but then it was pretty stable for a very long time, about 15 years, and then it started declining around 2019. Of course, that was the time of the oil and gas ban. The Opposition would say, well, they basically cut the knees from under oil and gas exploration, and that’s the area where we disagree. They are, basically, relying on nobody going and looking for anything more, because if you don’t look, you’re not going to find it. If you do look, and if you’d started looking in 2019, you might have found some things, and you might actually have been bringing them into production now. I know the Greens are defending Labour, but Labour has never looked in the mirror on this score. That has had a major impact on this country. It has lost us jobs; it has lost us businesses. Sometimes, the Opposition complain about that loss of jobs, but they have been part of the cause of that situation.

I’m just going to finish off with a few quotes that we had in front of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee during this week. Members of the Opposition were there. This is from Meridian, who, of course, do not produce gas—they might use it, but they don’t produce it—“Material transition driven by the collapse in gas supply had pricing impacts that will take years to overcome. There are no silver bullets.” They acknowledge the pain, they want more affordable electricity, and they’re doing all they can to mitigate. The best way is to continue to invest in new generation, which I think we can get agreement on. But I did want to say this: they also said they are going as fast as they can to build new generation; they’re slowed down by consenting, but fast track has made a hell of a difference.

I thought that would be a good place to finish. We’re doing everything that we can to provide good information and also to get things built in this country, so that we can power our country. I commend the bill to the House.

09:04

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m just wanting to look at the regulatory impact statement, where it outlines the problem, the reason we need transparency in the gas industry. It points out that there is incomplete information: “Our primary objective is to get accurate and complete information on the gas market,”. It points out that there are forecasts of overestimating production on the part of the gas industry, and it points out that “decisions are currently made on incomplete, inaccurate and asymmetric information.”—inaccurate information. You can read between the lines on that. “The lack of good quality information”—repeated reference, in the regulatory impact statement, to what is well known around the world.

I just want to elucidate for members, before they freak out and jump out of their seats, that here I will quote from the Parliamentary Library’s search on information on industry overbooking, overestimating, or overproving its reserves: the National Whistleblower Center in 2020, “Fraudulent reserves reporting could hide stranded oil and gas assets.”; “Companies overhyping” in The Columbus Dispatch; the Royal Dutch Shell petroleum company paying $120 million to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission fraud case involving massive overstatement of proved hydrocarbon reserves. Shell admits it misled investors. “The industry has systematically misreported the size of discovery for good commercial reasons.”—that’s an academic paper from France in 2011.

Let me read a quote for you from the Shell company. This is from an executive in 2003, Walter van de Vijver, a senior executive of Royal Dutch Shell: “I am becoming sick and tired about lying.” The oil and gas industry faced its most embarrassing scandal after whistleblowers reported concerns about the size of the Royal Dutch Shell reserves. They surprised investors by slashing those reserve estimates because, in the words of that executive, they had been “lying” about them. Of 19 of the largest shale companies reviewed in The New York Times, at least seven increased their estimates of their reserves by more than 200 percent. Investors cheered the rule change that made them declare more openly, because, of course, it stuffs up the industry more broadly and the users of gas if there is incorrect information on the forecasting.

The Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, according to a 2016 whistleblower complaint in a securities class action: Anadarko inflated the value of its reserves by millions or even billions of dollars before it was purchased by Occidental Petroleum in 2019 for $38 billion, a delay that allowed executives to receive million-dollar bonuses for the sale. The former National Government passed a thing called the “Anadarko amendment” to stop people from protesting the drilling off the Raglan coast by that corporation, who, by the way, when they drilled, found nothing, because there is no new oil and gas in this country.

We will be supporting this legislation because we support greater transparency for the good of the country, and we agree with the statement in the regulatory impact statement that points out that the impact of there being misreporting or incorrect information is that there is a lack of visibility of the sector more broadly. Gas users without upstream production facilities—they come in several categories: electricity generators, industrial gas users, and some retailers—are all impacted by the tradition, not just in this country but across the world, of the gas industry overstating its reserves. If you would understand the real cause of the energy crisis right now, apart from the war in Hormuz, it is that the industry has been overstating their reserves in this country, and that is why we need transparency in the statement of how much gas we actually have left.

09:09

Good news: I think just about everyone wants to support this bill, so I too shall commend it.

As has been reasonably well canvassed already, we are supporting this bill in the interests of transparency. It’s a sensible bill. We’ll have some questions to ask during the committee of the whole House, but we do think this is a bill that needs to go through. Even more so, it’s a bill that is probably worthy of Budget urgency, unlike aspects of the tax bill that went through earlier. It’s also a bill where there is no great difficult issue to discuss, unlike the social security bill, where there is an extraordinary move to use artificial intelligence in assessing whether or not people are eligible for various benefits. Now, that should had have gone to a select committee.

It would be good to discuss some of these issues in a select committee, but sometimes there is stuff that the House needs to do fairly quickly, and we do know that we need this information from the gas industry fairly quickly, so it’s a reasonably sensible bill that we are reasonably happy to support. However, I do want to take up some of the comments that have been made by earlier speakers on this bill and some of the issues that have been canvassed—very, very briefly—by members of the Government.

Let’s start with the comments made by Simon Court. He opened with a statement that I agree with: “A stopped clock is correct twice a day.” He made some comments around scarcity—that we have a scarcity in our energy supply—and that in order to manage that scarcity, we need better information. That’s something we can agree with. It’s where he went to next that I find puzzling. His question was, “Where are we going to get more gas from?”

Now, the thing is, we have a problem of scarcity in our energy supply, and we have a problem of scarcity in our gas supply, but those two are not synonymous. There is more than one place from which to get energy. We do want to use our remaining, already permitted gas resources sensibly as we transition through—away—from fossil fuels. The sentiment on that side of the House seems to be that any energy source is a good energy source. But there are huge externalities associated with the use of fossil fuels, and, in particular, the whole world is bearing the cost of the energy that is supplied by fossil fuels. The whole world is experiencing the increase in temperatures. The whole world is experiencing climate change.

This is not a matter of going out to find new gas. This is a matter of using the remaining gas sensibly as we transition away from fossil fuels. Now, for that reason, we do need the information about the remaining gas supply in this country that this bill will give us. The thing is, with more information, as Simon Court said, we can make better decisions. Simon Court is right; with more information, we can make better decisions. The trouble is that Simon Court ignores a whole lot of new information we have found in the last decades. The new information about climate change—the new information about the way our whole world is being affected. And there’s another whole set of new information that Mr Court has been ignoring, and that is the much better access to renewable energy. This is where the casual equation of “gas” with “energy” is a mistake. “Energy” is much, much wider than just gas. “Energy” also contains the renewable energies.

If we want an example of what a country can do when it’s starved of hydrocarbons, sadly, let’s look at what’s happening in Cuba at the moment. That country is being starved of hydrocarbons, and it is leading to the most rapid transition to solar in any country that has ever been seen. There is a great source of energy available to us that is not fossil fuels, and that source of energy is the sun and solar power. That energy is also the wind, and energy from wind.

Where does the firming come from?

Now, the cry on the other side is that those energy sources are intermittent, but even in Germany they can use solar power. Even in countries that don’t have great resources of sun and wind—

Even Australia has firming—non-solar.

—those renewable sources are available. In terms of getting, as the bleaters over there are talking about, the firming, that firming capacity is available to us from geothermal. There are a whole set of resources which, if used wisely and well, are available to us. We have our enormous hydro lakes in the South Island, which could be our long-term battery if we move to lots more renewable power. But so far, this is not happening. So yes, let’s make a sensible plan for using the remaining gas—let’s plan around it—but we do need to make this urgent transition to renewable power.

Now, the cry from the other side has been, “Well, what about the jobs?” Apparently, there are no jobs if we don’t have fossil fuels. What about the enormous source of jobs that is available to us—high-skilled, technical jobs, well-paid jobs, that could be available in places like Taranaki, like Northland, if we made the move to renewable power. The jobs for electricians, for installers, for people maintaining those sites. There are huge sources of jobs available—and jobs where the profits remain in New Zealand. That would be an excellent source of jobs.

Tell Heinz Wattie’s.

Let’s have a think about—well, let’s have a solar farm over in Hawke’s Bay as well. There are ways of doing this. We can do this. We can and we must do this. We must do it, because otherwise we simply refuel and reinforce climate warming.

Now, I do want to talk to some of the issues they’ve raised, because what happened to the transition plan? Under the Labour Government, work was beginning and was under way on a transition plan to transition away from fossil fuels, to keep the jobs going, to ensure that we had the right energy sources—gone. They just stopped the work on that, and now they have been caught out, because it is becoming urgent. One of the reasons it’s becoming urgent is that there have been no new sources of fossil fuels in this country for the last quarter of a century.

Over there, they say that the reason that we have no oil and gas is because in 2018-19, the previous Government stopped issuing permits for new areas of offshore exploration. Onshore exploration could still carry on, exploration in existing permits could still carry on, but nothing has been found in those areas. It’s not economic to go searching for them. The bleating and the crying over there ignores the reality of the world—that nothing has been found at a commercial level. It’s not just that there is no gas available now; it’s that the gas has not been found. As my colleague Megan Woods said yesterday, they can chatter away all they like, bleat away all they like, whinge away all they like; the hard, cold facts of geology and of science say that there is no resource there available.

Let’s get realistic. We need a transition plan to move away from fossil fuels. We need to ensure that we move rapidly to renewable energy. In order to do that effectively, sure, we do need to use those remaining gasfields—well, in particular, we need to look after our domestic users. This bill will help with that, and for that reason, we are supporting this bill.

Mr Speaker—

If you’d sit down, I’ve still got two seconds left, Dan Bidois.

Point of order, Mr Speaker. I know the speaker is keen to have his 10 minutes’ worth, but I did think it was actually at least a little rude that he was up and on his feet before my allocated time had expired.

The point is taken. Please wait until the clock is run down before you jump up.

09:20

This bill is all part of the Government’s plan to fix the basics and build the future. Let’s get it done. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very pleased to be able to take some time to make a contribution to this important debate. The member who just finished, Dan Bidois, used more time of the previous member’s speaking slot than of his own to not make his point, but I’m not here to talk about that; I’m here to talk about the Gas (Market Transparency) Amendment Bill, because energy security matters in New Zealand, and so that’s what we need to be giving the appropriate time to, to debate and examine in Budget urgency this morning, because it really is a very important issue.

Now, I want to start by looking at the regulatory impact statement and just remarking on how good it is that we have one but also that it goes into detail here about the changes that are happening in the gas market. It talks very specifically about New Zealand’s gas reserves steadily declining and reducing faster than previously forecast. I think that’s a really important point, and it’s something that a number of speakers from the other side of the House seem to be in some sort of denial about. I think that that’s a frustrating situation if that’s the case or if that’s the opinion.

The regulatory impact statement goes on to talk about the impacts of that, and it talks about closures of the Winstone Pulp International sawmill, the Oji Fibre paper mill, Oji also ceasing paper production at Kinleith, and Carter Holt Harvey closing its Eves Valley sawmill. Since this regulatory impact statement was written, we’ve also seen closures at McCain and Wattie’s in the North Island as well. So we know that this is a big issue.

But we also know that this has been an issue that Labour was working on the last time we were in Government, and since then it seems that work has, if not slowed down, potentially completely stopped, from this Government. I thought, “This reminds me of something.”, and I thought, “What does this remind me of?”

Then I remembered that a couple of weeks ago I got on a plane in Christchurch to fly to Wellington—something I do most weeks. I sat in my seat—I was in row six—and the person sitting in the aisle opposite me put on their headphones, as many of us do on a flight, and the plane took off and we flew towards Wellington.

Now, we got about halfway into the flight, and it was an unusual flight. The plane was performing differently to what you would come to expect. The cabin crew and the pilot very calmly explained to us that there were some engineering issues with the plane and that they were going to turn us around and they were going to fly us back to Christchurch and safely land. We all thought—or I thought—that was a good plan and a good idea and we were comfortable with that—and, sure enough, the plane turned around and we flew back to Christchurch and we safely landed in Christchurch and we got off the plane and we walked into the airport.

Now, that person who had been sitting opposite me with their noise-cancelling headphones on arrived at Christchurch Airport, walked off the plane, walked into Christchurch Airport, and said, “Where am I?”, because the duration of that flight was the equivalent of if you’d made an end-to-end flight from Christchurch to Wellington. But instead, because that person had been existing in another world for the period of that flight, they had no idea where they were.

I thought, “That’s what this reminds me of.” This Government reminds me of a passenger with noise-cancelling headphones who thinks they’re heading in one direction but, because they’re not paying any attention to the many signals—the many signals—that they are receiving from the pilot, from the cabin crew, and from their fellow passengers, they arrive somewhere and don’t know where they are. That’s what this looks like.

So, 2½ years into Government, having not been paying attention, they now need to urgently, in Budget urgency, move to introduce this. The current transition plan simply seems to be that there isn’t one.

We will support this bill, and our speeches have been, as you will have heard, supportive of the intent of this bill. But I think what we’re also saying is that on its own it’s not the plan that we need. It looks a lot like someone who’s been wearing noise-cancelling headphones thinking that they’re heading to one place, only to discover, when they put their feet on the ground and get the reality check that they need, they are actually, in fact, potentially back where they started. We will support the bill, but it is not the energy plan that New Zealand need and that New Zealand deserves.

09:25

I wish I had my noise-cancelling headphones for that last five minutes! This is all about our plan to fix the basics and build the future. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Here we are in the second reading of the Gas (Market Transparency) Amendment Bill. We have heard a number of second reading speeches that were very brief, but the Minister of Climate Change did add something. After we have another couple of speeches, we will be in committee of the whole House, so I might raise some issues here in the second reading that will be relevant to that committee of the whole House stage, for the Minister.

No headphones?

Hopefully he’s not wearing headphones and is listening so that we can be as efficient as possible in this—because apparently this is somewhat about efficiency.

What I want to start out with is just going back to basics—the actual basics of what we’re talking about here—because there seems to be quite a lot of muddled sentiment about what this bill is about and some magical thinking that it’s going to resolve all sorts of different problems and that there’s all these problems caused by the previous Labour Party, which is absolutely not true.

We know in New Zealand that we use a good number of different energy sources. We heard Megan Woods talk, in her second reading speech, about that difference between electrons and molecules. In New Zealand, about 50 percent of our energy use comes from, or is still derived from, fossil fuels at some stage. Gas—most of the gas that we are talking about in the Gas Act—comes from fossil fuels; that is, that they are the molecules.

Now, some of those fossil fuels are converted into electricity—that is, they turn into the electrons. Much of that energy could jump the molecule step and just be electrons, and that is what Deborah Russell was talking about in her speech before: that when we are thinking about the whole energy system in New Zealand, there is much opportunity to skip the molecules and go straight to electrons, and that, of course, should be our focus if we are trying to decarbonise our economy.

We often hear the term electricity being used interchangeably with energy, and there is a lot of energy—as I have noted before—used in New Zealand that is not coming from electricity.

Now, of course, when we are talking about fossil fuels, we are not just talking about gas; there are other fossil fuels as well. There are liquid fossil fuels, in terms of petroleum, and there are thermal fossil fuels. There is coal as well. This legislation is clearly not about those other fossil fuels, but it is about gas, and it’s not just about the gas that we might find and obtain from Taranaki; it is also about the gas that comes into New Zealand. That is my understanding. I’m very happy for the Minister to say that somehow this is different and it’s only about New Zealand’s reserves. but from listening to the Minister’s speech before, this bill is not just about New Zealand’s gas reserves; it is about all gas that comes into New Zealand, whether it originates from New Zealand or is imported in. Then, of course, we know that some gas is exported out of New Zealand as well. Point being, these are all fossil fuels that we’re talking about, and we want, desperately, for New Zealand to change its economy to decarbonise.

Now, that takes time. We’ve heard Megan Woods, again, speak about the importance of a just transition when you’re transitioning, and to plan for it, which is why you need an energy plan—something that we’ve heard debated in this House, in this sitting block. There have been questions to the Prime Minister about this, and it seems like this Government is not interested in a plan to do that. What, in fact, this Government wants to do is to sit around, point some fingers, and totally continue their reliance on fossil fuels. That is very disappointing.

What this bill is doing is saying, well, we have an issue in New Zealand with the actual amount of gas, the fossil fuel in New Zealand at the moment, because so many users of the gas are still dependent on having gas. They have not done a transition so that they can use electrons rather than those molecules. This decarbonisation can happen for difficult-to-decarbonise industries that rely on industrial heat.

For example, in the great electorate of Dunedin, recently I’ve gone to visit two different electric boilers. So that is that they are using the electrons, and these are both boilers that were using gas. One was using natural gas, and that was at Lion’s; now the Speight’s factory—now 150 years old, and happy birthday to Speight’s. The other is at Preens dry cleaners, which is a big laundry—it takes a whole lot of hotel laundry—and that had been using LPG.

So thanks to the CERF—the Climate Emergency Respond Fund—and the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund (GIDI Fund), those companies were able to do the investigations and the seed funding. Both those companies told me they would not have converted from their fossil fuel molecules to renewable electrons had it not been for that seed funding. They put the majority of the money in, and both companies are now very pleased that they did that because, obviously, gas prices have gone up.

But anyway, my point is that what this bill is doing is saying all of the gas that is in our economy, we want to know more about where it’s being distributed and who those commercial players are—not the domestic houses but those commercial players. Who is using that gas; when do they need to use it? And, hopefully, although I don’t think it’s in here, what is their plan to get off that gas? What is their plan to move from molecule to electron? That’s the missing piece here, and it’s the missing piece from everything that we hear from those Government benches.

Instead, we hear that, “Oh, we need to put Government money, taxpayer money”—in terms of, we’re talking about subsidies; I just heard those words used before—“into an LNG terminal so that we can continue importing foreign fossil fuels into New Zealand and we can embed the use of that gas into our economy.”

Rather than saying, “Here is an opportunity”—here is an opportunity to say to everyone it is worth it. It is worth making the long-term investment now to change your processes from the use of molecules, of fossil fuels, to renewables and to electrons. Of course, it will take more investment. Nobody is saying that firming is not a problem and that we need to do more investment in this space, but here is the opportunity to do it. Instead, this Government is turning away and talking about liquefied natural gas terminals, and that is very sad.

What is useful is that we are going to have some regulations—if the regulations are made under this—to be able to make good decisions and to do planning. So I implore that Government to actually do some planning so that we can move away from a reliance on fossil fuels, foreign or otherwise, and move to a more renewable New Zealand—a decarbonised New Zealand.

09:36

Let us move into the committee stage for the Gas (Market Transparency) Amendment Bill and to fixing the basics and building the future for New Zealand. I commend the bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of Te Pāti Kākāriki. As we heard from my previous two speakers, Steve Abel and also Scott Willis, we do support this bill. But I think both Steve and Scott canvassed the broader issue of the gas market and what we’re seeing in terms of the transparency of information quite well.

I think, to start with, when we’re looking at the market transparency—or we’re just looking at transparency in general, whether it is to do with the gas industry or whether it is to do with public-private partnership or whether it is to do with anything that the public would be interested in or is of public interest—we should be striving for more transparency in all regards.

There are a couple of things in this bill that I want to speak on. I think this is just to kind of indicate also some of the questions that potentially could come up later on in the committee stage. The main thing about this—and people talked about the purpose of this bill, like I said, quite well. The main substance of the bill is secondary legislation. We’re looking at a regulation-making power under the new section 56AA of the Gas Act. But one of the things that is in there—and it does list a number of things in terms of the disclosure of gas market information by industry participant or consumer, which does not include a domestic consumer. While that is there, I think we’ve heard previously from other speakers, as well, that it doesn’t quite go far enough as what we see in some other comparable jurisdictions, such as Australia. I think if you’re going to be doing something like this, we might as well do it all the way. As we know, Australia is not really the shining example when it comes to their gas market, yet they’re still doing it better than what we’re doing here, even with this particular bill. So I think there is room for us to consider and question what information could also be added or how we are able to strengthen this particular regulation under new section 56AA.

What is also interesting around this area is that there is no real end date or real date that has been given on when that regulation must be made. While we understand that secondary legislation is made by the Governor-General by Order in Council under the recommendation of the particular Minister, and we’re talking a big game about transparency and how good this is and how much we support it; commencement date the day the day after Royal assent—fabulous. But there is actually no real date given on when that regulation will kick into effect. I think that is something we do need to hear from the Minister on, just to be able to get a sense of, well, when is this going to happen?

I think finally, in terms of the bill, before I move on to what I’ve now just discovered is the Minister’s own Amendment Paper, is around: if the industry or industry participant or consumer failed to declare or has declared incorrectly, what are the repercussions when it comes to that kind of offence? I know that the Government parties all seem to be very keen on this idea of being tough on crime, yet we don’t see the same approach when it comes to white-collar crime, for example.

When it comes to something like this where an industry failed to declare or declared incorrectly, based on what we see in this bill and based on what we see in the Gas Act, the maximum penalty is $200,000, right? But, as we heard from the previous speaker, petroleum companies earn millions and billions a year, so $200,000 is peanuts compared to that. Is that something that will actually deter potential offenders? I think that is also an important discussion to have.

Overall, we do support this bill. We believe this bill can be strengthened, and we are keen to engage with the Minister in the committee stage.

This bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Gas (Market Transparency) Amendment Bill.

09:42

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s nice to see you again this morning.

It’s nice to see you too.

Before I ask some questions on Part 1, I’d just like to refer to the explanatory note, because it’s useful for us to get a broad view of where the Minister sees the problem and what the nature of that problem is. The explanatory note, on the first page, is very clear that the bill is designed to make more efficient decisions for market participants and “to require industry … to disclose relevant market information to the chief executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment or to the industry body for gas, the Gas Industry Company”. The language is interesting, because “Those regulations are intended to facilitate the collection of additional, accurate, and complete information”—it’s interesting that it uses all three of those words, not just “additional” or “complete”, but “accurate” is a notable word.

The implication of the use of that word is that we’ve had inaccurate information to date. “The power will allow the Government to address key gaps in information”—i.e., has the industry being somewhat economical with the information that it’s made available? “This approach is necessary because much of the information available about gas markets is incomplete”—to quote again the explanatory note of this bill. The problem with that is that “Poor information leads to inefficient decisions about the constrained supply of gas and, ultimately, to higher costs for New Zealanders.” There is the key point—if we don’t have this accurate information, we’re going to get higher costs.

My question for the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, regarding the broader objectives of this document, as elucidated in the explanatory note, is: what advice has he received on the New Zealand gas industry overstating, overbooking, overproving, or overestimating its reserve volumes? Have you received information about the inaccuracy of what the gas industry has been providing to the public, to its users, and to the Government? The reason I ask that very specific question is because we know, as I elucidated in my speech, that, unfortunately, the oil and gas industry, globally, has form for overstating, overproving, or overestimating its gas reserves, because that relates to the value of their industry. Could you please answer that question, Minister? Have you had advice on the New Zealand industry overstating, overbooking, overproving, or overestimating its reserve volumes? Thank you.

09:46

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a series of very short questions for the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, but in this call I just want to ask an overarching question about the option that the Minister has chosen to go for, Option 4, as set out in the regulatory impact statement, which is to amend the Gas Act to create a new regulation making power for information gathering, as opposed to the other options, which range from the status quo through to a more hard-wired legislated requirement to collect the information and publish it, which would have taken us closer to the Australian regime. What we can see from the regulatory impact statement is that going for Option 5, which was amending the Gas Act to collect and publish information via notice, actually could have been implemented faster. It seems to have had a six-month implementation window, as opposed to the 12 months that the option that he’s chosen to go with, Option 4, is taking. Now, given the case that is made in the explanatory note and in the regulatory impact statement on the need for this legislation, why has Minister chosen to go for the lighter-touch option that will take longer to implement?

09:47

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m interested, with what I was saying in my second reading speech and my first reading speech, for the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, to clarify at a very high level that these regulations are not just about what’s happening in New Zealand’s reserves but that it is about all the gas that is coming to New Zealand, wherever it’s originated from. I think it’s useful for the Minister to clarify that when talking about “domestic consumers”, it is defined in the Gas Act as talking about households. We’re thinking of households differently. These regulations don’t apply to households, but they do apply to companies and businesses that are using gas. That’s my second question.

Then I’m very interested in clause 4, new section 56AA(1)(a)(i)—“petroleum reserves and resources within the meaning of the Petroleum Resources Management System:”. This petroleum resources management system, if we look to the next page, is defined at new subsection (4), which says, “In this section, Petroleum Resources Management System means the system of that name developed and published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and available on the Society’s Internet site.” Now, Minister, I’ve gone on to that internet site—and I’m sure the Minister will know much more about this international society, and I’m sure these are good international standards that everybody uses—but it’s interesting that to access the document, you have to put in your email address, and then they email it to you. But I’m interested in the fact that New Zealand law is going to have a definition that is based on an international society’s definition somewhere on their website that you have to have emailed to you.

This seems like a very unusual way to make laws, and primary legislation, in particular. I’m interested—and I couldn’t see in the regulatory impact statement if there was anything on this point. I’m not disputing the importance of the society or the rigour that’s gone into that document or any of those issues. It’s just that our law is now referring to an internet site, when, actually, the documents—you can’t access it from the internet site.

Then, also, whilst we’re still on Part 1, I think it would be useful if the Minister could explain to us the link between petroleum reserves and gas reserves. I know that there is some chemistry and physics there and that they are, of course, interrelated. But if he could explain how petroleum reserves are relevant to this amendment and these regulations, because, of course, these amendments are going into the Gas Act and gas is defined in the Gas Act, and gas means a gas, as we all learnt about in—I don’t know—standard 4 science, something like that—different states. How is liquid form relevant? Is it relevant? That’s all I’m asking, and if he could answer that very simple question that would be useful.

09:51

Thanks, Mr Chair. Morning, everyone. We’re working our way through a six-clause bill, and we’re talking about clauses 4 and 5. In regards to the question from the Hon Rachel Brooking around the Government’s plan to get New Zealand businesses off gas—market-led transition. Private businesses are best to determine their own energy sources and whether they transition away from gas or not. You will be aware that we’ve launched a loan guarantee scheme that will help firms switch away from gas to electricity. That’s one mechanism that is in play, particularly those that are constrained by capital and have the ability to transition, acknowledging that about one-third of manufacturing firms in New Zealand do not have a pathway to transition off gas—think coffee-bean roasting or bread production, which is quite critical to your morning breakfast.

In regards to some of the questions just raised in the second reading, which are relevant to this clause around maximum penalties—$200,000, Lawrence Xu-Nan. There is also a $10,000 per day ongoing penalty for noncompliance. That’s in addition to that other charge.

In regards to the point raised by Rachel Brooking around the Amendment Paper, it responds to minor and technical issues identified by officials after the bill was approved by legislation.

In regards to Megan Woods’ question around why so much discretion, the exact types of information will be provided from whom, and we couldn’t and didn’t wish to seek that out in primary legislation, but we will soon through regulation, and we’ll look to pass the regulations as soon as practical, once this bill is passed.

Australian provisions noted by Megan Woods and Lawrence Xu-Nan—most, if not all, of the items of information Australia requires could be required under this legislation under our regulation powers.

09:53

Thank you, Mr Chair. I noticed that the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, has said it’s only a six-clause bill; we are nevertheless going bit by bit through clause 4, which is the substantive clause of this bill and does all the work.

I want to just focus on new section 56AA(1)(a), and it’s the information that’s required and is given is to “an industry participant or a consumer (other than a domestic consumer)”. Now, I can understand why domestic consumers are not required to provide the information. They are at the end of the chain on this gas stuff. But one of the things that is happening in terms of the gas supply in this country is a sense of unease for domestic consumers as to whether or not they are going to continue to have gas supplied to them—partly it’s gas for barbies, if you go and get your gas canister filled up at the petrol station, but it’s also whether or not they will continue to have sufficient gas to supply stoves, heaters, hot water, and so on.

I’m looking from the Minister for what advice he has received around domestic consumers, the extent to which they will get reassurance about their gas supply. There’s another issue, of course, the extent to which we continue to hook new buildings up to gas. That’s entirely separate from this bill, but I do think that existing domestic household consumers of gas could do with some reassurance as to whether or not they will continue to get gas supply.

Actually, there’s a good reason for this. As we know, New Zealanders are keen renovators, they change their houses around, they redo their kitchens. It would be good for people to understand whether or not this would be a good time, if they’re in the process of redoing their kitchens—maybe this is the time to go to an electric hob rather than a gas hob. If they’re redoing a bathroom and so on, maybe this is the time to make the move. So a little bit of reassurance for domestic consumers, please, Minister.

09:55

In regards to households and domestic consumers, it represents about 7 percent of total gas usage. Households as a whole use so little gas that it would be too disruptive to impose such obligations, that we’re referring to here, on to them.

In regards to the certainty of their supply, we’re not aware of any concerns in that regard. However, we do know that the pure economics of gas versus electricity mean that many consumers are transitioning off gas and on to electricity because it is cheaper, if they have ability to do so.

A question in regards to petroleum and the definition from the Hon Rachel Brooking: gas is a subset of petroleum; petroleum includes both gas and oil products.

09:56

Thank you, Mr Chair. My question relates to clause 4, new sections 56AA and 56ABB. I think my point or the question I’ve got for the Minister in the chair, given that the Minister also holds the responsibility for climate change, is about emissions. We have a fantastic opportunity here, if we’re thinking about transparency in general, thinking about transparency in the availability of gas, we should also be thinking about transparency in the emissions that that gas releases if we use it.

I’ve got a proposal for the Minister that I’d hope the Minister might consider, and it’s an amendment that we’ve put in called “Gas (Market Transparency) Amendment Bill proposed amendments”: in clause 4, new sections 56AA and 56AAB and cross-heading, insert after clause 4 new section 56AA(1)(a)(vii), page 2, after line 32, insert “(vii) information on emissions emitted by gas.” Now, a very simple amendment, but a very useful amendment because, as the Minister will know, as Minister of Climate Change, we do need to count our emissions.

This is just about transparency and it’s about improving legislation to make sure that we have legislation that does the job that we would expect of it, which is to give us the data that we need to understand what our emissions profile is, to understand our risk as our emissions grow, and the cost to the economy if we do not act to reduce those emissions. A very simple amendment, and a proposal that I hope the Minister can respond to, that I would hope that the Minister would accept that this could be adopted—slid in there to make sure that we are able to take note of the emissions and give greater transparency to what we can see in front of us. Thank you.

09:58

Yeah, with respect, on this side of the House, we’re not into slipping and sliding around amendments. The amendment the member’s proposing, in my view, is out of scope because this bill is putting in place regulation-making powers. What the member is trying to do is put in the detail of what those regulations would be, and that would be for the Government to determine. That’s not in scope. We’re simply looking at the powers to put in place a regulation-making ability for Government.

09:59

Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, for going through and answering questions. As my colleague Deborah Russell alluded to, there really is just one clause that does the heavy lifting, well does all the lifting, apart from the amendment in this. We will be going through subclause by subclause around this.

There was an answer to a question from Deborah Russell where the Minister rightly said that we wouldn’t be trying to collect information off domestic users of gas. No one is suggesting that is what we are doing, but in that clause 4, 56AA (1)(a)(ii), “forecasts of supply and demand”, has the Minister given any thought to how new connection data for gas connections could be built into those forecasts? Because one of the reasons that we’re putting in place this regulatory power to get this information is for policy making. It’s not just for commercial use; it’s for policy makers to use it. So actually having good sight into the rate of connections and any trends that are happening in there—so what thought has been given to how we might do that?

More broadly, new section 56AA(1)(a) goes through the kinds of information that is going to be collected: petroleum reserves and resources; forecasts of supply and demand; information on how much gas; information on any risks; agreements to trade, including volumes, prices, parties—all the kinds of things that you’d expect would be collected in there.

I want to know, in making the policy decisions around this legislation, what categories of information will be prioritised first. What thought has been given to this list in terms of prioritisation? Is the list as it appears? I know it’s a list that says “for example”, but is this indicative of the kind of prioritisation that may be given, in terms of the information that is asked for when the regulations are set? How will the Minister make those decisions against each other? The reserves, outages, near-term production contract data—these are all vital pieces of information. Some will be more important for others, some will be more pertinent to policy makers, some will be more pertinent for gas users. In making the choices around regulation, how will the prioritisation be carried out by the Minister?

10:02

Just in regards to the question on clause 4, new section 56AA(1)(a)(i) to (vii), and questions in regards to prioritising and other aspects and whether that list is representative of the priority in which Government will look at, what that list represents is the scope of the areas in which the regulation-making powers will be within, it will be for Cabinet and the Government, subsequent to this law passing, to put in place the detail of what those regulations are and work their way through that. It would be fair to say that the concerns have been noted by members around the Chamber on the need for more transparency, and that is absolutely something that is shared across the House in the context of that information, and that will be the intent.

We’ll obviously take on board what other players and other jurisdictions are doing in this area to ensure that our issue is fit for purpose. But the fundamental issue here is that the information that we are currently receiving is not sufficient to make informed-based decisions in regards to policy and other matters, which is at the detriment of our ability to effect and take action as a Government and ensure that we mitigate the risk of the implications of less gas availability and the flow-through impacts of that on the economic growth of the country.

So that is the intent. It’s not within—just giving that as background context because the scope of this bill is only to establish the regulation-making powers. When we start getting into what’s going to be included in those regulations, that is not in the scope of this bill. But I think just for context for the members—just to explain it.

Hon Megan Woods. At this stage, we’ve obviously got a well-informed and participating Minister and members, so quite happy for members to go back and forth if we can facilitate that.

10:03

Thank you, Mr Chair. Just in response to Minister Watts’ answer, and I thank him for it—absolutely appreciate that this is a piece of legislation putting in place regulation-making power, and I do remind the Minister that we haven’t had a very fulsome response. We haven’t really had a response to why it is that the policy decision was made to go with a regulatory-making power piece of legislation over legislating for the powers that would be collected. So I think going back to first-principle questions is really important in the terms of this committee stage.

The other piece of information that the Minister said that it will be Cabinet to decide the detail, and it is a job of this House when granting regulatory-making powers to an Executive is to understand, through the course of that legislation, the criteria and the weightings that will be given in making those decisions to bring in the regulation. So that’s what I would like to hear from the Minister.

I appreciate the problem definition statement the Minister has given us again, but what we haven’t heard is any discussion informing this policy around this legislation in terms of what relative weightings will be given by Cabinet when they make the decisions about making the regulations.

I’m not asking the Minister to spell out what the regulations will be. I’m asking him to tell us, from a policy-formation perspective, what the relative weightings and criteria will be, and in terms of how that will differ if they’re seeking for information gathering for public policy purposes or whether it is information gathering for commercial gas use purpose.

10:05

I mean, two calls ago, I did provide a high-level overview in regards to why we’re not putting more information in primary legislation. As I said, the exact types of information to be provided, and from whom, would be too detailed to set out in primary legislation. There is also significant movement in the gas market, and the kinds of information necessary to inform market and Government policy is changing rapidly. We need the ability to move fast in regards to that, hence the ability to do so through regulations.

If we had regulations here and now today, we could have addressed the issues of updating the regulations without having to use House time. But the legislation currently that we have and why we’re doing this change is not sufficient to gather the information we require.

10:06

Thank you, Mr Chair, and I thank the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, for that. In terms of moving through new section 56AA(1), and if we look at (b) through (d), now, in there, I think one of the things that still—I appreciate the Minister’s answer, but I still don’t have a good sense in that area, (b) through (d), of what the design principles and any policy discussions that have sat behind that, that will guide the frequency and format of the information that will be sought when regulations are put in place.

And the other question that I think the House needs to know from this committee stage is whether there will be—what measures will be put in place by the executive when they are making those regulations to look at existing reporting and seeing how that may crossover. Will there be duplication? Will that be something that will be taken into account when those decisions are made? And what reassurances can the Minister give, given that it is an executive power that is going to be used to do this, in terms of the predictability of the information, in terms of the content, but also in terms of the timing?

Because one of the things is if we put this against the Australian system, which has a more hard, baked-in system, it has a gazette system and people have that predictable knowledge of when their information will be available to them. How will the New Zealand system operate in those terms?

10:08

I refer the member to new section 56AA(2), which sets out the criteria related to the points that the member is raising around considerations that the Minister has the ability to make in terms of considering the implications—the member specifically talked about where there may be a duplication around process. We had another question before around new connections, for members interested—the gas industry group already publish the data on new connections.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, for his questions and responsiveness. In new section 56AA(1)—in Part 1, still—in terms of the disclosure of that information, Minister, I wonder if you could, in regard to petroleum reserves and resources, give us a quick answer to my initial question today as to if you have any advice on the extent to which the industry may have been providing overstated or overbooked or overproven estimates of their reserves. It will be useful for us to understand that and for the public to understand that, as means of clarifying the necessity for this legislation—which we all agree it is.

In terms of the information that has to be disclosed in new section 56 AA(e), you require the contents of gas market information to be independently assessed for accuracy and certified by a person who’s approved by the industry body or secretary. I wonder, Minister, how does he envisage that that accuracy will be assured? There is evidence from overseas examples where there’s been overproving or overbooking of reserves, that whistleblowers from within industry, such as reserve engineers, are a vital path to getting accurate information. Because of course it is a challenge for those who work within an industry that wants to keep information close to its chest to get that information accurately reported. For example, a person by the name of Lea Frye—who was the former reserve engineer who blew the whistle on the Anadarko executives in 2016—said that the executives rejected and hid internal drilling reports from engineers when reports showed that the Shenandoah field had far less oil than previously predicted.

I wonder, has the Minister considered the way that he will verify the accuracy of the information that he is requiring the industry to provide? It says that it will be “independently assessed for accuracy and certified by a person who is approved by the industry”. How does he protect those people from the influence of that industry should it wish to not be transparent about the status of its reserves? Thank you, Minister.

10:11

I’ll refer the member, just for background context, to the Frontier review that the Government undertook in regards to the electricity market. In that review it says, and I quote, “information published on the New Zealand gas market is fragmented and incomplete.” That’s the underlying feedback and recommendation why we are here to ensure that we mitigate.

In regards to the way in which we will mitigate the points around how we ensure that we get the right information and how me make sure that there are mechanisms for ensuring the information we get is true and accurate, most, if not all, of those items of information and processes that can and could be required are the ability of the regulation-making power that we are doing here. The fact that this bill would allow us to put in place more comprehensive information-gathering powers and requirements than currently is the status quo, or potentially than Australia, is absolutely within the guise of the Government of the day. What we’re doing here is the regulation-making power in order to do that.

Some examples of that may be, which are in play in Australia, are around seven-day look-ahead production forecasts, weekly and monthly pricing data for contracts under 12 months, and disclosures on volumes of uncontracted gas. Those are examples in the Australian model where, again, I’m just signalling to you that when we get this law passed today, we’ll be able to start progressing at pace those regulations and get those into play into the market. We need that in play in the market as fast as possible because we need better information to make more informed decisions.

10:13

Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you to the Minister in the chair, Hon Simon Watts, for methodically working through the questions. I just do point the Minister to the fact that still outstanding is the design features that will guide the frequency and format, so if we could have an answer to that one as well.

I just want to move on now to clause 4, new section 56AA(1)(e), and this is the clause that my colleague Steve Abel just talked about, which is requiring the “contents of gas markets information to be independently assessed for accuracy and certified by a person who is approved by the industry body”. In the regulations or in any other instruments that the Government has, will there be any guard rails put around who can be approved by the industry body, or is it entirely left to the industry body around who they can use to do that independent assessment of the accuracy of the data, or will there be any prescription that will go in there?

The other question is, in this subclause, will that certification apply to all data, or will there be a threshold around, say, for example, high-impact data, around reserves—things that are seen to make a material difference? Does the Minister envision that it could—if there were to be, for example, new connections data that would come through in the supply and demand forecasts, could it apply there? Going back to the list of examples that are given in 56AA(1)(a)(i) through (vii), does he see that independent certification applying equally through all of those kind of measures, and has there, in policy making, been any consideration of thresholds?

10:15

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m still on my states of matter question, and thank you to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, for saying that petroleum can be a gas. I just want clarification that this is only in the state of being gas and not as a liquid, or are there some definitions somewhere else that somehow bring in the liquid form? That was my question about clause 4, new section 56AA(1)(a)(i). Also, the Minister hasn’t answered any of my questions about the use of a foreign internet site for a definition in New Zealand law.

Then, going on, I’m interested in—at 56AA(1)(a)(iii) and (v), there’s information about agreements or information about how much is being supplied or being supplied to consumers. I realise that, for the wording for subparagraph (iii), there’s Amendment Paper 634 there. My question here is: could that information be about a specific agreement? That’s the question. Does it have to be general, or are these coming into the specifics, noting, of course, that subparagraph (vii) says domestic consumers aren’t included?

Then, moving on to subsection (2) and those safeguards that are included in subsection (2), there’s talk there at paragraphs (b) and (c) that it’s assisting “the Government in overseeing, monitoring, or regulating any gas market:”. Is that wide enough to include planning and policy settings? At paragraph (c), it’s also to assist in the “co-regulation of the gas industry by the Government and the industry body.”—but that’s the co-regulation, which is an interesting part of this gas bill. The question there is: are these regulations going to be made in a way that can inform the planning and the policy settings that we’ve been talking about? So that’s four questions.

My next question is to the relevance of biogases—and apologies for not knowing everything about the Gas Act, but where do they fit with this? Is that something that can be included? Then I’m also interested in the Minister’s reference that a third of manufacturers or businesses in New Zealand don’t have a pathway to transition away from gas. The example he used was coffee-roasters, and I’m wondering if he gave that example because it’s Saturday morning and we were here till midnight last night. That is a cruel way to remind us that we’re not sitting around having a nice Saturday coffee—not that that often happens. But, the third that don’t have the transition, is the point here to get the two-thirds that he says do have a transition pathway off gas? Or is that not the point, and then what happens to that third? If he would like to make some more remarks about that.

To remind him: are we dealing with liquid states of petroleum somehow through this? Why is there reference to an international internet site where you have to send an email to get the document? What is the relevance of biogas? Are these regulations going to be set in such a way, or can they be set in such a way given the safeguards, to inform planning and policy settings? And will part of that be to enable the two-thirds of users who, he says, can transition to do that transition, and will it help with that remaining one-third? Thank you.

10:19

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Biogas would be included, in regards to the member Rachel Brooking’s question.

I had a question earlier from the Greens in regards to the protection of whistleblowers. This is covered under the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Act 2022.

The Hon Megan Woods had a question around the frequency and format of regulations. No decisions have been made in regards to that. We’ll decide on the frequency and format after consultation with the gas sector once this bill is passed today.

I had another question in regards to information about a separate agreement. Yes, the bill could require information on specific agreements. The New Zealand gas industry includes a few large users, which the members will be aware of, and, in some cases, specific agreements may be requested as part of the information-gathering process. However, that’s why we’ve got the ability to have information that will be retained as being confidential to a Government, because some of that will be commercial and in confidence.

10:20

Thank you, Mr Chair, and I appreciate it. I’ve got quite a number of questions, but I’ll try and keep it simple. But before I do, I’d just like to address the point about coffee-roasters. At the Carbon and Energy Professionals conference earlier this week, we did see examples of coffee-roasters that had been electrified, and this doesn’t seem like it should challenge us on a Saturday morning. We can have electrified coffee, Mr Chair, and for the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, and so let’s celebrate the small wins.

While we’re doing that, I want to address in Part 1, clause 4, subparagraph (vii), because what we’re talking about here is the “information to help other industry participants or consumers (other than domestic consumers) to make informed decisions in connection with the gas markets:”. This is really important, as the Minister has indicated, but I want a little bit more detail, if he would. We can see the gas network going cash-flow - negative in a very short space of time, and, as a consequence, I’m really interested in how this information is going to pass through to the electricity distribution businesses (EDBs), who, in addition to electrons, also have the gas supply responsibilities. How is this information going to pass through and how rapidly will this pass through?

I can follow up with another question, but we have a five-year reset on gas regulation happening right now, and that’s likely going to result in some accelerated depreciation. As a consequence, Minister, we will likely see homeowners out in the cold or being hit with a $50,000 cost to refit their homes away from gas when those gas lines get turned off. I know that this isn’t going to be declared to homeowners, but the EDBs, who are responsible for the gas networks, are making decisions right now, and I’m wondering about the pathway through which they will get that information. How will that information flow through to the electricity distribution businesses, and will those consumers who are households or businesses down the supply chain have access to that information through the EDBs or some other way?

A little follow-up question—I don’t want to waste the Minister’s time, but I think this is really, really important. We were wondering whether there is any other legislation that’s going to be proposed that would assist, perhaps through the Commerce Commission, with the accelerated depreciation of gas assets at the same time as this bill, or swiftly following this bill. Is this something that the Minister would be considering, as well, because we really do need some certainty at the EDB level? I’m concerned about households here with regard to the gas supply—the longitudinal supply. We all know that it’s not there, but just what is there, before we have that decommissioning under way, and households have no idea of what’s happening and they are hit with heavy, heavy costs—$50,000 costs—to refit their homes. Thank you, Mr Chair.

10:24

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’m just going to say that if the member Scott Willis could refer to the clause number, then I can answer the question, but on the general policy, I feel like I’ve provided significant detail already around that. But clauses are helpful for me to answer.

In regards to the questions from Deborah Russell in regards to regulations planning and policy: yes, under new section 56AA(2), it includes planning and policy for overseeing the gas market and regulating entities. I’ve covered that clause a number of times now. To the Gas Industry Co. point, I can certify that they have the technical expertise to do so. The timing of when that information will be available: again, under new section 56AA(1)(i) to (vii), the information will be made available as soon as possible after consultation with the gas sector.

10:25

Thank you, Mr Chair. Just while there are still some outstanding questions on new section 56AA in clause 4—I’ll allow the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, to catch up on those—I’m going to refer now to Amendment Paper 634, which was tabled yesterday, and come back to go through the clause once the Minister has caught up on those outstanding questions.

This is an Amendment Paper that arrived yesterday, and I guess that the first question for the Minister around this is that this is a bill with one clause—what was needing to be fixed, in terms of the Amendment Paper? I appreciate that this Minister in the chair is acting on behalf of and that it’s not the Minister whose bill this is, but I think that the committee needs to know why a bill with literally one operative clause needed a ministerial Amendment Paper to be dropped 24 hours after the primary piece of legislation was tabled.

On going through the explanatory note of the Amendment Paper, I think that it would be useful for the Minister to explain why some of these changes needed to be made. In the explanatory note, the second bullet point says that it “extends the power for regulations to require the supply of information about how much gas is supplied. Currently, this is limited to gas supplied to consumers. This is extended to include gas supplied to any other person or persons (including for the purposes of resupply);”. What was the policy decision behind this amendment, why does that need to be, and was there a feeling that there needed to be far more rigour around resupply?

We’ve, obviously, seen over the last couple years a number of businesses who were on curtailment contracts. They’ve curtailed their use of gas and they’ve on-sold it in a tight gas market. Is that what this amendment is trying to capture? It would be good to know from the Minister around that.

Also, one of the bullet points in the explanatory note says that it “allows the regulations to prescribe limits or restrictions on the publication of information [collected] under new section 56AAB;”. The committee needs to know what the thinking is there. What are these limits and restrictions that this Amendment Paper is seeking to put in place, and why are there limits and restrictions that are being sought to be put in place? How did this come about?

We know—we can see through the regulatory impact statement—that gas producers are of the opinion that this information isn’t necessary, and they didn’t want these powers put in place. The regulatory impact statement, at paragraph 61 through to paragraph 63, has made clear what gas producers’ perception of this information is. Is that what this clause is seeking to address?

Then, the last bullet point in the explanatory note says that the Amendment Paper “provides that information may be published under new section 56AAB despite any legislation or rule of law to the contrary, but subject to any limits or restrictions prescribed under that new regulation-making power.” Why does this need to be put in place? What is the purpose of this amendment? Why wasn’t it in the bill that was tabled? Why has it been added so much later? What is the purpose of it?

There’s quite a lot of detail that the committee needs to understand around this Amendment Paper. These are just some of the top-lying questions, and, as I’ve said, our moving on to the Amendment Paper doesn’t mean that we’ve fully worked our way through clause 4. We’re just allowing the time for the Minister to catch up.

10:29

Thank you very much to the member. This Minister doesn’t need time to catch up. If the member had listened to my opening statement, I provided an explanation—so now I am repeating, Mr Chair—the Amendment Paper responds to minor and technical issues identified by officials after the bill was approved by the Cabinet legislation committee. Again, I’ve repeated that.

We have got a number of tabled amendments which is growing, which seems to be a technique by some members to chew some time. But in regards to amendments by Scott Willis, (1), not a matter for the Gas Act; the Gas Act is about the market. Steve Abel’s amendment, (2), it’s a retrospective amendment; it’s not appropriate we’re going to be doing that. Scott Willis’ amendment, (3), again, retrospective: it’s impossible to do this; complying with this can make the regulations in the past. Scott Willis, (4), again, retrospective. Steve Abel, (5), contrary to the policy intent about publication. We won’t be accepting any of those amendments.

I will say to the Minister: leave it up to the Chair and the clerks to judge the amendments.

10:30

Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate that the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, has tried to write off an Amendment Paper by “minor and technical amendments”. But if we go through these explanatory notes, in this committee of the whole House stage, there are some things that this committee needs to understand around this Amendment Paper, Amendment Paper 634: why it is here, why it was so late, why it wasn’t included in the initial one-clause piece of legislation, why errors had already been made that needed to be fixed.

But with all due respect to the Minister’s answer, allowing the prescription of limits and restrictions about the publication of the information collected under this bill that will be collected once the regulations are put in place to collect this information, that we are now having an amendment that is going to allow limits and restrictions. The committee deserves to know: what are those limits and restrictions? When do they apply? Why is this being inserted into the legislation as an amendment? To simply write this off as “minor and technical” isn’t the kind of discussion that this committee deserves when a piece of legislation is being put through under all stages under urgency, and this is the one opportunity we get to consider this. I think what we’re seeing in this debate is a careful consideration of this legislation and an informed debate, so understanding the meaning of the limitation and restriction of the information that will be published is vital to the committee’s understanding.

10:32

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to respond to the Minister in the chair’s accusation that we’re clogging the system with amendments. We’ve got around half a dozen amendments and they’re reasonable ones.

I wondered if he could explain or at least point out why he doesn’t agree there would be value in new section 56AA(b), inserted by clause 4, after new subsection (e), which requires “the contents of gas markets information to be independent”, to put in a proposed subsection (d) to protect whistleblowers of any industry participant or a consumer—other than a domestic consumer. As I elucidated earlier, whistleblowers are a thing that are helpful in us getting transparency around the industry. I wondered if he’d respond to the specifics of that proposed amendment.

But, also, I want to ask in new section 56AAB, inserted by clause 4, “Industry body or Secretary may publish information”. “The industry body or … Secretary … may publish any information disclosed under regulations”. Why has the Minister opted for “may” rather than “must”? I have an amendment that proposes that it should, in fact, be “must”. Why would it not be in the context of “requiring”—is the language used—the industry to be transparent? Why would the Minister not go for “must” publish information disclosed under regulations made under new section 56AA? Thank you.

10:34

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m interested to ask the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, for an example of—and this relates to, to take the Minister there, new section 56AA(1)(b), inserted by clause 4, which is “prescribing the circumstances in which gas markets information must be disclosed … (when requested, at a specified time, or on the occurrence of a specified event):”. I’m wondering if the Minister could give us some examples of what a possible “specified event” might be. I just don’t know what that is, and there might be an example—I understand a specified time—but is there a likely specified event or a type of specified event? What is the range? This is going on the Hansard; that would be useful to know about.

Also, very quickly—great that the Minister’s going to get up—reminding the Minister when he gets up, he hasn’t answered my liquid question; he hasn’t answered my internet site question; and he hasn’t answered the question around new section 56AA(2) and those safeguards, which is the regulations can happen only if the Minister is satisfied that the disclosure is necessary for one of the following—(a), (b), and (c)—and whether (b) in particular is wide enough to enable regulations that will inform good planning and policy-setting. Questions, going backwards: are the safeguards wide enough for policies? What about the internet site? What about the liquid state? And can he give us an example of what a specified event might be that would be prescribed in the regulation? Thank you.

10:36

A specified event, for example, may be the decision to close Maui, which is a significant gas reserve, and the implications of that, obviously, have broader implications on the industry and other players as well.

In regards to the question from the Hon Dr Megan Woods, on Amendment Paper 634 around what are the limits, restrictions, or why we are limiting the restrictions on information. Primarily, this is about ensuring that the Government has the ability to protect the confidentiality of information provided to us. Some of that information the Government collects will be for publication, obviously, but some of it will be for Government information only and we want to make sure that the information that is only for Government is properly protected. That’s the background of that portion in the amendment.

In regards to the last question that we have around thresholds on the information requirements verification, again—I answered this before, but again—we’re not going to be determining whether any thresholds should be included here. This will be worked through in consultation with the gas sector once this law has passed.

10:37

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Most of these sections have got a name beside them where questions have been asked. However, I’m aware there hasn’t been any select committee and this is a new bill, but we need to be starting to get fairly specific.

Thank you. The Minister in the chair’s answer around new section 56AAB, inserted by clause 4—he gave the answer to that, and I think that has opened up some very important questions for the answer that the Minister just gave us.

The reason why this has been added in an Amendment Paper: is this because either Ministers or officials received any representations, correspondence, or contact from gas producers after the bill was published in terms of limiting information that would be published? Between the bill being tabled and this Amendment Paper being issued yesterday, what contact has there been with the gas industry in terms of either Ministers or officials in that regard?

I think that is an important piece of information that the committee needs to know. Because to have an Amendment Paper that that does seek to limit—I mean, I would have thought, and it as a fair assumption, when it is a one-clause piece of legislation, that officials and the Minister would have worked through the publication when this is a bill about disclosure, that would have been a well-thought-out and well-worked-through clause in the legislation—why it is that there are eleventh-hour changes is a very important question that this committee needs to know. If this was going through select committee, members of Parliament would have heard any representations from the gas industry. But given this is going through all stages under urgency, the committee needs to know: has an industry body or the gas industry been in touch around this clause and made any representations or any suggestions?

Furthermore, in the Amendment Paper—a question that I asked the Minister: in that amendment was a clause that we just want to understand what the purpose of it is, what it’s seeking to achieve, where it says it “applies despite any legislation or other rule of law to the contrary;”. Why is that clause in there? What is it seeking to do? It’s not a usual clause for us to see in a piece of legislation, so to understand exactly the purpose and why it is in there is something that is vitally important.

And then, furthermore, around the disclosure, since we are on this disclosure section—which, for the Minister’s elucidation, that’s new section 56AAB—I’d be interested to know before the amendment, but now, since the amendment, even more, what framework will be used to decide what is published and what the level of aggregation will be in terms of the published information. Will the aggregation be designed to minimise transparency, so it’s hard to see down to a very granular level—what suppliers, for example? Or will the design be to maximise the transparency that can be seen there so that you can see at that very granular level in terms of whether it’s supply or demand, actually?

And what weight will be given to protecting commercial sensitive data on the part of the gas producers, and what weight will be given to the vitally commercial data that the gas users are going to need in terms of making their commercial decisions? So even before we move to the public policy aspect of this and what information is needed for making good public policy, there are two buckets of commercial sensitivity here. How is weighting going to be divvied up between the two of those?

10:42

Thanks, Mr Chair. For the third time, the Amendment Paper responds to minor and technical issues identified by officials after the bill was approved at the Cabinet legislation committee. It is a clear indication that officials have identified changes, and any statements that the member is making are not consistent—for the third time—with the reason why I’ve outlined why we’re doing an Amendment Paper.

Again, the question is asked of the Minister for the second or third time. The information and the consideration around the degree of how far we go will be done subsequent to this bill passing, in consultation with industry.

Thank you, Mr Chair. To the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, I’d just like to encourage the Minister to not rush through amendments, given that the other Minister has clearly put an amendment in to fix legislation. We are going through all stages in urgency. We are having a useful discussion here today, and we want to make sure we can get the best out of it, Minister—and I don’t think that the amendments that the Minister referred to are minor or technical. They are serious amendments. We want them considered.

For the Minister, we have an opportunity here—I think it’s in new section 56AA(2), down between clauses 4 and 5—for a proposed amendment, because what we’ve got here is something that doesn’t have a useful date in it. This is a really simple amendment. If I want to take the Minister’s word that this is serious and it’s important and we need to move fast and we need to get things done, we need to have some clarity.

My amendment is to move the following amendment: “ ‘Clause 4 New sections 56AA and 56AAB and cross-heading inserted’ After clause 4, new section 56AA(5) (page three, after line 24), insert: (5A) Despite subsection (1), any initial regulation must be made by 1 October 2026.” The reason for that, Minister, is to make sure that we get moving. The reason we want to see this amendment, Minister, is to make sure we have transparency and we get moving on it. So rather than suggesting that we are using time in urgency to waste time, we are after the Minister to take action and to move at pace, and this is what this amendment will do.

So I would ask the Minister to consider an amendment that will be helpful, improve the legislation, ensure we move at pace, and ensure we have greater transparency in the gas market, to make sure we can help electricity distribution businesses plan for what’s coming and to make sure we can help businesses and industry and stop with the deindustrialisation. Thank you, Minister. If the Minister could respond, I’d appreciate that.

The Hon Megan Woods—but I would have to say, Ms Woods, on the Amendment Paper, that the Minister has explained, and looking for a “gotcha” moment—I don’t think it’s going to happen. We’ve probably exhausted that one.

10:45

OK, but—Mr Chair, thank you—I still am waiting for the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, to explain, on “applies despite any legislation or any other rule of law to the contrary;”, what the purpose of that is in the Amendment Paper; what it is intended to do. It is a question that the committee needs to know. If we were at a select committee, that would be something that we would be asking officials about—given we are doing this under all stages in urgency.

I am taking from the Minister that he has confirmed to the committee that there have been no representations from industry around this Amendment Paper. That’s what the Minister is on record as saying.

I will then return to new section 56AA(6), which is “Regulations made under this section are secondary legislation”—and that is the whole purpose of what we’re doing. This is a piece of legislation that is seeking to make regulation. What is unclear from the legislation: in making those regulations, will there be public consultation? Will there be regulatory impact analysis released or made for the regulations when they are made? Will that be released? Because these are very wide powers. There’s going to be some very specific powers given through regulation, and understanding the regulatory impact of what is put in place is going to be vital for the operation. So: public consultation and whether or not there will be regulatory impact analysis for regulations when they are made.

10:47

I thank the members for the questions. Just in regards to the last point, yes, the Government are interested in feedback on the level of and implications around the regulations, which we will look to propose, and that transparency will be appropriate. We obviously haven’t made any decisions about that, but they’ll be worked through once this bill is passed today.

Dan Rosewarne—sorry, Dan Bidois. I need some more of that coffee, I think.

10:48

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Um—

Deborah Russell.

The Hon Dr Deborah Russell.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It sounds like you need the coffee.

Yes, that’s a good observation.

The Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, has not answered one very important question that my colleague the Hon Dr Megan Woods has made. Has there been any representations from gas industry members or representative bodies about this bill after the bill was tabled that resulted in the Amendment Paper? It’s actually a very important question, because that particular Amendment Paper contains what could be a somewhat egregious clause.

I really, really want to be sure: have any representations been made by industry bodies? There’s a particular name I’m tempted to name, but I won’t in this committee because that’s maybe just taking it a little bit too far—but have representations been made? Can the Minister guarantee that no representations have been made by gas industry body representatives about the content of this Amendment Paper?

10:49

Thank you, Mr Chair. I, similarly, am concerned at the lack of response to the specific questions around the Amendment Paper. I will not repeat those of my colleague—that would be repetition—but I do wish the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, would very simply answer, under “Subsection (1)” in clause 4(2) of his amendment—the prescribing limits or restrictions will apply “despite any legislation or other rule of law to the contrary”. We should have a right to know what other rule of law is specifically being spoken of there, because that is a substantial restriction on basic principles of democratic law. Where and what would be the rule of law that would be overridden by gas transparency legislation?

10:50

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Mr Chair. In terms of reiterating, again, the outstanding questions that we do have, it is around this Amendment Paper. When Amendment Papers get dropped quite late in the process, it is custom for the committee to be able to have a good explanation from the Government Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, around what the purpose and the intent is. It’s not a very long Amendment Paper, so understanding exactly what the intent of that legislation or other rule of law to the contrary means—we simply don’t understand.

This is legislation that Labour, for its part—and, I think, other Opposition parties—have voted for. But we do need to understand what the purpose of the amendment is. The Minister has his officials with him. He can ask why that was included; what it means. Does it substantially change the way in which the Act will operate, or is it a very minor and technical amendment, as we’ve been told? But simply telling us it’s a minor and technical amendment doesn’t really give the committee the explanation that it requires. So that is a very, very significant, outstanding question that is lying on the floor of this Chamber that does need to be addressed.

One of the interesting pieces of information that was provided in the regulatory impact statement is the proposed categories of information considered to be sought. In Annex Two, there was a very large table that was produced, which was very useful, and I thank officials for providing that because I think it is good. The information that is provided currently that has an inconsistency in it was the explanation to changes to 2P reserves and 2C reserves—so this is the reserves of gas. This is really where the crux of it is. How much gas is there in production? How much do people think is going to come on board in terms of that inconsistency of information? Was that inconsistency across fields, or was that inconsistency across particular companies that were doing the production? In what way does the Minister think this regulation is going to prevent that? Is that where the certification comes in to call?

10:53

Thanks, members, for the questions. In regards to the question around time limits, we do not see any end date to the need for good information on the gas market. So it would not be appropriate to put a time limit on those powers.

To the Greens’ call, a question in regards to the gathering of information powers: the clause number I don’t have in front of me, but, basically, as a result of this, we’re going to increase the amount of power to gather information that is currently able to be done.

The point raised by the Hon Dr Megan Woods in regards to the inconsistencies: I mean, as I noted in a response back with the quote from the Frontier report, the problem that we are looking to address through this legislation today is that we’ve got incomplete and fragmented information. As a result of this, we will have more consistent information which deals with the point there.

In regards to the member’s questions, again, in regards to the Amendment Paper—and I will reinforce, for the fourth time—the Amendment Paper and the issues identified within the Amendment Paper, while minor and technical, were identified by officials after the bill was approved by the Cabinet legislation committee.

10:54

The question is, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to Amendment Paper 634 amending clause 4 to delete new sections 56AA(1)(f) and 56AAB(2) be agreed to.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Amendment Paper 634 be agreed to.

The question is that Scott Willis’ tabled amendment to clause 4, new section 56AA(1)(a) inserting new subparagraph (viii) “information on emissions emitted by gas” be agreed to.

Just ensuring that there are no comments during voting, please, just so the Clerk is not distracted.

The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to clause 4, new section 56AA, inserting new subsection (5A) relating to 1 April 2025 be agreed to.

The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to clause 4, new section 56AA(2) inserting new paragraph (d) relating to whistleblowers be agreed to.

Scott Willis’ tabled amendment to clause 4, new section 56AA, inserting new subsection (5A) relating to 1 October 2025, is out of order as not being in the correct form of legislation.

The question is that Scott Willis’ tabled amendment to clause 4, new section 56AA, inserting new subsection (5A) relating to 1 July 2024 be agreed to.

The question is that Scott Willis’ tabled amendment to clause 4, new section 56AA, inserting new subsection (5A) relating to 1 October 2026 be agreed to.

The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to clause 4, new section 56AAB, replacing “may publish” with “must publish” be agreed to.

11:04

Thank you, Mr Chair. Part 2 is very short. I’m wondering if the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, can just—as he hasn’t done an opening on this part—confirm that what Part 2 is doing via the changes to the Schedule is what the departmental disclosure statement says, and extending the application of the existing strict liability penalty regime to these new regulations. So a breach of these disclosure regulations could result in some hefty fines that are already prescribed in the Tax Act, and now they’ll relate to these new regulations.

And then the reasonable excuse defence is provided in the Gas Act that is now going to be extended to these regulations. Does he have any examples of what he would expect a reasonable excuse to be? That is, when somebody breaches one of these new disclosure regulations but won’t be subject to the strict liability offence and penalty because of a reasonable excuse—what sort of thing does he consider might be such a reasonable excuse? That’s one question.

The second is: can he confirm that the point of the Schedule, which is related to clause 5, which is Part 2, is just about what the departmental disclosure statement says, and enabling the existing provisions to be extended to these new regulations? Thank you.

11:06

Thanks very much, Madam Chair. In regards to the clauses within this section, they are, in the main, remedial in nature; however, under section 54, the extension of the exemption primarily deals with the interaction with the Crown Minerals Act, which is outlined in those subsections. It also makes clear that existing information disclosure powers and the new powers do not limit each other, which is important in terms of overlap of coverage and other regulations—also, aspects around existing penalty provisions for non-compliance, and we’ve talked about previous sections already about time limitation.

The point noted in regards to the other aspects of any significance are simply that section 3(2) ensures that new regulation-making powers can only be used to require gas information from gas producers, despite, again, the interaction with the Crown Minerals Act. That’s pretty much the nature of what we’re doing in this small part of the Act.

11:07

Thank you. That appears to have been a pre-prepared statement that the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, read out. I welcome the Minister doing overviews of the parts of the bill at the start of the debate on the part, but I don’t believe he answered my question there about the penalty regime being extended to these regulations, and the application of the existing strict liability which provides the reasonable excuse. Further to that, my question is: does he have an example of what a reasonable excuse could be? Quite a simple question; I don’t have anything else on this part.

11:08

Yeah, it’s not for the Minister to provide an explanation around what an example would be. That’s why we’re going to have the independent regulator who will make an assessment around that. I expect that they would take down their experience and make a valid and pragmatic assessment around what they deem as reasonable.

Just to the first part of the question, can he just say that, yes, the penalty provisions that are existing in the Gas Act will also apply to these new regulations which are in this bill? It’s a very simple question.

11:09

Yes.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to the Schedule amending sections 57(3) relating to “a minimum fine of $200,000” and “$25,000 for each day” be agreed to.

The question is that Scott Willis’ tabled amendment to the Schedule amending section 57(3) relating to “$2,000,000” and “$100,000 for each day” be agreed to.

The question is that Scott Willis’ tabled amendment to the Schedule amending section 57(3) relating to “a fine up to 20 per cent of an industry participant’s gross income for the previous financial year” and “1 per cent of an industry participant’s gross income for the previous financial year” be agreed to.

11:14

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, a very short part. It comes into force the day after Royal assent, which is quite normal, so my questions relate to the title. We know it’s the Gas (Market Transparency) Amendment Bill. I’m wondering if this could be a clearer title or if the Minister in the chair, the Hon Simon Watts, would consider changes to it. He hasn’t answered yet, but this might be the opportunity for him to answer my question about states of matter and if it applies where petroleum is a liquid rather than a gas. At the moment, it could be the “Gas (But Maybe a Little Bit of Liquid Petroleum Too Market Transparency) Amendment Bill”. This is a great opportunity for the Minister to answer that question.

Another question unanswered has been around the reliance on international societies with websites that you have to log in to or you have to request documents from that are now referred into our primary legislation, so should it really be the “Gas (Market Transparency but Doing the Opposite of Transparency in Terms of Relying on International Internet Sites for Definitions) Amendment Bill”?

Another issue that has been raised consistently through the other parts of this debate has been around how this bill relates to reserves, so gas that is in the Earth’s crust, versus the gas that’s already lurking about New Zealand in terms of it either being imported into New Zealand or it has already been extracted and it has been transported around in pipes or in gas cylinders or whatever other means. It’s important that that element, the gas that’s already in New Zealand and is being transported around, is what most people would think of as the market, but then what the Government members keep talking about are these reserves. Another question for the Minister is: should it be the “Gas (Market and Reserves Transparency) Amendment Bill”, to be very clear that this bill is to talk about both of those things?

Then going into my final point that I’ve raised, certainly in the Part 1 debate—the point of these regulations. Yes, we can have some more transparency and know where those bits of gas are going in their different units and what they’re being used for, but then what do we do with this information, and how are the criteria set for those regulations? What is the point of having a regulation? Surely, the point of having the regulation is to enable the Government to do some planning—I know that’s a word that they don’t like—but also to do some policy making about, then, how that gas can be distributed and where it really needs to go and where it perhaps doesn’t need to go. How do you make those incentives for getting the gas to the places where it’s really needed at the times that it’s really needed? A suggestion there would be the “Gas (Market and Reserve Transparency to Enable Some Good Plan-Making and Policy-Setting) Amendment Bill”.

A number of questions there. This is my final opportunity to ask the Minister to answer my questions that he has not yet answered via the title of the bill.

And commencement.

Thank you for pointing out that it’s also about the commencement, but if you had been listening, you would have noted that I don’t have anything to say on the commencement until you’ve invited me to make those comments, Dan Bidois. Thank you for that.

But going back to my questions, giving the Minister—I hope he’s excited about this opportunity that he has to answer my questions on whether it should be the “Gas (But Maybe also Liquid Petroleum Market Transparency) Amendment Bill”, or should it be the “Gas (Market as well as Reserves) Transparency Amendment Bill”, or could it be some amalgamation of these, the “Gas (Market and Reserves”—

The member’s time has expired.

11:19

I thank the member for her contribution. We will not be considering any changes to the title of this bill. We’re cooking with gas; let’s get this bill passed.

11:20

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that Scott Willis’ tabled amendment to clause 1 relating to “Fossil Gas Market Transparency” be agreed to.

Point of order. I seek leave to correct that vote.

We are in the process of voting, so you can’t interrupt a vote. It’s a bit confusing because you raised that question while we were voting, so I hadn’t put the vote, and you changed it to 11 votes against—is that right?

Thank you.

The question is that Scott Willis’ tabled amendment to clause 2 relating to 1 July 2024 be agreed to.

The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to clause 2 relating to 1 April 2025 be agreed to.

Madam Speaker, the committee has considered the Gas (Market Transparency) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

This bill is set down for third reading immediately.

11:25

on behalf of the Minister for Energy: I move, That the Gas (Market Transparency) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I wish to thank members for their contribution during the committee phase under urgency. Existing disclosure mechanisms under the Gas Act are too slow, they are too uncertain, and are limited in effect to address the current information challenges that face the gas market here in New Zealand. This bill will make sure adequate regulation-making powers are in place to improve the transparency of the gas market and to support better decision making by market participants and Government.

The significance of declining gas reserves reaches well beyond the energy sector itself. Gas generates the electricity that keeps the lights on when renewables cannot, and a large number of Kiwis’ jobs depend on businesses that rely on gas. It is important that we make sure that market participants and Government have the information needed to plan effectively for the future as gas supplies decline and the market rapidly changes.

Passing this bill will enable work on information disclosure regulations to proceed without delay, ensuring timely access to the information needed. Improving gas market transparency is an important step that will support secure, affordable energy for Kiwi households and businesses as this Government continues to fix the basics and build the future. Kiwis deserve power that they can afford, an economy backed by reliable energy, and jobs protected from avoidable shocks. I commend this bill to the House.

11:27

I want to go through a little bit of the history of what was being done in respect of the gas market, and it was work that did actually begin under the Labour Government. In 2017-2023, the Labour Government kicked off a whole formal work stream on wholesale gas market transparency, and we asked the Gas Industry Company to design stronger information disclosure arrangements for outyears production prices. It’s good to see the progression of this work and we agree that it is something that needed to be done.

In terms of why we actually got the whole work under way, we knew that gas was a resource that we had to move away from, and we had to move away from it because it is a fossil fuel and fossil fuels are driving climate change, so we did start working on that and making a plan. In 2020, we commissioned the Gas Industry Company to investigate whether the market then, the commercial and regulatory settings, were fit for purpose, and no they weren’t. The Gas Industry Company concluded that in the absence of a transition plan for fossil fuels, for fossil gas, there was a risk of what’s called a disorderly exit of New Zealand’s gas sector—in other words, considerable disruption, huge difficulties for businesses, and huge difficulties for consumers.

In 2021, we were developing a plan for a transition. The terms of reference for that were agreed in April 2022, and then a new Government came to power, and crickets. Nothing—nothing happening. This was absurd, especially in the knowledge that gas resources in this country were declining; especially in the knowledge that there have been no commercial finds of gas in this country for the last quarter century; especially in the knowledge that we simply must move away from fossil fuels. From that Government: crickets. It’s a real shame because, in terms of moving away from fossil fuels, we have a huge opportunity under renewables—a huge opportunity to go high tech, a huge opportunity to provide jobs in the regions, a huge opportunity to affirm our energy security and to become energy independent.

Now, let’s remember that gas is not equal to energy. Gas certainly provides energy, but energy comes to us from a whole lot of sources, and it’s quite appropriate that we move fast to get that renewable energy online and working for us. We’ve been clear on this side of the House that while we don’t support this particular Government’s version of fast-track legislation, and we don’t support it because of its callous disregard for the environment, we did have a fast-track process in place ourselves, and that fast-track process was working with respect to renewable energy. The fact that that Government then got rid of it for a couple of years while it faffed around is on them. Transition planning was under way, working; we had stuff happening. This Government came in, and crickets. Now we are getting the knowledge that our gas reserves are substantially less than we thought they were going to be. We now have the risk of a disorderly exit from the gas industry.

That’s why this information that is provided for in this bill is very, very important. We agree that this information is needed. We agree that Government needs to play a role in the transition away from fossil fuels. We agree that Government needs to be working alongside business to ensure that businesses can transition away from fossil fuels. We were doing that. That was happening. Crickets. This is catch-up legislation from this Government, and the fact that it’s catch-up legislation is shown by the fact that it is now being introduced and passed under Budget urgency.

You had no plan—you had no plan.

It was there, Ryan. It was there; it was happening. It was actually happening. It is here now, this ability to collect information and to use it That’s a good move, and we support that move.

There is, however, something that we are worried about in this bill. It’s something that we asked the Minister, the Hon Simon Watts, about several times when he was in the chair, and the Minister did not answer. That is this last-minute Amendment Paper 634, an Amendment Paper that was tabled after this very short and very simple bill was put on the Table. What happened? We asked the Minister, “Why?”, and he said, “Oh, minor technical changes.” These are not minor and technical changes. In fact, the Minister can restrict the information that is provided—can limit or restrict the publication of the information that is provided. Why? And why did this have to be included in an Amendment Paper that was put on the Table just yesterday, as real time goes, but it wasn’t available when this very short and simple bill was put on the Table on Budget day? We asked the Minister whether there were representations from gas industry representatives, from fossil-fuel representatives. And from the Minister? Crickets. That’s worrying, and we will be following up on that.

I want to speak to some of the issues that members did raise in speeches during the various stages of this bill. I think I said, in both my first reading speech and my second reading speech, that for once I agreed with Simon Court. It was an interesting position to be in! He talked about how we are now managing scarcity, but let’s remember that the scarcity we are managing is not scarcity of energy. There is plenty of energy that hits this country every day, coming from the sun. There is plenty of energy that hits this country every day, coming from wind. There is plenty of energy that hits this country every day, coming up from the ground beneath us. I note that Rūaumoko had a little bit to say during the course of this debate. There is plentiful energy available to us. All we need to do is make the transition, and we need to start making that transition away from fossil fuels.

People on that side of the House like to deny, effectively, that the climate is changing around us, but that is a critical need for us to address. In our country and in the world, we need to address the issue of climate change, and part of the issue of addressing climate change is forming a credible plan to transition us away from fossil fuels, to use much more varied sources of energy. That is a Government that did not sign up to the pathway to transition away from fossil fuels that was agreed by about 80 nations around the world at COP30. That’s a Government that has its head in the sand when it comes to taking action on climate change. I agree that we need to manage our remaining gas reserves carefully as we help businesses to transition away from fossil fuels. That is what this bill will do. It will help in this process. That is why it is a good bill. But there is a whole lot more we need to hear from that Government.

What is their plan with respect to fossil fuels? What is their plan with moving this country to electricity as its major source? What is their plan for helping us to deal with climate change? What do we hear from that Government?

Crickets!

Crickets. It’s great to see this legislation coming through, it’s great to see some work in this space, but, actually, it’s going to take a lot more than just this to help New Zealand in the 21st century.

11:37

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Well, we do expect to hear from the other side of the House, particularly from the ACT Party, the typical sort of obsequious, simpering, forelock-tugging, petroleum-soaked, gushing-like-a-deep-sea-oil-spill love of the petroleum industry—

So you don’t support gas?

And no doubt, at some point, the member who is barking at me right now might want to make a point of order, because he doesn’t like freedom of speech when it relates to criticism of the petroleum industry. He likes freedom of speech when he wants to slander Māori or trans people or migrants but not when it’s criticism of billion-dollar polluting industries.

Back to the bill, Mr Abel.

to the bill—to the bill—we are supporting this bill because we do support greater transparency. It was deeply concerning that the Minister, the Hon Simon Watts, was so reluctant to answer my specific questions as to whether he had received any advice on the New Zealand industry overstating, overbooking, overproving, or overestimating its reserve volumes, because, as I elucidated in my opening speech, this is a problem globally

fraudulent reserve reporting, companies overestimating their reserves, and, in fact, being taken for fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States because of that overstating of their reserves.

It is very obvious, when you think about it for a minute, why the oil and gas industry would do that. They would do it because that is the value of their industry, and if those who use gas want the confidence of having a future energy supply when they are going to be investing in a new plant or new machinery, one thing they want to be sure of is that there is plenty of gas into the future. These are one of the points made in the regulatory impact statement (RIS), that one of the consequences for industrial gas users is “significant sunk costs in gas-dependent plant and equipment [that] rely on gas for their manufacturing processes and their equipment lasts a considerable time.” So why would the oil and gas industry want to be optimistic about how much gas they had? Because they know that a company that wants to buy a piece of equipment that relies on gas wants to know that they’ve got gas for the next 25, 30, 40 years.

That’s exactly why this bill is so important: because right now, there are companies all across this country who have seen the price of energy go through the roof because there has been an overestimate of the amount of gas that we have in this country. In fact, that gas has been in steady decline for 26 years. Again, the regulatory impact statement very usefully published the graph which showed, from 2000, a steady decline in gas. Yet the industry kept saying, “We’ve got heaps of gas past 2030”. They don’t have heaps of gas past 2030. The crunch is coming right now.

The members on the opposite side have been so busy denying climate change that they forgot that gas itself is a finite resource; as is oil; as is coal. We can’t afford to burn the existing reserves if we want to have a liveable planet. But these things run out. The beauty of us moving to a renewable energy system isn’t only that we address the existential challenge of climate change, we also address the finite nature of fossil fuels.

Right here, we have a bill that will assist us to manage that transition by using what little gas we have left wisely. We have not been using that gas wisely. Because, for example, we’ve been burning it to generate electricity. That is about the worst way that you could use gas, because there are so many other better, cleaner, more effective ways to generate electricity than by burning non-renewable fossil gas. The industry themselves, Todd Energy, for example, were great touters of building gas peakers so that they could burn the gas that they claimed they had well beyond 2030, when, in fact, it’s turning out those claims were not correct.

One question I have is that when industry is impacted by the overstating of reserves, it may well be the misleading of people into that state, because of the lack of good-quality information—I don’t know why the RIS hasn’t got page numbers, but some way through it, it says who is affected by the “scope, scale and impacts of the problem”: the Government is affected “through a lack of visibility”; the electricity generators are affected because they “face uncertainty”; the industry gas users “who lack sufficient information on future availability to plan their gas use”; and “some retailers (Contact Energy, Mercury, Pulse Energy) … will also pay higher gas prices due to asymmetric information”.

What are the consequences for the gas industry if it is proven that they have misled us, which I think is obvious. What are the consequences for them? Everyone in industry has invested on the basis of assumptions that we have a lot more gas than we actually have.

What is more, it is very concerning that the industry—and, unfortunately, political parties—have kept making promises that there is more gas and more oil to find when, in fact, the evidence clearly shows there is not. The likes of Anadarko, who were taken for fraud on claiming how much gas they had; the likes of Shell Oil, who paid $350 million for their fraudulent claims on their reserves; the likes of Exxon Mobil, who subsidised the Bush Government millions of dollars to take positions against climate change; the likes of Chevron, the likes of Statoil and Equinor; the likes of Petrobras, the big Brazilian company. All of those companies came to this country—they explored, they searched, they even did wildcat well drills, and they found nothing.

The last National Government, under John Key, threw everything at trying to find more gas and more oil, and they came up zip—they came up zip. When is this Government going to be honest with the people of New Zealand and the industries of New Zealand who are suffering right now because of a fundamental failure of subsequent Governments to plan our energy future. They still refuse to plan that energy future, even in the midst of this crisis, when we should all in this House be standing united in finding a means for us to secure certainty of energy supply for the future—for the present day. That would be in the best interests of New Zealanders and of industry, of householders, of all those that rely on energy.

This bill is a small step in the right direction. It is transparency. That is why we will be supporting it. But we make an absolutely sturdy bid to this Government that they must work across the House for us to have an energy plan.

When I visit Profruit, down in Hawke’s Bay; when I visit the pea growers impacted by the closure of the McCain’s factory; when we speak to businesses across this country; the horticulture industry who are turning off their glasshouses this winter because they can’t afford to pay for the energy—all they want is consistent certainty of policy direction across Governments. They don’t want the flip-flop when there’s a change of Government, which is inevitable in the next six months; they want certainty.

This Government, if it was serious to the challenge, would step up and invite us all to sit down at the table and make a plan for New Zealand’s energy future. That is the bid I put to the Minister: step up to the plate, Minister. Thank you very much.

11:47

The ACT Party commends the Gas (Market Transparency) Amendment Bill. I just want to point out—I just want to point out—we have heard the most ridiculous hyperbole from the Opposition. You’d think it was 2021—peak climate weirdness is over, you lot. We are focused on energy abundance, security of supply, and affordability above all else. That is what this legislation is for. ACT supports it, and I commend it to the House.

11:48

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First. There’s a lot I would like to say, but I have undertaken not to take that time to do so. But what I would say is that their position is based on: “There is nothing there to find”. I’d just say, from a seismic geologist there, “New Zealand remains a frontier rich in opportunity … proven hydrocarbon systems … [and] is uniquely positioned to become a future exploration hotspot.” I commend this bill to the House.

Scott Willis. [Interruption]

Language, language—please. I have heard a lot of nonsense from the last two presentations—Simon Court bleating about his climate denial. We hear this from Government members regularly—time and time again. They are not willing to action on climate. I don’t know why, because I have children, and I want to have grandchildren, and I cannot understand how anyone who has families cannot take the existential threat that we face seriously.

Your guy said we’re already dead.

We do have puerile comments like that coming at us time and time again, but we are here to debate legislation. We will support this bill because it improves transparency. We will support this bill. We will support this bill, but we want greater transparency than just in the gas market. We want some transparency about the gas security fund, the $200 million fossil fuel subsidy this Government is giving away. We want some transparency about the liquefied natural gas (LNG) proposal—the proposal to import LNG in a very volatile global market, with no certainty of price—where the cost is going to be worn by all electricity users. We want some transparency around those elements as well. We’d like some transparency around the potential for the replacement of fossil gas with bioenergy. We’d like not just some transparency but some investment in the bioenergy sector, but what we get from this Government is the insistence that they are going to find fossil gas—hopium—somewhere in the future, somewhere deep down.

This Government has stymied all the innovation. We’ve just seen, through the Budget, Ara Ake, New Zealand’s energy innovation centre cut—cut. It’s cut down because this Government will not fund energy innovation. This Government wants to return to the age of fossils. This is the problem with the Government. It is doing the little bits, but it’s not doing what is needed. As my colleague Steve Abel said, we need an energy strategy, and we need an electrification plan, and we need to work as closely with the Government as possible, but they just don’t seem willing to discuss these things, because they are in constant denial.

Now, this matters. This matters because we have electricity distribution businesses (EDBs) who are running gas networks—gas networks that they know are in decline. They know that they can’t supply, and they know people are switching off, and this has consequences for whānau, for families, who are dependent on gas at the moment. What happens when those gas networks go cashflow negative? What happens is that they just get turned off. For anyone who’s still connected, well, bad luck—bad luck. That’s a $50,000 cost to put in a hot water heat pump, an induction stove, and something else to get rid of the gas machines in their homes that are no longer being able to be supplied.

It’s 4 percent—7 percent.

Yes, it might only be 4 percent of consumers. They are real people. They are real people with real lives who matter. They are people who will suffer the cost, and they are some of our most vulnerable. They may only be 4 percent, but every percent matters. Every percent of our population matters. Every degree, every percentage of a degree, matters with climate change emissions, and this is what the Government just does not seem to understand.

I had an amendment that I put forward to talk about capturing the emissions, as well as showing transparency, to show the transparency of the emissions profile in our gas market, and that was rejected. This is a sad day, where we see climate denial in full display by a Government that simply wants to condemn us to a damning climate future. We will support this bill, but we will not support this Government. We will replace them on 7 November.

The member’s time has expired.

11:53

Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is actually quite a happy day, and it’s a day about providing transparency to the New Zealand gas economy, and all parties are supporting the bill. I commend it to the House.

Thank you. Thank you to Ryan Hamilton for talking about happiness on this Saturday morning whilst we’re pretending it’s the Thursday the 28th. I want to start by going up some levels and noting that, on this side of the House, we care about climate change. We acknowledge that we appear to be passing over that 1.5 degrees. What that means for New Zealand is more storms in the short term, and those storm events cause New Zealanders real problems. Whether it’s a house being flooded or whether it’s a farm crop being taken out, these are all very real issues for New Zealand. I know members opposite might say, “Well, New Zealand’s climate pollution is not as big as some other bigger countries.”

It’s 0.17 percent.

Oh, and that is true, but we, on this side of the House—and it used to be that side of the House too—argued, “Well, that is why we need to work with other countries. That is why we need some international agreements so that everybody reduces their climate pollution.”

What can we do in New Zealand? We can reduce, very easily, our reliance on fossil fuels. What is one of those fossil fuels? Gas is a fossil fuel. Yes, it’s a biogas. Gas is a fossil fuel, so we, on this side in the House, want to reduce climate pollution, and one of the ways to do that is to reduce reliance on gas as a fossil fuel. We also understand that there are many industries and businesses that, at the moment, are reliant on gas as a fossil fuel to make the thing that they make, whether it’s in a glasshouse or whether it’s the bread that was spoken about before, and whether it is the coffee beans—I’m very keen to have a coffee after this. We acknowledge that that is an issue, and we acknowledge that you have to do a transition.

But what worries me, after listening to the other side of the House, is that there’s no interest in a transition. The only reason this Government is promulgating this amendment bill for the regulations is to look at what the market’s doing. It’s not to use these regulations to make policies and to plan for a decrease in that reliance on those fossil fuels that are climate pollution. That is what worries me. We’ve heard from Simon Court that “Peak climate weirdness is over.” I’m not going pretend to understand that statement, but I think what he means is that we can just talk about using fossil fuels with there being no consequence. That is craziness, because climate change has not gone anywhere. In fact, it has got worse, and it will continue to get worse. If we want to be economically responsible, we have to do everything we can to reduce our reliance on climate pollution—that is, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. That is not what I’m hearing from the other side at all, and that is very disappointing.

Now, we’ve got some other issues in this bill—things that were not answered in the committee stage—and, of course, we’re in urgency, so there has been no select committee process. We do not know why we have drafting here that relies on the internet site that is governed by an international society. That is an unusual way to make laws in New Zealand—to have a reference for a definition and for an operative clause that relates back to somebody else’s internet site. It could have been specified in the bill. That’s a disappointment, and we got no answer about that.

We’ve also found out, from our questions to the Minister, the Hon Simon Watts, and some of the Minister’s responses, that whilst the Government members are mainly talking about gas reserves in their contributions, these regulations will relate to both the reserves and what might be in them or not in them in New Zealand as well as the market in New Zealand—meaning all of the gas that is being imported into New Zealand and that has already been extracted in New Zealand and that is in circulation. We heard from the Minister that that also includes biogas—and that is good that that’s being considered—as part of these transparency regulations.

We also heard from the Minister that these regulations can be set to require information about specific agreements. So that could be a contract from a major user. So, presumably, Simon Court’s bread bakers, they might have a particular contract for their gas—I’m sure they do—and there could be regulations that are set that require detail about that specific arrangement. The Minister gave us some comfort about how that information would be protected, but he did not give comfort about the reasons for this regulation setting.

The reasons that I would like to see is the Government being active and saying, “We do need to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels. We do need to decrease our climate pollution. So what we are going to do is find out exactly where all that gas is, and then we are going to look at those industries that specifically require the use of that gas now, that have no options, or they might have some time limitations, and we’re going to think about that picture and incentivise those industries that can, in the short term, get off gas. We are going to incentivise, we’re going to use this information, and look to who can transition first. For those where it’s trickier, we’ll have some planning for how we get the trickier ones off the gas as well.”

The Minister himself said that a third don’t have a transition. He specified coffee roasters. We’ve heard—everybody, as I noticed, starting googling: “Can you have an electronic coffee roaster?” It appears that you can. So even in that one third that the Minister says don’t have a transition route, it appears that he is not being ambitious enough. There are transition routes. They might be slower. They might cost more. These are all things that good planning should interrogate and have a pathway for.

My hope is that this Government will not do what the Minister said, and just say, “Oh, we’re going to leave everything to the private sector. Whilst we might gather some more information, it is all up to the private sector—it is all up to the market.” Because we know that that makes things slower. When we had a Climate Emergency Response Fund and we had the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund, we could speed up this transition. By speeding up the transition, that means that we are not using a fossil fuel, that we’re instead using renewable energy so we’re moving from the molecules to the electrons. When we do that, when Government can help with incentives to do that, then we lower our reliance on these fossil fuels—fossil fuels that are causing climate change. Climate change is real. Climate change impacts New Zealand. Climate change impacts individuals, it impacts our rural sector, and it impacts all the businesses in New Zealand.

Carbon dioxide makes plants grow.

The emperor has no clothes, Rachel.

I’m hearing some noise from the other side that it’s not real, and that is amazing. It is real, it is happening, and we need to do everything we can to reduce our reliance on those fossil fuels.

12:04

This bill is all part of our plan to fix the basics and—

Build the future!

—build the future. I commend this bill to the House.

OK. This is not a political sideshow. That was the member’s speech, and I would prefer that if just the member used the lines, if that’s what the tactic is. Reuben Davidson—this is a split call.

Madam Speaker, thank you so much. It feels like déjà vu that I stand up after the member from the other side of the House, who delivers a speech and a contribution that is so short into what is a very important debate being rushed through in urgency.

10 seconds!

I’m told by a very reliable member from this side of the House that it was, in fact, a 10-second contribution. If you remove the time that was taken by his colleagues chorusing in, then that would make it even less than 10 seconds. But I’m not going to waste any more of my time talking about how long that contribution was or wasn’t. I’m, in fact, going to get on to my contribution instead, despite also having the same sort of chorus that that member enjoyed through the end of his from the very same members on that side of the House.

Now, what I want to do is I want to talk about the problem—and we’ve been hearing quite a bit of the problem at the beginning of my contribution here this morning. The problem that this bill is setting out to solve is that the current state of information has gaps. That’s not ideal if you’re trying to make decisions or trying to make policy or positive progressive steps in a forward direction for the energy future of New Zealand. That would be, I would expect, the hope that New Zealanders should, could, and do rightly have of any Government. But they would be disappointed, I should suggest, with the progress that has been made by this Government so far. We’ve moved this bill through and are now in the final third stage. It hasn’t gotten to a select committee, which is always less than ideal.

But what we know with the problem that’s trying to be solved by this bill is that there are gaps in the gas market information—the information that is available on the gas market. It’s either incomplete, it’s out of date, or it’s both. This is what’s been identified in the regulatory impact statement for this bill. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment does publish comprehensive quarterly gas statistics, but there’s a lag on this, so you’re not dealing with good, real-time data or information. You’re dealing with a lag on that information. That’s really not ideal if you’re wanting to come up with a plan for the future—that you are not looking into a crystal ball for the future, but you are in fact looking back into the past for how you might come up with a better plan for a future. So that’s also not ideal.

But what this bill does do is it picks up on the work that Labour started when we were last in Government. That was a comprehensive piece of work around an investigation into gas market settings, around a transition plan, and around the role that gas can play as a transitional fuel, and that that needs to be really carefully managed. But this Government has stopped work on that plan, and is now restarting it some two-and-a-half years into this three-year term of Government that they are currently enjoying and that will potentially be coming to an end very soon.

The thing that I want to reflect on at the close of my contribution to this final third stage of the debate today is that I did go outside this morning. I left the precinct this morning and went outside and saw the sun shining in the sky. It’s a beautiful, beautiful day out there—absolutely stunning day out there. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, it’s a blue sky, there were hardly any clouds, and I heard some amazing waiata being performed. I thought, “Well, this looks to me like the future—this looks to me like the future.” As I walked back into the building, when I arrived back in time to deliver this contribution to the House this morning, I walked back into the building and I thought, “There’s that smell.” And I thought, “What is that smell? What is that smell?” I thought, “Oh, it’s the past.” So that’s what I thought: “I can smell the past.” I walked into this House to deliver this speech, I looked up at the wooden plate on the wall, and I thought, “We literally are going back in time for the energy plan that this Government doesn’t even really have ready.” It doesn’t smell good. In fact, it stinks. We’ll support this bill, but the Government should be doing so much more.

I thought the member was going to refer to the renewable energy coffee roasting but, anyway—Nancy Lu.

12:09

I rise to support the third reading of this bill. I have to say, it is about the quality of the contribution in this House, not the quantity of the time. We just wasted five minutes in the House. I commend the bill to the House.

I’d like to share what I heard this morning through the committee stage, because the question that I have is: what is really going on here, and why? If I look at the elements that are involved, we’ve got a Government that says gas supply is tightening and has committed to a $1.2 billion transition loan scheme, and, in that loan scheme, also mentioned the legislation that was brought to the House this morning. But then we also have it expanding the gas market disclosure rules as part of that loan scheme. At the last minute, it then adds production data disclosure, and also, at the same time, makes those disclosures subject to regulations which have not been made yet and which will involve the gas industry.

What we, effectively, have is something that has been sold as transparency by this Government about wanting to solve the problem of transition but is really retaining power to keep a lot of that information secret. If I put that against the backdrop of the other attitudes shown by this Government: it has reopened offshore oil and gas, it has emphasised energy security repeatedly, and it has been promoting gas consistently through this term of Government as being critically important to the economy.

The question I have is: what is the connection between the Government’s proposed loan scheme and this bill? On the face of it, it looks like this is about trying to get more information to support a just transition and to support business through the loan scheme. We would’ve accepted it, and this could’ve been a very short time in the House had that been the case, but what made the difference was this Amendment Paper 634 dropped at the eleventh hour, and also through the use of urgency for the principal Act, which really didn’t need to go through urgency. There was no rush for it. The transition period and the declining of our gas reserves has been happening for decades. Suddenly, we’re in urgency and then we get this really interesting Amendment Paper.

The critical part of that Amendment Paper is clause 4, replacing new section 56AA(1)(a)(iii), which says, “information about how much gas has been produced or is being produced”. This changes the whole scope of the disclosures from gas sale supply to gas production. That is significantly important. It means that the Government will get details about gas operations. They will potentially be able to gain leverage over producers if they were not interested in more drilling themselves or allowing more drilling, and they can also use it to justify further intervention.

If I look at the type of information that that would enable to come out to the public, it could be which fields are producing gas, which producers are underperforming, whether producers are holding back production—which could be a really interesting scenario—whether reserves and the estimates of the reserves match the output. All of that information, you will accept, can be used for a number of reasons. It could be used to help get the full picture to be able to do what my colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking has identified as being the best use—the one that we have been sold—which is to get an understanding of the landscape so that Government can make the right investment decisions and use the loan scheme appropriately and responsibly to support a just transition.

But it could also be used to reinsure investors—it really could—and when I see that there is a definition on a website from an overseas outfit, I worry about where that has suddenly come up from. It could also be used to build a case for further exploration, and let’s put that in the context. That’s not paranoia. We have members who sit on the Government benches who regularly yell across this House, “Drill, baby, drill.” Now, wouldn’t it be handy for them to know which fields are producing; which producers are underperforming and might do better if they had some additional funding; which producers are holding back their production, because maybe they could produce more with a bit of Government intervention; which reserves are matching the market output? All of that would be very, very interesting.

The second point is that when you look at that, that raises a lot of questions that I do hope journalists will be looking at. But then we also want to understand: where did that suddenly come from? When the Minister, the Hon Simon Watts, was asked in the committee stage, he was pressed a number of times, and finally, in response to the Hon Dr Deborah Russell, he said, “It has been identified by officials that we need it.” He did not rule out having any information or any correspondence or any advocacy between his office or his officials with big producers who might benefit from this very last-minute amendment to the amendment bill.

Now, if there was nothing to hide here—that Minister is a competent Minister. He knows what to say; he would rule it out. He would just say there has not been that. He did not say that. He said the change had been identified as needed by the officials. So there are a lot of questions to be asked, and I’m sure we will be asking them—and I can imagine journalists will be asking them—about what kinds of communications have happened over the last 24 hours that might add a bit more context to why we got this dropped on us.

Then we go to the really interesting thing in the law about the open-ended proviso in new section 56AAB, inserted by clause 4, which says that information must be subject, but—and there’s a gaping “but” here—subject to any limits or restrictions prescribed under that new regulation-making power. Those regulations have not been made, and those regulations are very likely, as we have seen with other regulations that have happened in other industries, to be made with involvement from the sector—[Interruption]—and possibly to be subject to regulatory—

Too loud.

—capture. For those who don’t know what regulatory capture is, it’s when there is a set of regulations made with industry input that are very, very difficult to change.

So the questions are: who is going to supply that information? When those regulations are made, will they specify what information will be supplied, what information will be withheld, what information will be aggregated, and how will it be aggregated? We didn’t hear a satisfactory response to that from the question from the Hon Dr Megan Woods. It will make governing rules over confidentiality protections, and it will also govern publication times and who gets access to the information. That is an awful lot of power to go into regulations that have not been made yet that are going to limit the information that may be published under new section 56AAB.

That is why I say that we have been sold a lemon here, because we were sold a bill that was going to be about transparency, and yet the real effect of it is that it will keep a lot of the information out of the public sector while giving the Government and Ministers lots of privileged commercial information. That commercial privileged information could be used very appropriately: to apply a just transition, to help taxpayers get the benefit of the $1.2 billion loan scheme that was announced in the Budget, and to reduce our dependency on gas. If so, fantastic—we’re all on the same page—but as I have laid out, it could also be used for other reasons. It could be used for investors, it could be used for business cases, it could be used to help the Government make decisions about who might be able to justify more drilling, or even, if producers are underperforming, to intervene and make them perform better so that more gas is produced and that our fields run out more quickly.

There are so many things that could happen as a result of the open-ended information disclosures that give the Government so much information, and yet we don’t get to see it; members of the public don’t get to see it. They only get to see what whoever is writing those regulations wants them to see, and I can tell you now that those who stand to benefit, the big corporations, will have a big hand in that.

The real question from here on in that we need answered to give us some surety is: what happened over the last 24 hours that led to this amendment being put on the Table? Who did the Minister for Energy or his officials have conversations with? And what is the real agenda behind the $1.2 billion loans in this bill before us today?

12:19

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s great to see universal support across the House for fixing the basics and building the future.

Dana Kirkpatrick stood up the quickest, so I’ll call Dana Kirkpatrick to take Te Pāti Māori’s call.

12:20

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In the interests of expediency and urgency, I commend the bill to the House.

I present a legislative statement on the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill.

That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The bill continues this Government’s focus on reducing excessive regulatory burden that has accumulated over successive reforms to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act (CCCFA). This bill is about ensuring consumer credit is regulated in a way that is effective, proportionate, and that makes sense within the wider regulatory landscape.

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) is the conduct regulator for the financial markets. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to have a different regulator responsible for consumer credit. This bill simplifies the regulatory landscape by transferring functions under the CCCFA from the Commerce Commission to the FMA. This puts the FMA in a position to regulate consumer credit consistent with its approach to other financial markets.

When the FMA takes over from the Commerce Commission on 1 July this year, this bill will give it the regulatory tools to effectively protect the interests of consumers. This includes, among other things, improved oversight of lenders through the FMA’s licensing regime, and other administrative powers such as direction orders that enable the FMA to respond swiftly to breaches of the CCCFA.

It is also important that liability settings in the CCCFA are proportionate. This bill does this in three ways. It removes a due-diligence duty and attendant personal liability for directors and for senior managers. The changes I’ve just outlined make this form of liability unnecessary. The bill also addresses two issues with how the CCCFA assigns liability for the costs of borrowing, in the event a lender has breached certain disclosure requirements.

The first issue, as this House well knows, is a historical one. The bill backdates reforms made in 2019 to protect the market from redress that the courts consider unjust. This has no impact on the class litigation against ANZ and ASB.

The second issue is an ongoing issue. To say that lenders are liable for the full costs of borrowing until they have fixed the disclosure breach is the wrong starting point when the breach was trivial or otherwise harmless. The bill addresses this for new loan agreements without removing this form of redress for borrowers.

The bill has its origin in policies announced over two years ago. I want to conclude by thanking everyone who has contributed to its development and evolution. I want to thank the Hon Andrew Bayly, I want to thank the Hon Scott Simpson—my predecessors. I want to thank officials and the many individuals and organisations who took time to make submissions on the CCCFA amendment bill, both during policy development and at select committee.

Just on the select committee—the hard-working Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC), now chaired by Ryan Hamilton and deputy chaired by Dan Bidois: the FEC studied these reforms, worked through submissions, and developed some very sensible changes. The net result of all this thought and effort is a bill that I am confident will improve how effectively and efficiently consumer credit is regulated in New Zealand. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

12:24

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is relevant, what the Minister has said in his legislative statement to the House: that this bill gives effect to policy decisions that were made two years ago and built on the work of the Labour Government in reforming consumer credit access to make sure that the rules were proportionate to the risk and to ensure that our financial system, at the level of controls within organisations, is robust.

That is why it may surprise some of the members sitting around the House to be sitting here on what is, technically, Thursday of a Budget week, in this period that is well understood to be a free hit for the Government, where it is encouraged, even, that the Government would pass legislation that is to do with the Budget and to give effect to their financial decisions which are empowered by the Budget in a period of urgency, which is well understood and largely well-supported by major parties within the House. It is important that the Government would be able to give effect to those things which relate to Budget documents and Budget policy decisions as soon as possible when they’ve been announced and they affect ordinary people’s lives.

But this is a piece of legislation which was first mooted in May 2025. Why was it delayed, you might ask? Well, it went swiftly to select committee, which the Minister has alluded to; he was the chair of it at the time. And we embarked swiftly on a programme of work to hear from submitters.

It was important for submitters to be able to have their say, because it emerged, in the course of submissions, that thousands of New Zealanders were owed debts by two banks that posted a total profit of about $6 billion in that financial year, and the Government was seeking to forgive those debts at the point they crystalised, which was in a class action litigation before the courts at the time the committee considered it.

So the delay, from the Labour Government’s introduction of laws to tidy up this process of credit contracts and then for the bill that was seeking to change the way that consumers were able to bring claims against their banks, not only from the date of the legislation but before the legislation was enacted—that delay happened because there was pushback from those people who would have lost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars that they were owed, that accrued during the period of 2015 to 2019.

I want to read you the sort of correspondence that was received by those people when one of the banks let them know after the select committee made what was a sensible change—thousands of people around New Zealand, mums and dads who had mortgages on their homes, received a letter that said something like “Dear Tom, on 5 October 2025, ASB agreed to settle the representative proceeding commonly referred to as a class action that related to ASB customers who held a home or personal loan.” Those customers then duly went and checked their bank accounts and found that they had between $300 to thousands of dollars that had turned up overnight.

That is more than any tax cut would have netted them. That is more than what the Government have offered them in things like childcare subsidies. These are people who are struggling with rising costs of groceries, of electricity bills, and of their personal banking services. For that to happen at that time was incredibly important to them, and that was through a series of really great submissions by ordinary people who came along to the committee and told the committee exactly how this would affect them. Parties around the House—all except the National Party, at that time—began to agree that it was unfair for consumers to have to shoulder that burden.

That reason why we are here in Budget urgency debating this bill is because it has been an embarrassing attempt at a law change which would have required the Government to run roughshod over the rights of thousands of ordinary New Zealanders, and then an embarrassing backdown, because minor parties and opposite parties—Labour and the Greens included—advocated consistently for the Government to change their minds, and they eventually did.

The delay, and the reason why it has taken two years to get to this policy point, is important to understand. What does it truly say about how we make law in this country? One, that we simply don’t have the appropriate safeguards for this kind of decision making. At all stages, Ministers and officials were contacted by the New Zealand Banking Association, by banks themselves, and by corporate lawyers who did not have to disclose that they were acting in the interests of the banks, to advocate for a policy change which would have created this debt forgiveness regime.

It was unfair when they asked Labour for it in 2017. It was unfair when they asked John Key for it and Jacqui Dean for it in 2016. It was unfair when they asked Kris Faafoi for it in 2019. All of those Ministers rejected it. But this Government relied on not only the official advice, where the New Zealand Banking Association also had access to officials, but on their own decisions, also based on the advice of the Reserve Bank, which accepted the New Zealand Banking Association’s number of $12 billion worth of financial risk to the New Zealand financial system. That number was unreasonable; officials should not have relied on it, and it continues to be an example of where going back through the timeline shows that we are not getting the right kind of information about these kinds of risks before they come to light.

And yet, the Finance and Expenditure Committee did make the right decision. The committee made the right decision to leave, essentially, those two cases to work their way through the courts. One of those banks saw the writing on the wall and made the refunds that it needed to make to its customers, and so we have thousands of happy customers, who are happy that National changed their mind on this. But there are still thousands of customers out there who are owed money by ANZ, and it would be unusual in this House to name one corporate entity, but it is directly relevant to this legislation. Now that Parliament has given a clear indication of whether the law should or should not apply, that is a corporate organisation that owes money at this point in time, and a court has decided that it owes money at this point in time. It owes debts, and every day that passes is a debt that it has not repaid to consumers. New Zealanders who are owed money by ANZ should rightly be assured that this Parliament stands behind that debt because of this decision. That is still working its way through the courts, and they are entitled to do that, but it is important that this decision stands as a decision that was unanimously supported at the committee stage.

Even if you’re not an ASB or ANZ customer, decisions like this matter—the implications matter. Consumer law is tough for a reason. We’ve had a National Minister in the last three weeks stand on the stage in front of a competition conference and up penalties for corporates who make mistakes in things that they do with consumers. Why? Because consumers can’t negotiate every contract that they enter into with their grocer, with their bank, with their energy company. The disparate power between those two entities is huge, so it’s important that the penalties for getting something wrong if you are the larger entity are fair and appropriate and large. But this kind of lawmaking says very clearly two things: (1) if you are a corporate entity and you muck up, you can wait for a Government like this to fix it for you, and we are seeing more and more of that, not only with this case but with the Uber decision and with Fonterra’s climate litigation. That is a problem. The law should be known and knowable at the time. It should be enforced by the courts and by Parliament alike.

The second thing is that it tells the incumbents and challenger banks something important about the way the banking system works in New Zealand. There are countries that we sometimes compare ourselves to that will tell banks what Government thinks they should do, and banks will act on that under the proviso that they will be protected by their Governments. Jurisdictions that have that kind of arrangement between banks and Governments rely on a flow of information between banks and Governments that is not like our open economy has. Our open economy relies on incumbents and challenger banks being treated in the same way—but, if I was Revolut, looking to open cheaper banking services in New Zealand, I would back off fast, because what this decision shows is that a National Government has the interests of incumbent banks top and centre when it is considering legislation that will affect competition in this market. It is important that Governments that are open to challenges, especially when they are telling the public that we need more competition in a sector like banking.

Finally, it also is a bill that should have improved the settings around “buy now, pay later”. Because of this Government’s change to the settings, which was advocated by one minor party that got less than the constituency vote of New Zealand First, it was a decision that meant that Zip can charge $40 every purchase for young people who use it as a credit product, Afterpay can charge $68, and financial hardship cases that financial mentors are seeing have gone up by 700 in the year since that was introduced. There is more hardship because of the lack of change in these rules. This is a bill that should have sorted out “buy now, pay later” as a proper credit consumer contract; it did not, and, therefore, this is a failure of a bill. We thought we might be able to support it at this stage; we cannot. It does not improve things for consumers, it sends all the wrong signals, and this Government should hang its head in shame.

12:34

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I also want to reflect on the fact that we’re having this third reading under urgency. It is deeply puzzling that on a week that’s supposed to be about the Government advancing its priorities in relation to the Budget, we are rushing a third reading of a bill that, in my view, has had a shambolic process and has actually, in my view, required countless ordinary people having their voices made loud and clear for the Government to concede that what they were about to do was make laws that were taking the side of huge banks as opposed to everyday people exercising their power to take on big corporates through the judicial system.

I want to reflect that this follows on from a really, really concerning pattern of legislative behaviour and actions from this Government. The previous speaker commented on how the Government also overrode the case that people took against Uber, for example. Yes, this is such a prime example of the Government once again taking the side of big corporates—the same thing with Fonterra. I want to acknowledge, first of all, the people who took these proceedings to court, because that would not have been easy. It’s not easy to take on big banks at the court, let alone win.

I think what is particularly concerning in the case of this legislation, if we look at the journey of the legislation, is that previous Governments had actually held their ground against lobbying from banks that sought to allow them to effectively have this debt forgiveness regime. It’s really clear that there’s been a shift of attitude and behaviour from this Government towards that kind of approach from big banks.

After the select committee stage, we had huge concerns, at that point, that the retrospectivity component was not yet addressed. I’m glad that at least the National Party saw the light—and potentially, I guess, the electoral consequences—of going ahead with the bill as it was during the select committee. I think they realised that voters were likely about to punish them if they continued keeping the retrospectivity and allowed to override the proceeds of Simons and Others v ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited and ASB Bank Limited. I think that the amendments that were put forward later on were an acknowledgment that you cannot just trample on people’s dignity and contributions when they are telling the Government crystal-clear that their decisions are about to take the side of huge corporates.

While we are glad that the Government and particularly the National Party took this approach to back down from some of the retrospectivity components, I think that the changes to ensure consequences for disclosure failures are still, in my view, problematic. I want to make it clear that the Green Party does not support this bill. I think, as the previous speaker noted, this bill, if anything, had an opportunity to actually strengthen consumer protections and simplify enforcements under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, but we’re not actually making the most of the opportunity to actually look at this wholesomely. In fact, what I think was also a shame, if I reflect back on the select committee sessions that I had a privilege to sub in on—and I want to acknowledge my colleagues Francisco Hernandez and Chlöe Swarbrick, who have been, during this term, permanent members, as well as the other members who have been permanent members of that select committee, and I do want to give a shout out to Arena Williams, who I know has been very diligent in the scrutiny of this bill.

Those members ended up taking, in my view, the majority of the time for the scrutiny of this bill to address the component of the retrospectivity. In my view, that’s a shame, because I think this bill in and of itself actually presented an opportunity to look at a range of broader issues. “Buy now, pay later” is another issue that I think the member Arena Williams described had merit to be addressed in this bill, but wasn’t. I do think this is a shame, because you’re not looking at the equity components of what bills like this one could genuinely address.

If we look at, again, the process that we undertook for this bill, now that we’re finally at the third reading: at every stage, when we have other procedures such as inquiries into banking competition and we have the Government talking about wanting to enhance competition within the banking sector but then it sends signals, through bills like this one, that, actually, big banks will continue being favoured, basically, when it comes to competition laws, or even legislation here versus, say, for example, outcomes of consumers—I think this sends a chilling effect to any potential competitor that wants to take on the likes of ASB and ANZ.

Now, these two players are not small, family-owned businesses that deserve attention from, or any pandering from, any Government, any political party, as it has been noted they have made humongous profits while ordinary people are literally having to take on debt simply to make ends meet. This is why I think this bill attracted a big amount of public and media attention—because, again, it was people who were being generous enough to share during the select committee period the outcomes that this bill would have had if the retrospectivity component was not addressed.

I know that we heard not just from clients and people who may have been taking part of the class action; we heard from legal experts and consumer advocates. When we’ve got experts that continuously get dismissed and ignored, brushed off; when we’ve got experts who questioned, for example, the numbers that were presented by officials in terms of the financial risk, I am concerned that this goes back to a pattern of behaviour where people who actually hold expertise—and I want to acknowledge that, across the whole of Parliament, no one is an expert in every portfolio and, therefore, we rely on people who actually have trained, have spent their lives being experts in subject areas to actually contribute to bills like this one. When we see that expertise being brushed aside and perhaps only listened to for matters of electoral convenience, I worry that people are going to start wondering, “Well, what is the point?”

I want to reassure members of the public that this bill is also a great example that in numbers, there can be strength. When people—particularly people who voted for political parties that are in Government—show up and make it clear that support for Government parties is at risk due to decisions, that political parties can actually cave in to that pressure. This is why I want to, once again, commend that throughout this process people have made their voices loud and clear. They do not want a Government that takes sides with ANZ and ASB over everyday people.

I want to commend, or I want to at least acknowledge, the coalition parties in the Government, outside of National, who I know actually understood what was wrong with this bill. I can tell that they did. I want to particularly acknowledge that as a constructive element in an MMP environment, where, sometimes, those other political parties can actually play a decent role in actually putting pressure on the larger party to do the right thing and address some of the most problematic components of this bill.

Again, the amendment that was put during the committee of the whole House stage does not go far enough. I once again want to go back to the issue that successive Governments led by Labour or National have pushed back against: the lobbying from the banks to make changes in relation to the debt forgiveness regime. I hope that this is the last case—the last time that the National Party caves in to this pressure. We deserve a Government that actually—

Read the bill.

—takes the side of everyday people as opposed to the big banks.

When I hear members of the opposite side say, “Read the bill”, well, you know, I invite them to make contributions that are more than 10 seconds, because as far as I’m aware—I am none the wiser that throughout this bill or other bills in every other debate, they have actually read the bill when their contributions are 10 seconds long. I appreciate that, perhaps, they want to scrutinise my knowledge on the bill, but I invite them to show their own expertise on the bill by actually outlining the back-down that they took in the committee of the whole House stage.

So, like I said, on the whole, we are disappointed that this bill didn’t actually do what was right for consumers, and the Green Party will not be supporting it in the third reading and question the use of urgency to rush it through at this time.

12:44

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I rise to on behalf of ACT to speak in support of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill. It’s actually entirely appropriate that we’re dealing with this in Budget week, under urgency. Not only did we have to clean up a massive economic mess left by the last Government; they also wasted six years to actually make regulatory changes in important areas to New Zealanders.

This bill is proportionate. It’s effective. It’s cleaning up some red tape and regulations, and it’s making sure that credit and consumers are looked after. We’re modernising this area of law, and I want to say that the Finance and Expenditure Committee did an excellent job in listening to submitters on a whole range of issues, not just the ones around the banking cases. This is an excellent piece of law. It actually is going to continue to support this Government’s economic agenda, and I commend it to the House.

12:45

I rise in support of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill. This was one of the first bills that was put in front of me when I arrived in Parliament. Thank you very much for that—quite difficult to get through some of the issues, and I thank members from the other side basically saying that the select committee “got there in the end”—which, I agree, it did. I’d like to just sort of have a shout-out to the then committee chair, the Hon Cameron Brewer, who is now the Minister.

The thing that I think probably gives me the most confidence here is moving to the Financial Markets Authority oversight of this kind of activity, which I think will help in the future. We’re streamlining credit laws and strengthening regulatory oversight. Therefore, we commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call.

12:46

Madam Speaker, thank you. I want to address a couple of the broader, I think, comments around this bill that we’ve heard in the House. Particularly, I want to address the comments my colleague Ricardo Menéndez March made around why this bill needed to be under urgency. We heard from the Minister that part of the reason is because this bill needs to take effect on 1 July. Now, as we’ve seen with any bills that come through the House, this commencement date itself has been amended from the original date because the original date was a date set by Order in Council, which means that the date could actually be further amended.

There is no reason for this bill to actually be coming into the House under urgency, for two additional reasons. I think this is partly an indication that this Government has, for lack of a better term, run out of gas when it comes to legislation, because the committee stage of this took place on Wednesday morning, 27 May 2026, which is technically three days ago by calendar days, but one day ago by House days. This bill could have had its third reading Wednesday afternoon. It, again, does not need to be in the House right now. While I admit that if there’s no reason that this bill’s commencement date can be altered from 1 July 2026—bearing in mind that there is still another week and a half of sitting weeks before that date—it does bring into question why this and the subsequent bills we will be reading are coming into the House under urgency.

Potentially, maybe that particular Minister, being one of the newest Ministers, is one of the few people who’s actually left from the team—so, maybe, because being one of the junior Ministers, you get the short end of the straw when it comes to the bills that go through the House.

Mr Xu-Nan, the current Minister—and, actually, we don’t talk about Ministers, and I’m not suggesting you did, who were and aren’t here, but the actual current Minister is actually right here.

There’s no such thing as a junior Minister.

Oh, absolutely—absolutely. Sorry. I apologise, Madam Speaker—not junior Minister; Minister outside of Cabinet.

I do want to say that one of the disappointments with the committee stage for this particular bill is the fact that we weren’t given an opportunity to have a full engagement with the Minister. I do hope that for the some of the subsequent bills that the Minister is in charge of that we’re going to be discussing, we will get the opportunity. We could have asked a little bit more around the enforcement when it comes to the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). I think we could have asked a little bit more around what exactly happened and around the timeline, when we’re looking at the potential retrospectivity which happened during the select committee stage and was later on taken out, and what that would involve in terms of the kind of responses that the Minister, as well as the officials and the Government parties, received as a result of the class action when it comes to Simons & Ors v ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited and ASB Bank Limited.

On that particular part, even the fact that the Government parties have entertained the retrospectivity signals the priority of the National Government, when you’re looking at further punching down on everyday New Zealanders, to pander to their big corporation overlords. We’ve seen that with ASB and ANZ—which, by the way, as the previous speaker Arena Williams mentioned, make $6 billion. That money, considering successive Governments sold ASP and ANZ to Australia, isn’t going to be coming to New Zealand and supporting our economy in that sense. But not only that: we’ve heard about Uber, we’ve heard about Fonterra, and we’ve heard about the other areas, as well.

I think this bill is, in essence, a good step. It’s something that we wanted to perfect and wanted to improve in the first reading and during the select committee stage, but I was disappointed in subsequent stages because of the changes. It also means that we couldn’t actually ask the Minister, in that sense, around the enforcement aspect and the actual penalties. If you’re going to be making $6 billion, what is a proportional penalty? This is why the Green Party will not be supporting this bill. It is not good anymore.

12:52

Can I firstly just acknowledge the new Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and this being the first bill to go through the full suite and come into law. There’s been great shepherding-through by several Ministers, but it’s a great finale for Minister Brewer. Secondly, when Labour passed this in 2019, we recognised that this retrospectivity clause was a bit untidy. It was a promise made, and, today, it’s a promise delivered.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, it’s great to be able to take a call on the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill—a bill without brackets in its title, which is a nice change from what we’ve been talking about this morning. The junior Minister opposite, I think, just said that we’ve run out of time, and the good news is that we definitely haven’t, which is great, because we are in this third reading, which means it’s the final opportunity for us to talk about what it is that we are not happy about in this bill.

I think what’s important is to come back to the essence of what this bill sets out to do and who it sets out to do it for. It’s talking about streamlining compliance, so my question is: for who? What it talks about—or what it should be talking about—is strengthening consumer protections, because what we’re talking about here is an environment where you might have an individual up against an incredibly large company. We’ve heard the scale of some of those annual turnover figures of some of our biggest banks. If you think about taking on a bank with a $6 billion turnover, I know who I’d be thinking probably has the most firepower and the most legal representation, should it come to that. My question really is: if the aim is to simplify regulation, reduce compliance costs, and improve consumer outcomes, is that really what this bill is going to achieve?

Now, when it was in front of select committee—and it’s good that there are some bills in this term of Government from this coalition Government that actually get the proper scrutiny—

Heaps! Heaps do.

—that a select committee should provide. Someone on the other side shouted out “Heaps!”. I think there are a number of examples of bills—very important bills; some even just in the last week in this Budget urgency—that have progressed through all stages without even getting near a select committee. That’s not good governance. It’s not responsible lawmaking, but it is a pattern of behaviour that we continue to see from this Government.

What I’ve done is gone back to look at some of the 1,500 submissions that came to the select committee specifically about this bill, and I’m going to go through each one of those submissions—but I’m not, because I don’t have time.

You definitely don’t have time.

I’m going to look at a number of those submissions, and, particularly, I’m going to look at submissions that advocate on behalf of individuals as opposed to submissions that were made by large corporations or by people paid to act and represent those large corporations and their interests in that select committee environment.

I’m going to start with the Citizens Advice Bureau, who do incredible work in our communities. We’ve got an amazing Citizens Advice Bureau located down in New Brighton, so I want to give a big shout-out to Stowe and the team at Citizens Advice Bureau for the amazing work that they do to advocate for and support individuals in our community. Now, they particularly call out clause 12 of the bill, and they say they are very concerned about the implications of clause 12 of the bill and recommend that it is removed.

The reason for this is that it removes the requirement for continuing disclosure if the creditor maintains a website where the debtor can access information about their unpaid balance after each transaction. What you’re talking about here is an assumption, in law—and it is an assumption—that every New Zealander has easy and ready access to online websites, to the connectivity that they need, and to the data that they have to pay for to do that. You are assuming that every New Zealander can readily and easily access that information online and that if the lender, the big corporation, makes it available online, that person can come and find it. That would be a great assumption to make if you had also committed to resolving the issue that we have in New Zealand about digital equity and the huge gaps that we see for many New Zealanders who are unable to enjoy the access to services that they are increasingly needing to be able to operate in New Zealand currently.

We’ve also seen this in some of the bills that we’ve discussed in Budget urgency this week about the interface with Government departments like the Ministry of Social Development and the increasing use of digital decision making, but, also, that digital interaction with those agencies. I think that’s a very good point that the Citizens Advice Bureau make. They do an amazing job of representing. I’m very grateful for their submission. I’m disappointed to see that even with the strength of their submission at select committee, it was still not listened to by the governing parties, who are instead pushing this bill through today.

Now, the next one I want to look at is the Community Law Centres of Aotearoa submission. It’s another amazing organisation that operates across Aotearoa, providing legal support and advice to New Zealanders. We refer a lot of people to community law. They do do great work. Now, the general comment that they start with is that their key concern is in relation to the suite of financial service legislative reforms: the adequate protection of financially or otherwise vulnerable customers. These are people who were given loans that were unaffordable from the start, and there’s a lot of challenges with these loans and having robust enough enforcement of protections in law to stop that from happening. We see there are people out there who will prey on vulnerable people and who will put them into situations that actually push them further into debt. They’re not there to help them. They are there to make things harder for them. They—the people doing this—financially benefit from doing that. They put people in compromising positions, in far worse positions, and it would be good for us to be able to provide better protections for those people in law. That is not what is happening with this bill in its current form.

The final submission that I wanted to get to was the submission here that came through from Salvation Army. Now, I don’t need to introduce the Salvation Army. Everybody knows about the incredible work that they do in our community. One of their biggest concerns was add-on insurance. This is where people will make a purchase, and then there are other things that the person selling them the product—in this example, it’s a car—adds on top to increase the level of the debt, and often people unknowingly commit to far greater levels of debt than they can afford. The example they give here is a person they call Maria who purchased a car in 2022 for $16,450, but by the time her loan included all of the additional add-ons, that was nearly 30 percent on top—more than $5,000 on top—which took the total loan to $21,503. It makes what seems like a very manageable, sustainable level of debt all of a sudden spiral out of control, because all of these additional costs and charges have been added on top.

You haven’t added much value to this.

There is an opportunity in this piece of legislation to stop that kind of behaviour. The Minister across the other side says, “You haven’t added much”. Sorry, not the Minister; the member—sorry for my false advertising. The member on the other side who claims that I haven’t added much should compare the contribution I’ve made in resharing three of the 1,500 submissions, the majority of which are opposed to this piece of legislation, to the contributions made by his colleagues in this House for this piece of legislation that they believe is so important that it has to be moved through in Budget urgency on a Saturday, and yet they will speak for five or eight or 12 seconds on the bill in order to move it through. It’s an embarrassment. It discredits the work that you’re doing when you cannot even speak—not you, Madam Speaker, the member opposite; not a Minister, the MP opposite. My question in closing for my contribution this afternoon, as it is now in the House, is, really: who are you doing this for? It isn’t the people reflected in those submissions from those highly reputable organisations that do such good work in our community.

This debate is interrupted. The House will resume at 2 p.m.

The House is resumed. We’re on the third reading of the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill, and we’re on call No. 9, which is a National call.

14:00

This bill is about fixing the basics so that we can build our future. I commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Firstly, I’d just like to say that I have just received a text from my mum to say that it was her birthday yesterday and I missed it, so a really big happy birthday to my wonderful mum.

What’s her name?

Her name’s Bridget, and she is the best mum.

But, also, there’s been an argument that maybe I didn’t miss her birthday, because it’s still the 28th. I think general consensus was that I’m just a bad daughter, but I’ll go with the 28th! So very happy birthday to my mum, and she’ll be having a lovely day at the beach with her dog while we’re here.

Speaking of being here, I’m here to take a call on the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill. I want to just acknowledge the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and I haven’t had a chance to say congratulations to Ryan Hamilton, the new chair; so congratulations to Ryan Hamilton for being the new chair of that committee. I know that this committee have done a lot of work on this bill. Other speakers have spoken to that work, and I want to begin by acknowledging all of that work, because I know that this has been a long process.

But, again, I go back to being in urgency on a Saturday: I could be at the beach with my mum and her lovely dog, whose name is Casper, but I’m not; I’m here. And we’re not even debating a new bill. We’re debating something that could have gone through Parliament on a different day, not in urgency. It’s disappointing that we’ve had the Budget on Thursday and all of the excitement around the Budget, but it was actually a complete flop because there was nothing in the Budget—nothing that helped people with the cost of living that our communities are really struggling with right now.

I think that this bill speaks to that value that it feels like the Government holds, where they’re just not interested in helping people who really need it. The way that that connects to this particular bill is that huge power imbalance that exists between large corporations and everyday people trying to live their lives. I feel like being a member here in Parliament, in this House, my main job in doing what I can to influence legislation is to balance things. It’s to balance our country so that there aren’t huge power imbalances sitting between different groups of people and so that we can all get what we need to achieve and do well.

This just gets me, because last night we were sitting in this House and we were debating a bill that would put extra pressure on beneficiaries, the most vulnerable in this community—a bill that would influence and disadvantage our disability community, our elderly, and those dealing with considerable medical issues. Those people from that bill are going to be disadvantaged. And this is just another example—not quite so big, I will say. That one’s pretty significant; this one’s way down the other end, not quite so much, but it’s the same concept. It’s the same values from this Government, which is they just don’t seem to care about the huge power imbalance that exists just from living in our society that we have today.

In conclusion of my introduction, Labour does not support this bill, because we believe this bill is taking us in the wrong direction, away from strong consumer protection and towards weaker accountability for lenders. A lot of the discussion has been about the retrospectivity clause. I acknowledge that that has been removed from the bill after a considerable amount of submissions in the select committee process. The 1,500 submissions—many of them spoke about the unfairness of this retrospective aspect.

I want to acknowledge the select committee again for pushing to get rid of that and for the Government to finally—even though it took them a really long time—agree that that was not good lawmaking, that that did not support of the rule of law and it did not support the separation of powers within our society. This bill, as I’ve said, is going in the wrong direction, like so many of the bills we have from this Government. It is not giving people the power to stand up for themselves. When you’re going up against a huge corporation, an individual just is no match, and we in Parliament need to make sure that that power is balanced. I strongly oppose this bill.

14:06

Oh, Mr Speaker, it’s a great day. We’re going to get this legislation passed. I commend it to the House.

Tēnā rawa atu koe, e te Māngai o te Whare, otirā ko taku mihi tuatahi ki a rātou mā, ngā tini aituā o tēnei wā. I tērā wiki ko tērā o ngā tipua arā a Tā Tāmati Reedy. I tēnei rā tonu ko Hirini Moko Mead. Nā reira ki te tini me te mano kua wehe atu, ngā tipua o tēnei wā kua ngaro atu, haere, haere, haere oti koutou ki te kāinga tūturu mō tātou te tangata.

Hoki mai rā ki a tātou te hunga ora. Kei te hoki aku mahara ki te wā kāinga i tēnei wā tonu, nā te mea i tēnei wā kei te whakanuia te wharekai a Tāwhiwhirangi ki te marae o Rāhui i tana tau iwa tekau.

[My acknowledgements to you, Mr Speaker, and in particular I acknowledge, firstly, those who have recently passed on: last week, the great Sir Tāmati Reedy; today, Hirini Moko Mead. So, to the many who have passed on, go well, rest in the true resting place of mankind.

I return now to those here, to the living. I turn my thoughts to my home at this time, as at this time there are celebrations for the 90th anniversary of the dining hall, Tāwhiwhirangi, at Rāhui marae.]

Thank you for the indulgence of the House, Mr Speaker, as I acknowledge the great losses Māoridom and Aotearoa are feeling at the moment and the many tangihanga across our country. I send aroha to all the grieving families, communities, and to our nation.

I also want to acknowledge a very special occasion at Rāhui Marae in Tikitiki, where we are celebrating 90 years of our wharekai Tawhiwhirangi.

Speaking of descendants who are celebrating today, that’s who I am thinking of when I stand and speak on this bill, the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill—the impacts this will have on descendants across Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and across Aotearoa.

I will get to the bill. It’s very rich when you hear members opposite heckling this side saying, “Get to the bill.” You guys get to the bill. How about you guys get to the bill, and then we can have a debate, because three seconds talking on the bill and then having the audacity to heckle such a great contribution about the real-life impacts this bill will have on consumers and voters is absolutely rich, and Aotearoa deserves better.

Heoi anō rā, this bill transfers responsibility for the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill—the CCCFA—to the Financial Markets Authority, which we support. We also support stronger consumer protections and clearer enforcement under the CCCFA. Until we can be guaranteed that clause 47 cannot be added back, we oppose this bill. Clause 47 changes how old lending mistakes are dealt with, giving lenders—lenders—a chance to avoid large penalties for “technical breaches”, even if those loans were made before the new law existed. Now, that is the risk for all everyday New Zealanders. The focus on Parliament must always be on the people we serve—the consumer.

I did a quick ask around my whānau to see some real-life examples of how this would be affected. Didn’t have to look far. My niece Kellyanne—not her real name; I told her she could remain anonymous—she went and got a loan for a vehicle. That’s not unusual. Now, she’s quite responsible. She’s got different spending habits to her auntie, and different financial management systems than her auntie. She thought, “I don’t want to have this debt looming over me for too long. I’m going to increase my payments”—you know, avoid paying less interest—so she did. She had in her mind the date. That was going to be the day she celebrated that her vehicle was paid off, and that debt was gone. Because she’s got very responsible financial habits, she studied her bank statement and realised the payments were still going out. How can that be? Then she received a statement saying not only had, in fact, she not paid off the debt; she owed $10,000—she owed $10,000.

Now, as I’ve said, this niece is quite financially savvy. She’s got nous, she’s got the inclination, and she’s got the confidence to deal with lenders and banks. Many whānau do not. The power imbalance that MP Georgie Dansey just mentioned is absolutely real. People assume that the lenders and the banks have all the power and, somehow, they must be wrong—they must have got their calculations wrong. Money is staying in the wrong pockets. In this case, in her case, it was $3,000 owed to her that otherwise may have just stayed in the lender’s pocket instead of hers. Whānau in Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and around Aotearoa know exactly the value of each and every dollar right now. For her, that $3,000 will go a long way towards her $600-a-week grocery bill. That’s just on the basic groceries to feed her family of five—$600, not $60.

That’s why the 2015 disclosure regime was so important. It made sure that borrowers were made aware of the total amount being borrowed. Like I said, some people might just assume that everyone is savvy about these things, but not everyone is. Some people truly believe if they’re borrowing $50,000, they will pay back $50,000. That’s why these consumer protections are so important. It requires any security—people know the security taken over their properties; what their hardship rights are; information, importantly, about dispute resolution; and, of course, severe penalties for lenders were they to breach anything. Taking away those penalties is a major risk for consumers, and that’s what we on this side of the House want to protect: the rights of our consumers.

There are many supporters of this bill who argue that it makes access to finance easier. On the face of it, most people would say that’s a great thing. Of course we want to make it easier to get a mortgage or the latest Ford Ranger or whatever—whatever it is for you. Access to lending sounds like a really good thing. But what I know for a fact is what borrowing represents to a lot of whānau is hope. It represents security, the opportunity to put a roof over their whānau’s heads, the opportunity to provide what they believe—and it’s their right to—is the best outcome for their whānau. However, when those agreements are entered into without the full knowledge and the full protections of these consumers, that dream can quickly turn into a nightmare where whānau are not aware of the interest payments; do not have the capacity to fulfil the repayments; then not only are they left with dashed dreams but they are still left with the debt, with the shame and the heartache of houses being removed from their whenua, being removed from their communities; and they are still sat there with the debt further back than when they were when they started.

A few of my staff who serve Ikaroa-Rāwhiti in electorate and community offices around Aotearoa have been approached not just by families experiencing hardship but by the organisations who serve them—the organisations who come in in the aftermath who have to deal with the whānau who have not only found themselves with a mountain of debt, but, as I said, the disappointment of not even having the asset for which they borrowed.

While we are all about efficiencies, the main priority for us on this side of the House is to protect the rights of consumers so that whānau are not left overpaying by $10,000 or not actually having to navigate a system where people whose job it is to do this—people have got to take time out of their day from their work to navigate these systems just to make sure they’re not getting ripped off.

Hei whakakapi [in closing], it would be very remiss of me, as the spokesperson for sport and recreation for the Labour Party, not to acknowledge Ngāti Porou East Coast and Poverty Bay, who are about to take the field for the King’s Birthday local derby in Tūranga-nui-a-Kiwa. Go the coast; he wīwī Nāti. Kāore rawa atu mātou e whakaae ki tēnei pire.

[We absolutely do not agree with this bill.]

14:16

It is my privilege to speak to commend the third reading of this bill. But before I commend it to the House, I have to say happy birthday to Minister Mike Butterick. I commend the bill to the House in building the future.

I commend this bill to the House.

14:17

I present a legislative statement on the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill.

That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill makes targeted but important improvements to New Zealand’s financial dispute resolution system, a system that provides consumers with free, independent options to resolve disputes with banks, insurers, lenders, KiwiSaver providers, and other financial service providers. I want to thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for its careful consideration of this legislation. The committee received 63 written submissions and heard 13 oral submissions, reflecting strong public interest in ensuring our dispute resolution framework is fair, independent, and effective. I also want to thank all submitters, including consumer advocates, financial mentors, industry bodies, dispute resolution schemes, iwi, community organisations, and individuals, for taking the time to share their perspectives and lived experience.

As the House will be aware, this bill forms part of a broader financial services reform package by this Government. This bill’s purpose is focused and clear: to strengthen oversight of financial dispute resolution schemes and to ensure these schemes are governed and operated independently and effectively in the interests of consumers. The bill achieves this by improving Government oversight of the schemes’ independent reviews and providing a regulation-making power to set minimum governance requirements for scheme boards.

The Finance and Expenditure Committee has recommended that the bill be passed with one amendment, and I want to briefly explain that change and why I support it. During submissions, several submitters raised concerns about how the new regulation-making power relating to board independence from financial service providers could be interpreted. In particular, there was concern that the provision might imply that there can be no industry representatives on a scheme board. In response, the Finance and Expenditure Committee has recommended amendments to clause 11 so that its regulation-making power focuses on requirements to ensure independence of the board as a whole.

This clarification better reflects the policy intent of the bill. For example, it enables future regulations, if required, to place limits on the number of industry representatives on a board while still allowing boards to retain a mix of skills, experience, and perspectives. Importantly, this amendment does not mandate new regulations, nor does it remove the ability for schemes to benefit from industry expertise. Instead, it ensures the regulatory power is better targeted, proportionate, and flexible.

I also want to acknowledge that many submitters—particularly consumer advocates and community organisations—expressed broader concerns about the operation of the financial disputes resolution system. Some submitters argued the system does not yet go far enough, and others called for more fundamental reforms such as consolidating the existing four schemes into a single entity or extending dispute resolution coverage to debt collectors. While those matters are outside the scope of this bill, I want to be clear that these perspectives have been heard and have been carefully considered.

This bill is deliberately targeted. It focuses on improving oversight governance and consistency within the existing legislation framework. The strengthened independent review process, combined with the enhanced reporting and clearer governance expectations, will provide better information and scheme performance and help inform any future policy decisions.

In closing, this bill strikes the right balance. It strengthens oversight and accountability, protects the independence of dispute resolution schemes, and improves confidence in a system that many New Zealanders rely on when things go wrong. With the improvements recommended by the Finance and Expenditure Committee, I am confident this bill will deliver meaningful benefits for consumers while maintaining a fair and workable system for providers.

The Government has a comprehensive package of financial service reforms, and this bill is an important part of that package. I look forward to support across the House. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

14:22

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Labour supports the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill because it does make some of the changes which were identified in the 2022 review of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) of the four schemes and the way that the system, as a whole, was operating. We support those moves to improve the quality and consistency of financial dispute resolution, and we also support making sure that consumers can have confidence that complaints are dealt with fairly and effectively, even if this is one of the few changes in that review that is being given effect to.

The legislative history of this is relevant. When the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs said that a consolidation of the four schemes is outside the scope of this bill, he was right that it’s outside of the Cabinet decisions which were made in 2023-24, but to say that they’re outside the scope of this bill is not quite right. This bill could have amended the way that the consolidation of the schemes would work and go forward. It could have created regulation-making powers which would bring the schemes into line with other jurisdictions we like to compare ourselves to, like Australia. So it’s important that we know what this bill does—which is good—but what it doesn’t do is also still important to maintain some focus on, and we will test that in the committee stage.

It’s also important to flag with the Minister, at this point, that there are a number of amendments which continue with not only things which have been identified by MBIE as priority areas and within his own set of advice that he would have received when undertaking to present this bill to the House in its second reading, but there are also amendments that have been called for by submitters, particularly organisations like the financial mentors FinCap and other consumer advocates, who consistently presented to the select committee that there is a real need for further consumer protection measures. If the Government wants to hold true to its promise in its own public comments about this bill, then it needs to continue to advance the position of the workability of these schemes.

We do support stronger oversight of the governance arrangements within this bill. That is a good thing. It is a good thing for the regulations to be able to take that into account, but in 2022, and before that, when the Government consulted on the effectiveness of the financial dispute resolution system, it received a very clear message from the entities that it consulted with. Those were the financial mentors and the community organisations, particularly, but also the schemes. Not one of the four schemes came along to the select committee and made a clear case, or would defend a clear case, for why there should be four different schemes.

No one in the system—no single actor within the system, or any of the submitters—came to the committee and said, “It’s good that there are four schemes. We want four schemes.” The closest anyone came to that was one service provider who observed that there might be a case for having two—maybe one more than one—because if one isn’t acting properly, then we have a system in the market that doesn’t work.

All of the submissions on this point were about the need for streamlining and consolidation, and I’ll give you the example of how this works. For someone who has a dispute with their financial services provider, and we could be talking about large banks, but only up to a certain cap—and I’ll get to that in a minute. It is only up to a cap of, I think it is, $250,000 for the total cost of the dispute. Or it could be other financial services providers like loan makers in corner stores in town centres, payday lenders, or lenders who are lending on car loans. For all of those, for someone to be able to bring a complaint against the person who wrote that loan for them, they have to first go on to the website or call up the provider of that loan to find out which scheme provider they use.

If, in some cases, that, say, car loan lender has gone bust, then they will need to be looking at historical documents, and then they will need to bring a complaint to that provider. Hopefully, it’s one of the two providers that has extensive provisions about what happens if the loan writer has left their scheme, because every one of the four schemes has a slightly different rule about what happens if the loan writer has fallen over and become not a member of the scheme or has joined another scheme, and then the consumer is in quite a pickle about how they might raise disputes at all, let alone through this way or through the courts.

It is also important to understand the context. If we didn’t have these schemes, we’d be relying on the small claims tribunal or the courts. Those are very inefficient mechanisms for consumers to seek redress because they are expensive, but they are also time-consuming and are paid for by the Government. To have schemes like this is an efficiency measure for the Government because it spreads costs of the actual disputes on to the providers of these services and incentivises them to do as well as they can. Without having an effective mechanism to do that, we socialise all of the risk and reprivatise the profitability of offering those services in a way which is not always clear to consumers in terms of how to raise issues when things go wrong.

I want to put on record my thanks to FinCap for their advocacy around this. This will never be the top of the priority list for MBIE, but they have consistently advocated over many years, beginning, really, around 2016, when this was first reviewed, and many of the findings were the same. Things like the cap for people to bring a dispute, even in 2016, were in question. The financial value of $250,000 at that time is now more like $400,000 into today’s terms, but that is not something that has been changed here. It creates a gap in the law where for disputes under a financial service that are greater than the value of $250,000 but less than the value of $400,000, it’s unclear whether you’re meant to be raising that in the High Court or not, and that is something that could have been changed in this.

FinCap have also been raising consistently the opportunity for confusion, consistency, and barriers to access through the existence of these four schemes. They came to the committee and gave an impassioned submission about what it is like for financial mentors to be working through these issues with a client. They can spend nine, 12, 20 hours of their time in a week just trying to help one client resolve a dispute with a financial services disputes provider, and that is a system which was designed to speed up these complaints, not slow them down. The disputes providers do so on behalf and for the benefit of the loan writers. That’s the intention of the system, and yet FinCap are raising these real stories of just how impenetrable the bureaucracy can be with some of these more complicated cases.

It’s worth noting that the Government was presented with an opportunity to simplify the system in the work that MBIE had done in 2022-23. There were options. These were taken to Cabinet as part of the commerce reforms, and, ultimately, it’s a one-paragraph recommendation from the Minister of the time to his Cabinet colleagues that simply recognised that this was a big piece of work to take on. Yes, it is a big piece of work to take on. To do one piece of what is about 12 to 20 recommendations is good—that’s why we support this bill—but we have to know that we have left some of the things which are critically important to people being able to access fair and suitable credit for their needs.

This goes alongside things like unfair contracting terms. We know in New Zealand that there are surprises in contracts for people who enter into consumer debt arrangements. We know that in other jurisdictions like Europe and like the UK, consumers with consumer debt contracts have much better protections about surprise fees, and especially fees that actually really look like penalties for people unsuspecting of that kind of conduct. We want to be a jurisdiction where consumers can rely on the law to protect them. There should be these sorts of provisions in our law on this hand—which there are not—but there should also be systems where they can raise disputes where the law is on their side. Our provisions fall behind that of somewhere like Australia, and so we need to keep working on this.

Finally, I want to talk about how the experience goes for users of the four schemes: the Banking Ombudsman Scheme, the Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman, the Financial Services Complaints Ltd, and the Financial Dispute Resolution Service. Those are people doing their best with limited resources in office buildings. It is not their fault that they are not able to process the number of complaints, and the number of complaints are growing. What is the case is that they’re not able to streamline between themselves, often they have to go back and forwards between each other, and there is a significant amount of resource spent just on getting the settings right so that people know who to go to.

The Government could have improved this. The Government should improve this, because, ultimately, the alternative through the courts costs us all. There is more work to be done here, and I urge the Government to continue to do that.

14:32

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Green Party is supporting the second reading of the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill. On the whole, we think this bill does move in the right direction. We do question, none the less, the use of urgency to go through the potential remaining stages of this bill when the legislative procedures of this bill have actually occurred quite some time ago. We could have actually finalised this bill ages ago, and we still have time, as I understand it, before the commencement date, for us to do that, and so I think it’s unusual that we are finding ourselves in urgency to debate this second reading.

I wanted to first of all talk a bit about my personal connection to the matters in this bill. Before being a member of Parliament, I worked at Auckland Action Against Poverty on the front lines, supporting people on the benefit to access their legal entitlements, and we specialised in understanding another piece of legislation and its impact on everyday people—which was the Social Security Act—but the reality is the people that we served often also needed different ranges of support. They needed financial mentors from organisations that would provide support for them to then engage with the very same institutions that this bill is trying to address to allow the Minister to carry out reviews on. So I recognise the complexities that financial mentors across the motu face when having to engage with these four main institutions.

I want to acknowledge particularly the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, who partook in this debate and heard from submitters, including consumer advocates, and, in this case, I want to acknowledge FinCap’s submission. I do want to traverse a bit from what they touched on, because FinCap is an organisation that does really important work. I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with them since before being an MP because of what I’ve just described earlier.

They talked about the reality that in the course of their work, the financial mentors interact with different financial dispute resolution schemes. They often talked about how they’ve reported that there are systemic issues with layman accessibility, consistency, and quality across the four financial dispute resolution schemes, and FinCap was clear that as it stands right now, people have big barriers when it comes to being able to navigate the different services that these four schemes cover. They also noted that consolidating them would actually bring us more in line with other countries. I note, as the previous speaker has said, that there is an opportunity to, in the next stage of this bill, potentially amend it so that we actually can move towards that consolidation. What they noted was that in the current status quo, this is actually taking a lot of time from those four big institutions to, basically, talk to each other, but it actually also ends up costing time for those very same financial mentors and everyday people who are trying to just navigate a system when they’re having to go through a financial dispute resolution.

One of the things that FinCap also urged the Minister on or sought more clarity on is whether the Minister should, basically, conduct—well, they were calling on the Minister to conduct an immediate review of all proposed schemes under the powers that will be granted under this bill. I think this is worthwhile, if the Minister does not support an amendment to consolidate them all.

This is also important because one of the things that FinCap also noted in their submission—I didn’t get to personally participate during their submission, and so I’ve been sort of covering what they’ve brought to the select committee—is that they raised concerns that the bill itself doesn’t signal any time frame for the Minister to act on the changes, to commission independent reviews, or to form regulations on minimum standards for governance. What they noted is that once this bill passes, they would hope to see that these powers are immediately actioned upon assent, that the Minister conducts an immediate review of all proposed schemes by the same independent reviewer, and that there’s certainty that this will happen at least every five years. There’s also—and I want to quote—“immediate consultation from officials to establish the regulations needed to ensure financial dispute resolution schemes are governed in an effective and independent manner.”

Now, I wanted to also touch on sort of the broader ecosystem that this bill covers. Something that FinCap also noted in their submission—and, once again, this is something that I think is about how the provisions that matter in this bill ultimately interact with people’s everyday realities—is that right now, most everyday people would not have the technical expertise to navigate this kind of system. Many of them—particularly if they’re already struggling on, say, issues like poverty, maybe the burden of debt, or maybe the toxic stress of just living in unaffordable housing and having caught themselves in financially stressful situations—rely on financial mentors, and what we do have is FinCap saying that we need to strengthen the support and the funding for those very same institutions—like, for example, community law centres—to ensure that they’re very well resourced to carry out their functions in order to be able to support people to navigate those very same systems.

I think this will be particularly important if the Minister in the committee of the whole House stage does not support amendments to consolidate these four institutions into one, because so long as we have four different institutions, the reality is that organisations like community law centres will end up having to spend far more time, far more energy, and, therefore, far more resources to be able to support people to navigate these different institutions. I think, at the end of the day also, there will be more resources spent on those institutions connecting with each other and communicating with each other to actually ensure that people are adequately placed to be supported.

So, again, this is something that, in the committee of the whole House, I hope the Minister can address, because I also would like to make sure that we use that opportunity in the remaining stages, which I would assume will very likely happen today, unless the Government decides to, say, finish urgency after the second reading. They’re more than welcome to do so, because I think that would be the democratically responsible thing to do, but I can tell from the heckling on the other side that perhaps it won’t happen. The heckling on the other side also tells me that this Government actually, through its record use of urgency, potentially will be likely to just continue to rush through the remaining stages of this bill.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, the Green Party does support this bill. There are elements of this bill that are really commendable, but I think, again, the use of urgency is kind of not really justified, or it hasn’t been justified by the Minister. So I would also invite the Minister, in his remarks—whether it’s in the committee of the whole House or in the third reading of this debate—to at least present to the House why he believes that the use of urgency for the remaining stages of the bill is justified. That is something that I don’t think has been adequately addressed by the Minister in this debate.

The other thing that I wanted to note is that the select committee that evaluated this bill did consider amendments and did end up proposing amendments around, basically, the independence of that board and ensuring that the independence of the board is paramount. I think that’s important. I think it’s interesting that based on the report from the committee, the main group that was raising concerns about being, effectively, locked out was the New Zealand Banking Association, and think where we’ve landed may need a new position. I think this is something that is worth exploring again in the committee of the whole House stage.

But I want to finish off, ultimately, by acknowledging that the real burden of the components of this bill, and also the ones who will be eagerly awaiting the Government’s signals around the timelines of the reviews and the scope of the reviews that may happen under the powers of this bill, will be the organisations that ultimately are serving people most affected by issues around the unsustainable debts of poverty of people who may find the process of these disputes a matter of being able to be financially secure otherwise. So, again, I don’t want to disconnect the sort of more technical nature of this bill from the everyday realities of people who ultimately engage with the likes of the organisations on the ground who navigate with the main four institutions.

The Green Party will be engaging on this in the committee of the whole House stage. I have seen already that there are plenty of amendments being proposed, and I’ve noticed, particularly, that the member Arena Williams has put forward quite a few amendments. We look forward to evaluating those, getting behind those amendments, and—

It’s just synonyms. It’s just changing one word—really meaningful.

—I hope that whichever random member on the other side is heckling about the amendments engages with them, too. Perhaps he may want to consider having a quick focus group chat conversation to see if those members would be inclined to support any of these amendments moving forward. The Green Party commends this bill to the House.

14:42

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of this bill. Isn’t it slightly ironic that the previous speaker Ricardo Menéndez March wanted to make a point around the use of House time, and yet we’re about to head into the committee of the whole House stage, where there is, irresponsibly, close to 200 amendments that don’t actually do anything. So that’s kind of ironic. We’re here for the long haul. I had a bit of a field day yesterday and I was out, so I’m refreshed and I’m ready to go. I commend this bill to the House.

14:43

I speak on behalf of New Zealand First on the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill. I have personal experience of some of these things—in particular, the Banking Ombudsman—and I am of the serious belief that at the time that my complaint went through, it was too heavily industry-focused. But I note that since then, they’ve moved far more towards independence, and so I’m pleased with the progress so far and I am encouraged by this bill. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Like my predecessor—one of the previous speakers—Ricardo Menéndez March, has said, we do support this bill, but I think there are a few important areas that I want to pick up on from his contribution.

We do look forward to the committee stage of this bill. I think, for me, it is one of the most exciting parts. It will not come as a surprise to anyone, but I love a good clause around regulation-making powers, particularly when it comes to secondary legislation. I’m sure any members here who are on the Regulations Review Committee, including the chair, Arena Williams, and deputy chair, Nancy Lu—I’m really hoping that they will take a call on this and discuss some of the nuances when it comes to RMP, or regulation-making powers.

That particular part is an important part because one of the things, starting with that—and, you know, I do commend the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for responding to what was discussed around the regulation-making powers as a result of the letter from the Regulations Review Committee, particularly around the elucidation of clause 11 of the bill, which is amending section 79 of the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Act 2008. So I think some of these amendments around the requirements for members’ knowledge, expertise, and skills, and also disqualifying a person, are important. I also note that this is something that some of the submitters—particularly from the banking sectors—raised questions about, as well. So this is something, I just signal to the Minister, that we will be looking into as a part of the committee of the whole House stage of this bill.

I want to talk about the broader context of this bill, and, again, this is part of, I guess, a package or a saga of bills around the reform of the financial services regulation. This particular one is to do with financial service to retail customers, which includes banks, insurance lenders, and KiwiSaver providers, and there are two areas I want to pick up on from what both the previous speaker, Arena Williams and also Ricardo Menéndez March have mentioned. Part of this is that, currently, there are four schemes: the Banking Ombudsman Scheme; the Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman scheme, the Financial Services Complaints Ltd, and the Financial Dispute Resolution Service. That’s a lot, and it is incredibly complex.

While many people will be familiar with banks, insurers, and KiwiSaver providers, I think that lenders is an area that deserves some specific attention, particularly when we’re looking at things that could be extended to the likes of loan sharks, etc., because they are lending to the people who potentially would be struggling in various ways. Ricardo Menéndez March has mentioned his work with Auckland Action Against Poverty. We were looking at places like the South Auckland community, who are constantly being bombarded by advertisements for things for them to borrow more and are increasingly having the need to go to loan sharks and lenders, etc. This particular dispute resolution scheme and the way that those communities are often being taken advantage of is a really important aspect, and it deserves some close scrutiny when we’re looking at this bill.

On top of that, one of the things that I disagree with, I guess—and this is an area on which I want to commend FinCap for raising awareness of the fact that those four schemes need to consolidate into one. I am disappointed that the select committee didn’t take that on board. However, I am looking forward to the Minister accepting, I’m sure, one of our amendments that does consolidate all four into one, because in one of the recent bills we were looking at as a package, which was the saga around the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Amendment Bill, it precisely consolidated three supervisors into one to ensure that there is some sort of streamlining process and reassurance for the market. They were the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Financial Markets Authority, and the Department of Internal Affairs, and the Minister in charge of the committee stage at that time specifically mentioned how this would allow some of the duplicates when it comes to the way they’re looking at it, without making an impact on their expertise—you know, that too is waiting to be said.

So I disagree with the fact that, for example, the Banking Ombudsman, of course, in terms of their own personal interest would not want any sort of consolidation, but I do think that it is needed, particularly for consumers who may not understand the complexity of our having four schemes. We support this bill and we’re looking forward to the committee stage.

14:49

It’s a streamlined bill that takes it from four dispute resolution schemes into one. It makes a lot of sense. The Opposition supports it and criticises us for going into urgency, and yet, ironically, the Opposition whip will change words from things like “maintenance” to “continuation” and “reorganisation” to “readjustment”, such is the value of what they think and the importance of this House. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is, in some ways, a small bill. It deals with the sorts of issues that sometimes don’t really get before this House in terms of financial matters. When it comes to bills that are in front of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, often it’s tax bills, high finance bills, or bills with big entities that come in front of us—you know, top lawyers, top advisers, and top accounting firms. Some of the biggest entities in New Zealand come and speak to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and for that reason it can be a deeply interesting committee to sit on.

This particular bill deals with a group of entities—of schemes—that are set up in order to help the everyday people of New Zealand. The ordinary people—the people who don’t necessarily have easy access to expertise, to highly trained lawyers, or to sophisticated analysis.

I guess I’m speaking like this because my first connection as a member of Parliament with some of the issues around consumer credit and consumer credit contracts, banking issues, and so on was dealing with a wonderful Pasifika man who was in real financial trouble. He was in real financial trouble because of a car that he had bought from a local car yard in New Lynn. The car was a bit of a dog, really; that’s probably being rude to dogs. It was a lemon, and yet he’d signed up to a finance contract for it. The finance contract rapidly became very onerous, and so my electorate office team and I were trying to help him.

Through that, we made our way into developing an understanding of all the various financial advisory services, the counselling services, and the budgeting services that are available for people, and then, through that, to the difficulties that many of them had grappling with the various dispute resolution schemes that are available, and it was kind of a little bit hard to deal with the dispute resolution schemes. They did their jobs, but it was difficult to work out where to go, who to be talking to, and how to solve the problems.

Now, in that particular case, we did end up with a reasonable resolution for our constituent, but there are cases that continue to come to our attention. So there’s been a real need for a reform of this law and some of that reform was done under the credit contracts consumer—or whatever. There are various bills that are going through at the moment, or Acts that have gone through.

This one is an interesting one because it deals with the services that ordinary people rely on to get some resolution from financial service providers, but the schemes themselves are confusing. There are four schemes. There is the Banking Ombudsman Scheme, the Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman, the Financial Services Complaints Ltd, and the Financial Dispute Resolution Service. Now, in the committee stage of this debate—I’m going to give notice to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs now so that he can perhaps have a word with his officials—I’m going to ask him to tell me what each of those schemes does, how they differ from each other, and where they overlap, and that is the problem with them. In some ways they are different and in some ways they overlap, and how is the ordinary consumer to know where to go to get some kind of resolution of their issue?

So, fair warning, Minister: I don’t want to spring that question on you unawares. I’m giving you an opportunity to consult with your officials. I trust they’re listening along and they’re scribbling down those notes for you right now.

This is why one of the things that we need to do in this area—and it is not done by this bill. It’s a shame that it hasn’t been done, but we do need to look at some kind of, I think, consolidation of these schemes, some kind of streamlining, and some kind of work to make this landscape easier for ordinary New Zealanders to navigate.

Having said that—some of the stuff that this bill doesn’t do—we are, nevertheless, supporting this bill, and we’re supporting it for good reason. It’s good work. It’s part of a stream of work that has gone on under Governments for, oh, 10 or 15 years—it’s always the stuff that’s been happening. There was work being done on it under the previous Labour Government, I think, right back in my first term, and it has continued. This work was being done under the second term of the Labour Government and it’s been picked up and continued by Ministers in this term of Government, and so when people say, “Why doesn’t Parliament agree on anything?”—well, actually we do. Sometimes there are streams of work that just continue steadily under Governments of various colours, and it’s not work that begins afresh with every Government. It’s work that is picked up and continued and we are glad to see that this work is continuing under this Government, as well, and I guarantee that after November, we will continue the work when we are in Government, gentlemen. So do not worry—your work won’t all be lost.

I do want to talk about some of the issues that are sitting within this bill. The primary work that this bill does is set up a series of reviews of these four different schemes. It says that the work that the bill does is that the Minister may require reviews of these schemes. It has to be an independent review, it has to be signalled in writing, and there are various rules as to who has to do the review, and so on, and what the terms of reference are. It’s all done with a little bit of consultation and thinking about it, and the Minister, I think, can require the review, but he or she must do so at least every five years—I think I’ll need to check that as we go through.

It’s a way of setting up an ongoing review process for these schemes, and, again, we agree that that is a good move. It is something that is worth doing. It is useful to get that regular feedback from independent and expert reviewers as to the quality of the work that is being done by the schemes, and we would hope that where those reviews point out concerns with the schemes, they will in due course come up with, I think, a better solution than four independent schemes. I do think that needs to be a focus for Government. This is a good move, it’s good work, and it’s getting stuff under way. Let’s hope that, over time, as successive Governments deal with this area, it does result in some kind of consolidation of these schemes. That would, surely, be very helpful to everyone.

Getting back to this issue of consolidating the schemes, I think part of it too is that we have the Banking Ombudsman Service in there, but, of course, banks offer multiple services these days. They offer insurance services as well, and so what do you do with your insurance services? Are you going to go to the Banking Ombudsman or to the Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman? It’s not immediately obvious, and that, I hope, is one of the things that these reviews will set up and do.

I think the select committee did some really good work—I can’t remember when we started on this work or whether it was when Stuart Smith was chair or when Cameron Brewer became chair—in particular, around the independence—

Great chairs.

Of course, we now have an excellent chair in Ryan Hamilton.

Aw!

Nothing like a bit of shade on a—ha, ha! We did some work on the independence of reviewers and the various boards and things that are involved in this. I think that’s an important point to note. We want people who are expert in financial services but not involved in financial services, and so that’s going to be a hard thing to come up with, but we can presumably at least get some work done in there to ensure the independence of those who are set up to review the schemes.

So it is an interesting piece of legislation, a piece of legislation that we think is worth supporting, a piece of legislation where we will be examining what is going on in detail as a committee of the whole House, and a piece of legislation that perhaps is not quite as full as we would have liked, but, nevertheless, it is worth supporting. So with that—[Next speaker stands up] I’ve got two seconds left, Mr Bidois; you’ve done this before!

This is a good bill—

Dan Bidois.

This is a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

Wait until you get the call—Dan Bidois.

14:59

This is a good bill and I commend it to the House.

Please, alert the media: Dan Bidois’ speech ran to four seconds, but it was because he said it twice. I have developed a habit now that when Dan Bidois goes to stand, I stand, and it’s not about me being slow to rise; it’s about him being so fast to sit back down. But I would like to get to the subject matter at hand: the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill.

Now, it’s a very important bill, and it’s also very important that when we’re talking about resolution, we’re talking about it being independent, we’re talking about it being accessible, and we are also—very importantly—talking about it being fair. That’s what we’ve heard in a lot of contributions from this side of the House. It is that experience that we’ve seen without our constituents and with people in our communities needing clarity and clarification around the fairness of a resolution scheme that operates with financial service providers to ensure that where things have gone wrong, individuals who have found themselves in often difficult financial situations can access advocacy and resolution services that allow them to be, I would hope, on a level with the very powerful organisations or companies that they are sometimes navigating with.

The committee stage will allow us the opportunity to fully and wholesomely examine this, because it does need to be examined, but one of the points that I wanted to look at specifically and draw attention to as something that I think we need to ask some questions around is in the bill, where it speaks about the Minister. This is new section 67B(3) in clause 7, which says that “The Minister may appoint as the reviewer any person who, in the Minister’s opinion, has the appropriate knowledge, skills, and experience to carry out the review.”

There’s a concern here that what could happen is a really high level of decision-making power sitting with the Minister and a lot of discretion sitting with the Minister. Much as it’s been remarked on, the transformational change experienced at the Finance and Expenditure Committee, with the transition from one chair to another, as has happened in recent weeks—the same can happen when there is ministerial change. So if you are looking for certainty—and, very much, certainty is what people in our communities and constituents in our electorates deserve and need so that they can have certainty that there will be independence, there will be accessibility, and there will be fairness in the resolution schemes and services that exist to help them through the dispute resolution process with financial service providers—then the risk, if it is simply down to the stroke of a pen from a Minister who is appointed into that role and to how those reviews are carried out, is that it does put a lot of power with a single Minister.

It does make that potentially very volatile, and that’s a trend that has often been remarked upon as being one of the signatures of this current Government. It is placing a lot of power with single Ministers who are then ultimately able to make some fairly big calls across a number of portfolios and on a number of issues without having the appropriate checks and balances in place, but, more importantly, it is destabilising a lot of sectors in New Zealand. A lot of communities that we hear from are concerned that they don’t have the certainty any more because the responsibility sits with a single Minister and it depends, potentially, on what day of the week it is or on which way the wind is blowing as to what that Minister will want to see happening.

I’m looking forward to the committee stage to really challenge members opposite in order to see, beyond these tweaks, what more will you actually do to protect individual consumers with a dispute resolution service that is truly independent—that comes back to the potential for ministerial influence—that is truly accessible, and, ultimately, that is fair. That is what people need to know—that the dispute resolution is fair.

15:04

I stand to commend this bill to the House. It is about streamlining and making things easier for New Zealanders, and that’s what the National Government is doing: fixing the basics and building the future for all New Zealanders.

15:05

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill at its second reading.

I will just remind the House of where this bill fits, because it fell down the back of the Government’s couch some time last year. They announced their Budget and that was a little bit of a fizzer and a little bit of a disappointment, and they thought to themselves, “Well, what are we going to do now? We might as well find some bills.” So they dug deep down into the back of the couch and they found all the rats and mice that they had piling up, and they brought this bill before the House. So here we are today. This package is part of three bills: The Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Amendment Bill—and that’s what we heard our third reading on earlier in the day—then we had the Financial Markets Conduct Amendment Bill, and then we have this bill, the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill.

I don’t usually sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee. [Interruption] Yeah, well, it’s a fantastic committee, actually. On the times that I have subbed in on it, I’ve been very impressed by MPs of all sides of the House, really, kind of navigating the legislation and things like that. It’s been fantastic.

But just rehashing the contributions today, the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs started out by talking about those free, independent options that several submitters highlighted. That’s particularly important around clause 11, because it provides that the board—and we need mixed skills on all boards. That diversity is very important. They bring a whole range of different perspectives, and for something as important as this, we absolutely need that.

My learned colleague Arena Williams has said that this bill could have consolidated the schemes a little bit better in how they work. So it would be good to panel-beat that aspect of the bill as we go through the committee of the whole House stage, and it’s also interesting that no actors or submitters said that they wanted four schemes. Some wanted two and some definitely wanted it to be simplified, and so that’s particularly interesting. Also, around the amount of hours with clients: 10, 12, 20 hours per week to address client concerns—again, that is definitely something that we can flesh out during the committee of the whole House stage.

I particularly liked Ricardo Menéndez March’s contribution. He highlighted his personal connection to this bill on the coalface, assisting people in the challenges that they face in our community. I think it’s really important to remember that this bill works for all Kiwis, and we need to make sure that it’s suitable for everyone, no matter where they are living or the circumstances that they find themselves in.

That leads on to Dr David Wilson. He touched on a complaint that he was navigating, and so that actually highlights that anybody can be faced with a challenge and they might have to go through the jungle gym of actually trying to go through the dispute resolution process. It doesn’t matter who you are; you might end up in this situation where you might have to weave your way through this system.

Of course, Lawrence Xu-Nan—I always love his contributions. He named these bills a “saga”, and they absolutely are, especially around our vulnerable communities, which are bombarded by advertising from loan sharks and that more predatory aspect of lending, insurance, and that kind of thing. It’s very important that our legislation is fit for purpose to make sure we keep those more malicious actors at bay.

Of course, Dr Deborah Russell made the point that people that present at our select committees usually have a high profile. They’re usually top-end lawyers and senior officials, and they bring with it a certain type of perspective. Often, the people in our communities are always the ones that provide their views, and so it’s very important that all of us get out into our communities and we make sure that we have those connections. In the Waimakariri, in particular—Mr Doocey would know this very well—we have some fantastic people in our community that—

That’s his doppelganger!

I won’t lose my train of thought there, but it’s very important that we do—

If you can survive through that, that’s pretty good, actually.

Yeah—ha, ha! But we do maintain that connection with our communities and those people on the ground that are doing that fantastic work to make sure that our vulnerable people in our communities are able to enter the system and address their concerns around dispute resolution and things like that, particularly around car dealers, too. I was actually quite surprised at how easy it is to walk into a car dealer, and you don’t even have to pay a deposit in a lot of cases—particularly a young person—and they could be going away with a three- or five-year loan for an asset that depreciates. If that car breaks down and they’re short on cash, then maybe they start reading the fine print. What the large print gives, the small print takes away, and then you read that fine print and you realise that the deal that you thought you’d got wasn’t necessarily the best deal. People usually enter these situations unexpectedly.

As mentioned, Labour will be supporting this bill. We’re doing so carefully because this is one of those pieces of law that most people will never read but they will absolutely feel it when something goes wrong. This bill is about trust, and it’s about whether everyday New Zealanders can trust the system when that financial service lets them down. As mentioned, most Kiwis don’t have a lawyer on hand; most Kiwis aren’t going to take a bank or an insurance company to court. They rely on these dispute resolution schemes to sort things out for them, and most schemes do exist so that people can get a fair hearing without spending thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.

So you might have a couple signing up for insurance and they think they’re getting a good deal, they might have gone through the paperwork, signed each page, and then, as soon as they’ve put in the claim, they realise, “Oh, hey, we’re not covered for the things that we thought we were going to be covered for.”, and they feel stuck. They feel frustrated and they feel like they’re going up against a system that’s bigger and more powerful than them, and that’s the moment where our dispute resolution schemes really matter. They’re meant to be that place where people can go and get heard properly, and it doesn’t matter what walk of life you come from.

That’s why the system has to work and it has to be fair, and this bill makes some changes to how that system operates. It gives the Minister the power to decide how and when independent reviews of these schemes are carried out and who carries them out. Those reviews will still happen at least once every five years. The bill also allows regulations to be made about who sits on the boards of these schemes, and it sets expectations around their skills, their experience, and their independence from the industry that they’re overseeing—and that’s particularly important with that clause 11, as well.

So, on the face of it, these seem like sensible changes. Better oversight is always a good thing and clear standards for governance are always a good thing, and most people would expect that the people overseeing complaints about financial providers are properly qualified, but not too close to the industry. If you think about that in simple terms, it’s a bit like a referee in sport: you don’t want the referee being too close to one side.

Yeah, rugby’s a good analogy. Last night, the Crusaders beat the Hurricanes 47-14. It was a fantastic win, and so I thought I’d put that in. But, again, you don’t want that referee being too close to any one side, and I know the rest of New Zealand—

That’s coming close to being out of order, Mr Rosewarne!

Well, you know, everyone outside of Canterbury blames the ref when the Hurricanes win, but it’s all right—but, hey, the same principle applies here.

This is where this side of the House looks forward to asking those hard questions during the committee of the whole House stage, because this bill also puts more power into the hands of the Minister. The Minister can set the terms for reviews and appoint a reviewer. We just need to make sure that these reviews are genuinely independent, and so, for that reason, I commend the bill to the House.

15:15

I was going to commend the member Dan Rosewarne for his contribution and then he brought up the Crusaders, and it went downhill very quickly from there, but it’s good to see some collegiality across the House. We’re a Government focused on fixing the basics and building the future.

Mr Speaker.

Mr Speaker—Mr Speaker.

No, Glen Bennett.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

Aw! I’m much faster.

The Te Pāti Māori call—five minutes. [Interruption] It’s on speed, not sound, actually.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s just like a sports game, right? The fastest always wins, which was not normally me because I was really bad at sport, but anyway, I digress, and they’ve already drifted off the bill.

Mr Speaker, I will name the bill, so that you don’t make me sit down. It is the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill, and, as we’ve heard through the contributions this afternoon and from the Finance and Expenditure Committee and previously in the first reading, the aim of this legislation is around improving outcomes for consumers. Now, does it go far enough? Well, maybe not, but it is what it is and it is where it is, and that’s why we are going to support it. If it is about improving outcomes for consumers, then we are in because we want to stand up for people in our communities and make sure that they’re looked after.

We’ve heard a few examples this afternoon about who this legislation is for, and, again, I want to reiterate in terms of my community and the people in my life over many years. One of the issues we heard about a decade or so ago, or a bit longer, actually—probably 15 years ago—was that there was a bunch of Auckland secondhand-car dealers and they had a scheme. They would come to New Plymouth and they would come to the community I live in—there were some communities they wouldn’t come to, for some strange reason—and they would go doorknocking and they’d drop leaflets. They would have these leaflets and they would doorknock and they’d say, “Have we got a deal for you—have we got a deal for you. Not only do you get a new car but we fly you to Auckland, we take you to the car supermarket and you walk the lots, and at the end of that visit, you get to sign on the dotted line and you get to drive your new”—or a second-hand, as-new—“car back to New Plymouth and live happily ever after.”

Why didn’t you buy your car locally?

Did you not hear the start of my story, Mr Bates? Again, the reality is that it isn’t actually funny. It’s not sort of being silly, because they were examples in my own neighbourhood of the fact that they’d bought into the dream and, yes, there was small print and, yes, there were things that they should’ve read and should’ve understood. But when you hear “Have we got a deal for you? We fly you to Auckland, and you can actually have a car to drive your family around the city to get them to school and get them to sports, and to get to the supermarket to pick up the groceries.”, it seems like a damned decent deal, until the fine print comes along.

Now, this legislation is to, hopefully, help in some of those disputes, because there were a number of them. For some, they just didn’t bother and didn’t realise they could actually go and seek help, and, unfortunately, they had to continue—well, it was within the rules. They had to continue to pay back their money on their vehicles.

I remember one day visiting a family, and there was this half-decent car that’d been sitting on their front lawn. It was on blocks and the grass was growing around it, and I remember that I was in the house and visiting. We were doing some stuff around budget advice and trying to get their books in order, and one of the lines in their budget sheet was car repayments. My comment to them was “What car?” because there was no car in the driveway; there was this car on blocks with grass growing around it on the front lawn. I said, “Sorry, you don’t have a car—I didn’t realise you had a car.”, and they said, “Oh no, it’s the car on the front lawn.” I said, “Are you still paying for that?” and they said, “Yeah, we got ourselves into this deal and we’re still paying it off.”, and this was a number of years afterwards. Unfortunately, they couldn’t actually fix it; they couldn’t repair it.

The point of the story is that we need to have decent systems in place to ensure that consumers can go to the right places with the right people, but they have the right teeth and the right ability to be able to deal with some of the loan sharks, with some of the lenders, and with some of those insurance companies. We need to find a disputes resolution regime that works.

We will support this piece of legislation. We know it’s not perfect, but it goes some way to supporting consumers, and therefore Labour will support this legislation.

The Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill is set down for committee stage immediately. I declare the House in committee for the consideration of the Financial Service Providers (Registration and Dispute Resolution) Amendment Bill.

15:21

Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to take the first call in this committee stage. This is an important bill that makes changes which are largely cross-partisan, so it’s important that we interrogate them carefully, especially under the conditions of urgency.

I want to first take the opportunity to thank both the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and his officials for being available on this Saturday—even though it is Thursday, Madam Chair!

Going to Part 1—I’m in the first clause here, clause 4. I want to ask the Minister just a quick question on the provisions that that part gives rise to around financial compensation and non-financial—

Can the member—which clause, sorry?

Clause 4—his amendments to section 52 of the original Act. This provision, which makes prescribed requirements—it doesn’t make mandatory requirements, even though that’s what the title is. I want to ask him whether he considered raising up the rule within the original section on financial compensation, non-financial loss, stress, and humiliation, up to a certain amount.

The reason I ask him about this is that that is the section which gives rise to that provision being a prescribed rule—not a mandatory rule, as the title says. But there were a number of submissions on this point—not only to the select committee but also to the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE’s) consultation in 2022. The reason why this was highlighted by organisations that advocate for consumers is that the rules for that kind of compensation are different across the four schemes, and so a prescribed rule or a mandatory rule is necessary to ensure some consistency across the schemes.

What that rule is doing is that when real loss—it’s not the entirety of the loss. Say that your entire dispute might cost you $1,500, but perhaps you spent a year of your life trying to resolve that dispute in the kind of situation that my colleague Glen Bennett described in the situation with car lenders in his area. If there was injury to a consumer that was non-financial but was stress-related, all of the different schemes have different rules for that. In the submission of FinCap to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, they also highlighted this as an area for further improvement, and it is an area that I’m sure the Minister might have taken advice on not only in the formation of this bill but also on the changes that came from the select committee’s considerations.

I also want to ask him a separate question now. This is the section where he could have given effect to a new section 56 provision, which would have created a system for one scheme to exist—a sort of transitional arrangement. Financial mentors have been making the case over many years for consolidating into either a single scheme or two schemes. A single scheme has already been implemented in Australia and the United Kingdom, as the Minister will know. This is the part in the bill where, if he had wanted to go down the route of creating a transitional scheme that existed for one year through sections 56 to 58, he could have made one entity that was a non-profit organisation to consolidate, and then it might disestablish itself at the end of another year so that a further single private provider could have continued. That would have required the amendments for the Minister to appoint the transitional entity with representatives from the four schemes.

He might be familiar with this model, because it was a model that was first canvassed with MBIE in 2016. That was a model that drew on the expertise of the consumer advocates who were working in the area about how you might create—not looking to create, necessarily, a State scheme, because the consumer advocates also acknowledge that the Government has a role in ensuring that the right person pays for the cost of a scheme like this, and the right person to pay for the cost of resolving disputes at this level is certainly the private sector. I want to ask him whether he considered those kinds of amendments at clause 4.

The other place you could do it is further in the bill, at the transitional savings provisions, and I have got some amendments that I will ask him about when we get to that part.

15:26

Thank you, Mr Chair. This bill is part of the Government’s financial services reform package, to start off with. And any suggestion that this has been a rushed process—perhaps they need to go back to the Finance and Expenditure Committee report, where it was sent to the select committee on 20 May 2025. We have given this in the select committee—and I was chair during it—due consideration.

I think it’s important, because it will be a recurring theme and I’m not going to repeat it, and that’s around the call for scheme consolidation—i.e., why have we got four dispute resolution schemes and not one? I thought I’d deal with that and then I won’t be repeating myself for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

The only MPs who’ve asked for that are National MPs.

The way I can go through that—if the member wants to ask questions and then listen to the answers—is what the member signed off as well is the select committee report, and the select committee report gave this a lot of consideration. She was right. Submitters did raise this. But let’s not forget that the issue of consolidation is outside the policy intent of this bill.

The other point that the select committee—that apolitical select committee that worked so well together—made is that scheme consolidation of those four dispute resolution schemes would represent significant structural reform. Where the select committee landed—and it was well-chaired and I’m in full support of it—is that they said, yes, we can see some merit in this, potentially, though it does represent significant reform, but the select committee will “intend to monitor the effects of the legislation and any policy work in the scheme consolidation area in 12 months.” And so the select committee is going to keep a close eye on this, and I will keep a close eye on this, but the whole issue of consolidating our four dispute resolution schemes down to one is not the policy intent of this legislation. It’s having a watchful eye. It will get a watchful eye over the next 12 months by our Finance and Expenditure Committee, and I promise the member that the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and his officials will continue to monitor the schemes and, in the future, whether there’s any possibility for consolidation in the coming years or decades.

15:29

Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to ask a brief follow-up of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. He pointed to the ability for the Minister to oversee the schemes. This is written into not this bill but the principal Act, I think, at section 80. That is a reasonably limited power for the Minister to continue to not just review the four schemes—which he’s given himself new powers to do—but the system as a whole, is the power at section 80.

I want to ask him whether he considered advice on establishing regulatory oversight of the system as a whole. That’s not something which is empowered in this system. It is empowered by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission’s framework. When you compare the operation of our schemes, not only are there four schemes instead of the one Australian scheme, but the Australian equivalent of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has an oversight role there and a monitoring role.

It is unclear what the FMA’s role is for all four schemes. Given that they have evolved out of a system which is like a supervisory scheme model—like, the old model where you would have a supervisor of a public trust is what this is designed around, not having a financial regulator like the modern FMA. I just want him to clarify that, given that he’s spoken about the oversight function of the Minister, which is on the four schemes, not in the system as a whole.

15:31

What I was referring to there is pretty much what the member Arena Williams’ select committee, the Finance and Expenditure Committee, suggested I do. That is, I’m not bequeathing myself statutory powers to conduct some oversight, but the select committee asks the Minister, in their report, for the Minister to undertake further analysis of cost-benefits and risks, broad stakeholder consultation, and, potentially, a wider review of the primary Act.

As the member knows, every piece of legislation is always under review. I’m committed to continue to look at the functionality of this piece of legislation going forward.

15:32

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a short question for the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, in clause 4 of this bill, before moving on to other parts, because I think what we’re seeing with new section 79(1)(caa) will be discussed much later in the piece. I want to check with the Minister, because I wasn’t part of the Finance and Expenditure Committee for this. This particular clause has interesting wording, which is whether the requirements prescribed “(if any)” are complied with.

My assumption is that “(if any)” pertains to if the requirements themselves need to be met, as opposed to if there are any requirements. Surely, if you look at new section 79(1)(caa), there are requirements. It’s detailed in there. Can the Minister just confirm that bit of clarification that when we’re looking at “(if any)”, that refers to “if any”—and, again, we’ll discuss the requirements later—of the three requirements in (i) to (iii) that need to be met, as opposed to if there are requirements?

I want to continue on by just checking, and I know that other members—and I see that the Hon Dr Deborah Russell has additional questions for some of these earlier sections as well. I just want to check, in terms of clause 5—now, I’m also noting that when it comes to the withdrawal of approvals, there are additional sections that are being discussed later. I want to check if, other than withdrawal and consideration for approval, any other potential part of the principal Act would actually be affected by the changes we’re seeing in terms of clause 7 with the new sections 67B to 67F. I will start with those two questions, but, of course, there will be lots of questions to come.

15:34

Just before we get too much further into the discussion on this bill, I am going to set that challenge for the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs that I signalled was going to come to him in my second reading speech. I think it is quite important for all those listening at home on a sunny Saturday afternoon—though I know it’s not so sunny in some parts of the country—if the Minister could clarify the different schemes we’re talking about. To be clear, it’s on the first page of the bill as it came from the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I’d like the Minister to clarify the schemes: the Banking Ombudsman Scheme, the Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman, the Financial Services Complaints Limited scheme, and the Financial Dispute Resolution Service; how those schemes differ; and where they overlap, just to give a little bit of guidance to our many, many devoted followers who are listening today.

15:35

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m happy to partake in this pop quiz, largely because we share some Taranaki heritage. Of course, Dr Russell comes from a place called Whangamōmona. So if you were at a Whangamōmona pub quiz in the republic of Whangamōmona, there would be those four questions as to what are those schemes and who do they pertain to, and the table that I sat on would win that quiz, and this is why.

We’ve got the Banking Ombudsman Scheme. Of course, providers that can choose that scheme—it takes into effect most banks. The Insurance & Financial Services Ombudsman—well, that takes insurers and credit providers under its wing. The Financial Services Complaints Limited—well, that encases lenders and financial advisers. The Financial Dispute Resolution Service—well, that also takes into consideration lenders and financial advisers.

15:36

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’ll move on. I just want to take the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to clauses 6 and 7, at the bottom of page 2. Firstly, I want to clarify with him whether it is, in fact, an error that there’s not a deletion of section 67A of the original Act. Section 67A is the provision which deals with mobile traders and other parts of the credit contracts system.

In the bill that we passed this week, there were modifications to ensure that mobile traders were treated by the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), as their regulator, in the same way as other lenders, and that they will not be licensed in a different way or subject to requirements of their services as a whole, they will just be subject to the requirements of lending products.

I want to ask him genuinely: would it be appropriate to vote for the amendment which is a deletion of section 67A? It is not a policy position which is the Labour Party’s policy position. There are some fierce advocates amongst colleagues—one of them, sitting to my left, is Dr Deborah Russell—around the harms of mobile trading and the need for regulation of mobile traders. I’m simply asking him whether it was an oversight because this bill was drafted before his other suite of bills which removed special provisions for mobile traders. This will now be an outlier of those financial markets systems bills which set out the rules of market participants when mobile traders are no longer financial market participants for the purposes of the consumer credit regime.

My other question is at clause 6. The repeal of section 63(1)(q) takes away the general provisions for the Minister to continue to review the schemes. That was a power to delve into them at least every five years, but that had a useful provision in that it had to be done within three months. My question is about whether he has retained the time frame—which is a short time frame—for him to act, because that is a useful thing to have: for the scheme participants to know that if they are going to be reviewed, there will then be a short time frame for a response to that review in whatever form—whether it’s the regulator, whether it’s the Minister, whether it’s Parliament. That was an important part of the way that section 63(1)(q) was operating.

I also just want to ask him, when this bill was first introduced, his predecessor said that there had been a problem with timeliness in the way that these reviews were carried out. I want to ask him whether the removal of the three-month provision is because the timeliness of the reviews was so poor that they were not meeting that time frame. How many reviews actually put the Crown at risk of breaching that provision? Of course, there’s no penalties associated with that provision—nor should there be—but was it the case that there was a sort of widespread slippage of the completion of those reviews? You might imagine that there would be reasons for that—say, in the period 2022-23, when there was a worldwide shortage of auditors, there was considerable slippage in auditing not only of private companies but of public accounts. You can imagine a situation where that would be the norm. It’s important for the public to understand those things because, when you have a statutory requirement for timeliness, just to remove the timeliness doesn’t solve that problem. Obviously, it can exacerbate it. What is the situation going forward in terms of timeliness, Minister? That would be a helpful thing to understand.

Just in the time that I’ve got remaining, I’ll begin on my question around the addition, in the Minister’s new section 67B, under his clause 7, of the independent review of schemes. Firstly, the provision there at new subsection (2) that the notice provides for the manner in which the review must be carried out doesn’t seem to make sense in light of new section 67C. If it doesn’t do that—if it’s only a “may”—then it doesn’t seem to work with the rest of the provisions, which have set out the manner in which it is intended to be given notice. On one hand, we’ve got a provision where the Minister has to give it in writing, but it can be in whatever sort of writing: on biro, like an amendment by me, is sort of fine, but then there is a prescription about how you would give notice. That seems to imply that there might be two ways of giving notice. I just want to ask him whether that also applies within the five-years provision. We’ll come back to that in a minute.

15:41

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m also just waiting for the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs’ response to my previous questions regarding clause 4 and clause 5. I’ve got one more question on clause 5, before I’m ready to move on to some of the substantial sections. But I respect the fact that some of the other members may still have questions between clauses 4 to 6.

I mentioned the changes to what we saw in terms of section 56 amended by clause 5, “Withdrawal of approval”, subclause (3): “In section 56(1)(g), replace ‘section 67’ ” with the addition of inclusion of section 67D(1) and 67F. Now, I do want to check with the Minister that when we are looking at some of the other sections that potentially this relates to—let’s say, if we’re looking at section 77 of the principal Act. It’s always quite exciting when we have an amendment bill, because you can go back and refer and learn more about the principal legislation as well.

Section 79 of that Act, which I know we’ll touch on later, is around regulations made under the Act, but in section 79(1)(da), which is not part of this bill but is an important thing to mention in the context of clause 5(3), it prescribes matters relating to section 67(1)(f) as well, which also includes information that must be provided. I want to check with the Minister that if we’re adding in additional areas like new section 67D(1) and 67F in clause 5(3), was there no requirement that those new sections 67D(1) and 67F would also be inserted as a part of section 79(1)(da) under the regulations made under this Act? Because, again, I would assume that in terms of the overall coherence of this particular legislation in relation to the principal Act, new sections 67D(1) and 67F would also need to be included as a part of the regulations made under the Act. Is there something else that means that those two particular parts are already included or encompassed, or are they not required as a part of section 79(1)(da)? That’s my question to the Minister.

15:44

Mr Chair, thank you. I just want to go back to the previous question and take it from the top, as far as why are we replacing scheme-commissioned independent reviews with Minister-directed independent reviews, which must occur every five years. It’s a very good question. I want to give the committee every assurance that we are replacing the scheme-commissioned reviews with these Minister-directed ones, and we are confident that they will be more robust, more consistent, and genuinely independent reviews, and removing duplication.

The Minister sets the framework for the review, but talking with officials just now, the terms of reference is something that we work with the Minister and the scheme on together. There is a notice period. We are confident that with the intent of this bill to give the Minister more flexibility, this will deliver improved consistency and transparency, while reviewers remain independent and schemes remain operationally autonomous. The independence of the review of each of these schemes strengthens, but the Minister working with each independent dispute resolution scheme will work very closely on setting out those terms of reference and the framework for those reviews.

15:45

Thank you for those answers, Minister. I’m going back to clause 6, amending section 63, removing the requirement for schemes to write their own rules about independent reviews. We had an earlier question about time frames; I’m focused more on the reviews themselves. Until now, each scheme set up how it would be reviewed, and that led to differences of quality, timing, and scope, so from a consumer’s perspective it can feel unfair. You know, why should the oversight depend on which scheme the provider belongs to? This clause says, essentially, “enough of that”.

Reviews will now be driven centrally under a standard approach that should make outcomes easier to compare and easier for the public to understand. At the same time, it does shift power away from the schemes themselves and towards the Minister. That may be justified, but it does mean that independence has to be protected in other ways. I suppose the real-world test will be whether reviews feel robust and fair; not political, not box-ticking, and not overly distant from how the schemes actually operate. So, two questions for the Minister there: what specific problems with the old system led to this change, and how will independence be protected now that reviews are centrally directed?

15:47

Thank you, Mr Chair. All right, I want to come to my main question for new section 67B(2), and it is a question about the terms of reference for review. As I understand it from the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs’ helpful response before, the interaction between 67B and 67C is that the consultation must happen before the review is entered into—those terms of reference must happen. Perhaps the reason why he has phrased this as “The notice may provide for the manner in which the review [happens]” is because there is clearly going to be an understanding between the agency, the Minister, and the complaints scheme. I think that’s fine. We do lose some level of transparency there, if the Minister’s notice simply says, “I’m giving notice of a review and it’s on the terms that we’ve agreed.” There is a sort of lack of transparency there for any consumers who are aggrieved by this particular scheme, but you gain a sense of high-trust engagement between the Minister and the scheme being reviewed.

I want to ask the Minister, then, about how he intends for consumers to get the assurance that they need because of this. I want to refer him to a very helpful piece of advice that financial mentors made public. From January 2025 to January 2026, FinCap surveyed users of the four schemes and calculated their net promoter score. For anyone who is unfamiliar with these measures, a net promoter score is about the number of people who would rate positively or rate negatively any given scheme. I bring this up because the results are revealing. Some schemes utterly fell short of public expectation for a scheme which is, for most people, assumed to be a public scheme and an alternative to the courts. What we must understand here is that this is intended to be something which is quasi-judicial, but for one of the schemes they had a net promoter score of negative 30; others had net zero net promoter scores in January; and then one scheme had a positive net promoter score of 12. There was one scheme out of the three which had a very positive score, but the others fell well short of the expectations of the people who used them.

In 2026, there was an improvement. I would suggest to you, Mr Chair, that the industry was well on notice that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment was conducting these reviews, that there was a process for official feedback, and the net promoter scores became—for two of the schemes—positive 30. That was better than any given scheme in the first year, and there were no schemes with a negative net promoter score.

The reason I raise this with you, Minister, is when the terms of reference are agreed, they don’t have to be public—so they don’t have to include consumer satisfaction, they don’t have to include any information on how easy it is for a consumer advocate to raise issues with the scheme, they don’t have to include information in the review about the hours that it takes for someone to engage with the disputes or the amount that they are paid back inevitably by their lender when things go wrong. None of that is definitely included. This could have been included in the primary legislation. Consumer-friendly legislation in Australia does include terms of reference which make it very clear that the way that the agency will be considered to be successful or not will be on measures like that—about how easy it is to use and how much money is recovered for consumers.

A Government that is interested in making consumers’ lives easier and bringing down the burden of debt for consumers who have entered into consumer credit contracts which are expensive, would be focused on ensuring that those terms of reference, if not set at the primary legislation level—I give the Minister that it’s his right to arrange the legislation in a way which takes that out of his hands, either at the regulation level or within these bespoke arrangements, but they’re not public.

I want to ask him: how do consumers ensure that, in 2025, when most consumers were telling FinCap that we have used these schemes and they are terrible, how do we ensure that the Minister is true to his word that this is going to improve and streamline the experience for the people who have to use these schemes at some of the most vulnerable times in their lives? When they have lost their homes, when they have lost their cars, when somebody they love has got into such debt that they need to declare bankruptcy, what is the insurance that these schemes are going to have terms of references that they are reviewed to his satisfaction, let alone the committee’s?

15:52

Each of these dispute resolution schemes are publishing annual reports, I’m accurately informed. Each of these annual reports—like annual reports are having to reflect on their previous year’s operations and results—will be publicly releasing the key findings of those Minister-directed independent reviews, and so there will be a level of scrutiny there.

As I’ve articulated and as the member pointed to, in new section 67B, inserted by clause 7, how the Minister of the day is to conduct these independent reviews—at least once every five years—is heavily prescribed in statute, as you will see. Also, it is a process of collaboration. If the Minister appoints a reviewer, that appointment must also be made in written notice to the reviewer. There is a very firm process that’s mapped out on the review of these dispute resolution services. As I said at the beginning, reforming it like this will address the wide variation in how schemes have previously been commissioned with their own reviews.

15:54

Thank you so much, Mr Chair. I’ve just got some questions on clause 7. My first question was if the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs wouldn’t mind maybe addressing some of FinCap’s submissions and comments in relation to whether he intends to use the powers under clause 7 to initiate a review that is consistent across all approved schemes. I know that the Minister talked about how consolidation was not in scope of the bill, but I wonder whether clause 7—and what is in clause 7—would be used to initiate a review on whether there should be more than one approved scheme. While I know an amendment to basically consolidate that may be deemed out of scope, I wonder if the Minister intends to use the provisions in clause 7 for the reviews to include whether there should be more than one approved scheme? Because that’s basically what clause 7 would allow the Minister to do. Is that part of what the Minister intends to do with the powers? I mean, that’s up to the Minister, so I’d like his opinion on it.

The second question I have is in relation to the provisions of clause 7, whether the Minister has sought advice or has any views on these sorts of costs that any of these reviews on average could have? Like, are there any fiscal implications—if so, like of conducting these reviews—for the Crown? I would like to know whether there are any costs related to this.

Now, on new section 67B(3), inserted by clause 7, my third question relates to the ability for the Minister to appoint a reviewer “who, in the Minister’s opinion, has the appropriate knowledge, skills, and experience”. What safeguards are there for ensuring that this isn’t sort of a jobs-for-mates kind of arrangement? I mean, the way that it is written, it is simply just “in the Minister’s opinion”, right? I guess the Minister could just say, “Well, it is my opinion that this person has the knowledge, skills, and experience.” But are there any safeguards that the Minister thinks are put in place to ensure that these can be fairly evaluated? This is useful because I would like to trust that the Minister will be robust in—and I would like to take him at his word around—his intention as Minister to appoint someone to be robust and assessing their knowledge, skills, and experience. But a future Minister perhaps could just say, “It’s just my opinion”, and then have no way of anyone else assessing whether that future Minister potentially may have actually done adequate or robust assessment of, say, the person’s skills. That, in and of itself, then undermines public trust in the reviewer’s ability to carry out that work and undermines the provisions in clause 7.

The other question I had was in relation to—and I know the Minister kind of engaged with it a little bit, but on new section 67B(4), inserted by clause 7, that “The appointment must be made by written notice to the reviewer.” Are there any requirements for the Minister to actually seek the agreement of that person? I mean, there’s the notice that has to be given to the reviewer, but I don’t see much in terms of language of saying, “The Minister must receive confirmation that this person is actually interested in doing the work.” I just wanted to know: how would that work? There’s the requirement to notify the reviewer, but is there the reverse of that where the reviewer must notify the Minister that they’re interested?

To recap, I’m interested to know if there are any fiscal implications of conducting the reviews as per clause 7; I’m interested to know what safeguards there are to maintain public trust in how the Minister appoints the reviewers; and also whether the Minister would like to address the calls from FinCap to conduct a review of whether there should be more than one approved scheme. Thank you.

15:58

Look, this is the last time I’ll canvass this, but the member did raise some good points as far as clause 7, and could there be a structural reform within the bounds of that? Clause 7 very much talks about the framework for reviews and, as I’ve touched on from the outset, a potential structural review of the system—i.e., perhaps a consolidation of four dispute resolution schemes down to one—is outside the policy intent of this legislation.

But, as the Finance and Expenditure Committee have asked me and have asked the Minister of the day and they have given an undertaking that the select committee themselves will continue to review this, is that core structural reform, like anything in a legislative sense, is always on a policy agenda to continue to be reviewed—they are living documents—but reducing the number of schemes cannot be achieved within this statute. But that’s not to say that we’re not reviewing it. The select committee have asked me in a macro sense to keep an eye on it and that’s what I’ve given a commitment to do.

On the reviews that the Minister sets, what the Minister of the day sets is the framework. The Minister does not set the outcomes. As far as cost—how is all this funded?—well, the good news is that the dispute resolution services, as is on the explanatory note, is a free service, but the schemes themselves are funded by member fees.

I have to say, members, it’s hard to think how any more questions on folding the four schemes into one would constitute anything other than repetition.

16:00

Thank you, Mr Chair. Just a quick question to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: when he said that the Minister sets frameworks not outcomes, was that a response to question my question about new subsection 67B(2)(c) and the way that the review reference terms will be set, or was it a reference to something else?

I want to take him now to new subsection 67B(3). It’s generally industry standard for the reviewers of these schemes to do several different reviews. They are people who conduct reviews of schemes and disputes in other capacities. That’s a good thing. These are people who are well resourced and have the proficiency to be able to carry out these reviews, but I want to ask him about whether he intends to take that practice forward, or whether he has a different intention about the kind of people that will be appointed as reviewers, given that it’s now firmly within his ambit. The example that I want to put to him is the largest provider of dispute resolution schemes in the last financial year was reviewed by a commissioner of another dispute resolution scheme. So is it his intention that reviews will be conducted by people—

A peer review!

—who are commissioners of other schemes? Yes, a peer review, you might say, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan. You could mount an impassioned argument for why that would be the most efficient way of doing it, but I think in the situation where most consumers are looking at dispute resolution schemes and raising the problems that the Government was responding to in its reviews in 2016 and 2022, it would be quite hard for the Government to step back and say that now that it’s within the provision of the Minister and not with the agency to continue appointments—you know, which are his responsibility; they are not the responsibility of the Public Service, so they have a degree of governance independence, but also politicisation—whatever you say about them, that is the perception. Is it appropriate that members of schemes would then review other members of schemes—whether or not that’s members of dispute schemes for the provision of financial services, the members of dispute schemes for utilities, or the members of dispute schemes for telecommunications, they are all quite a close network of expertise of a specific niche of corporate directors in New Zealand.

And, yes, you could also mount an argument that the corporate director pool in New Zealand is shallow and that there are not many people who could lead this kind of review. Again, the question is about how we make sure that there is a level of robustness and that consumers can see the public good of then lifting up the review provisions to the responsibility of a Minister. It is meant to be more public; it is meant to be more accountable by doing it that way, so is he sure, then, that his appointment provisions should not have an extra part there which says the Minister may appoint, as the reviewer, any person who is not a member of another scheme within the system?

I have presented him with a number of amendments that would also invite him to make a decision to appoint a consumer advocate. This is a different question. It is a question about whether he thinks that the appointment of a consumer advocate, or of FinCap themselves, would be appropriate in the system. The reason for this—obviously, “person” here could mean a natural person or it could mean an organisation or a business. Appointing a body that is in the business, every day, of—it is the financial mentor’s job to spend hours on the phone trying to resolve these disputes efficiently and quickly for the taxpayer and the client, who is the person who is in debt and is trying to raise the dispute. Is it not their expertise, then, to know what schemes are responding appropriately to consumer demand? Is it not the business of these schemes to take the burden out of the courts and out of the taxpayers’ way and make sure that they are properly resourced by the Financial Dispute Resolution Service?

With that lens, it would be obvious that you would want consumer advocates making the decisions about whether disputes resolution schemes were doing their jobs. So I want to ask the Minister, will he consider my amendments which suggest consumer advocates as the appropriate bodies, particularly the amendment which would appoint, essentially, FinCap, or an organisation like FinCap, as the default reviewer going forward?

16:05

Look, the member does well to raise this and I want to reiterate the important difference between scheme-commissioned independent reviews and Minister-directed independent reviews. As officials have noted, that move away from schemes commissioning their own independent reviews of themselves addresses the wide variation in how schemes previously commissioned their own reviews. They are independent reviews. You’re not marking your own homework, but you’re getting four completely different independent reviews that have been commissioned by each scheme and conducted independently rather than ministerial oversight, to be able to set the framework but not the outcomes.

As far as the Minister’s appointment of the reviewer and whether that should then be reviewed, well, I’m reliably informed that at least the key findings of each review will form each scheme’s annual report at the end of each year. And you’re right, it’s put in statute here: “The Minister may appoint as the reviewer any person who, in the Minister’s opinion, has the appropriate knowledge, skills, and experience to carry out the review.” So, yes, that does take some ministerial judgment, but as we have seen across parliaments, most Ministers, when they are appointing the people with the right expertise to oversee an independent review, get it right. If they don’t get it right, then there’s trouble to follow the Minister.

16:07

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few more questions for the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs in new section 67B, inserted by clause 7. I think the Minister has actually answered some of our questions already around review, etc.—my questions are quite separate. The Minister mentioned, multiple times, the fact that the Minister now gets to determine the framework, which I think is a great idea, but I just want to get a better understanding from the Minister of some of the potential questions around what that framework would look like. I’m drawing this from other external evaluation reviews that I myself partook in before, when I was in the private sector, particularly in education, on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.

The first question is when we’re looking, for example, at new section 67B(1), “1 or more approved dispute resolution schemes be carried out”, is there an expectation that all four will be done at different times or all four will be done at the same time? Is that the best value in terms for the information that we’re looking at? That might be being my first question.

The second question is, when we are looking at, let’s say, 67B(2)(a), “when and how the review must be carried out”—and I want to draw attention also to new section 67C. I understand that the Minister must consult with the person responsible for a dispute resolution scheme (DRS) in this case. But I want to check if there’s any consideration around whether that review needs to be, in some ways, premeditated, as in, “We’re going to be going in on 15 July and this is when you’re supposed to have all of it ready.”, or is it able to be conducted more like a spot check, as in, every so often, we may be able to drop in and just say, “Hey, we want to review this scheme today. You need to be able to give it to me right now.” That level of spontaneity also allows for a more robust scrutiny of any sort of dispute resolution scheme or any sort of schemes. We see that, for example, with some of the other potential schemes or other external evaluation reviews as well.

My third question is around new section 67B(5) inserted by clause 7, which is, “The Minister must ensure … at least once every 5 years.” There are two parts to this question. When we are looking at what formerly used to be called the external evaluation review under NZQA—number one—they have a set of categories, right? If you hit the target, you are a category 1 institute, or category 2, 3 or 4, and those categories determine how frequently we’re going to be able to review you. So if you’re a category 1 institute, we will review you once every four years, but, if you drop down to a category 3, we will review you every year until you get back up to a certain category.

Is that tier process something that the Minister has in mind, in terms of a framework—in which case, it’s quite nice, because then all four schemes are on the same page in terms of, essentially, your record and your score card? So I just want to check with the Minister if that’s something that the Minister has considered as part of the framework and whether that would impact or affect how frequently they are going to be subsequently reviewed based on their category.

My final question for the Minister is around new section 67B(2)(e), inserted by clause 7, which is a requirement for the person responsible for the scheme to pay fees. The Minister has already stated that. But I want to check, one of the things—and again, kind of drawing on previously, when we talked about anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism—is around that there’s a tiered fee process because those who are most at risk or more likely to create risk—i.e., banks, in those sorts of systems—will also have a different tiered system in terms of fees.

When we were looking for the fees for the dispute resolution schemes (DRS), for these four, are they all kind of equal pegging in terms of the level of risk they present; or, potentially, would the Banking Ombudsman Scheme be presenting more risk because they’re banking, as opposed to Finance Services Complaints Ltd? Is that a consideration that the Minister had as well?

So those are my questions. Are all of the schemes going to be reviewed at the same time or at different times? Is there consideration around the category system and whether the category would affect how often they are subsequently reviewed? Are they going to be doing spot checks, or are they going to be a very much structured review period? And, in terms of the fees, are there any tiers based on the level of risk each of the DRS presents? Thank you.

The Hon Cameron Brewer.

I move that debate on this question now close.

I haven’t called you, Mr Watts. I called the Hon Cameron Brewer.

But—

But?

16:12

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Watts.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank the member, too, for his engagement on this. He’s after a feel of how this will happen and how these reviews will be commissioned and the frequency of them and can they happen concurrently. Yes, they can happen concurrently. They just have to happen at least once every five years.

Will there be spot checks—kind of racing in there like a food safety inspector? No. As section 67B(1), inserted by clause 7 says, the schemes have to be given written notice to the responsible people who are overseeing that scheme. So there is a written notice period. There’s a lot of good faith in this, and I’m sure that that will be realised.

Just to reiterate: how do we know—what’s the public sunlight on the schemes and what the key findings have been when the reviews have been commissioned by the Minister? You will see—and I might be jumping ahead there—section 68(2)(b): “information about any independent review … if a report on the review was received under section 67E during the financial year;” must be reported on in that financial year annual report. So there is a statutory obligation when the Minister initiates an independent review for the scheme to include the key findings in their annual reports?

I can see from the record that there is repetition. We are going over old ground. I’m going to invite members to talk to new material.

16:14

Thank you so much. I don’t believe that new section 67F has been mentioned. Now, I want to talk about section 67F(2)—this is in clause 7.

I wanted to ask: in this “The person responsible for a scheme must, within 5 working days after giving notice to the Minister, publish the following on an Internet site that is publicly available”, does the Minister intend to explore whether this should be a repository on a Government website—the link to these reports? Because there are multiple schemes, does the Minister intend to, for example, host the information that the schemes must publish online on a Government-collated website to, I guess, increase the accessibility for the public to understand the notice and the report received under section 67A? If not, does he feel like the layperson will be able to actually—and I received principled feedback from people that I know who were actually telling me that they didn’t know that these four schemes existed. I think that the everyday person may not necessarily know that they do exist and how they can actually access them. So does the Minister have any intention of allocating any resources to host these reports on a Government or ministry website at all, and, if not, why not?

Just on that, because that is a good question—

Hang on—the Hon Cameron Brewer.

16:16

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate it.

Slow down.

Thank you. Just the level of excitement from me here, because this is very interesting stuff.

The TV cameras can’t keep up with you.

Yeah. The schemes will be published. They publish the fact that there’s been notice given, and they also publish the report received. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) could link to it as well, and perhaps that’s something that I work with MBIE on, just to give these reports and these reviews the sunlight that they will deserve.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to further explore the answer from the Minister that we’ve just had now around making things publicly available on the website—and this is new section 67F(2): “The person responsible for a scheme must, within 5 working days after giving the notice to the Minister, publish the following on an Internet”—which was lower case, struck out, and replaced with “Internet” with a capital “I”—site that is publicly available”. There are a few questions about this.

The first, really is around the use of language here, because “Internet site” is a very strange way of saying website, so it’s curious language. The other thing is that it says “is publicly available” but then, in brackets, “at all reasonable times”. And so I’m wondering what an unreasonable time to be accessing a website to be looking at that would be or whether that is implying that there could at times be, through no fault of the party responsible, an outage that prevented that resource from being available on a website, which would seem to me an unnecessary inclusion in the bill.

I’m just curious to know what the thinking behind that is and the choice of that language around referring to something as an “Internet site”. I’ve never heard anyone say “Please go to my Internet site and check out X, Y, or Z.” Generally, people will talk about a website or they’ll say, “You can find me on the internet.”, but “Internet site” seems like a term that exists only in this bill. I’ve never seen it anywhere else. But it’s really that question about reasonable times—what that is intended to capture—if the Minister could provide a little more information about that.

The other point I wanted to make was that while we were back in section 67B—and I’m not planning to go backwards here at this point, but we were looking at some of the content in section 67B, particularly around section 67B(3). There was a reference from the Minister about how that connected in with something in future section 68. I just wanted to bookmark for the Minister and, Madam Chair, for you that when we get to that—given that those two pieces of legislation are so connected and do speak to one another—that means we may want to refer back to some of the connectivity within the bill between those two parts. What I wouldn’t want that to be mistaken for is going backwards. It’s certainly not my intention. It is just to ensure that there’s a cohesion between those two parts of the bill.

Primarily, the questions in this point from me are around that choice of language, being “Internet site” rather than “website”, but also what the “at all reasonable times” language is intended to capture—what the Minister is thinking would be an unreasonable time, or just what the intention of that language is.

The member Reuben Davidson, after me just saying, “please provide new material”, repeated the same question on the same issue as the previous speaker. I haven’t got much more tolerance for repetition. Arena Williams, have you got new material?

16:20

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’ll move the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to just a brief question on his replacement section 68, inserted by clause 8 of the bill, on page 4. The provisions at subsection (2)(a), (b), and (c), they don’t include a (d) there, which would have required reporting on consumer care requirements. That is something that arises in two pieces of legislation that he is responsible for, and his advisers will be able to advise him on.

The Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act creates those kinds of reporting requirements for “buy now, pay later”, although those are on pause, and the financial advice providers provisions require them to report annually on their consumer care provisions as well. It’s also a very long-established part of the electricity retailers’ annual reporting components. I want to ask him whether he has considered a new (e) there, which would insert a requirement in the annual reports to give an assurance to consumers that compliance with consumer law and consumer care codes was in place.

I’ll also move him to clause 9(2): after section 69(1), insert new subsection (1A). I want to ask him whether that provision for the timing specified for the Minister should be the old three-month provision. If it’s not the old three-month provision, why not? Was that because the industry wasn’t able to do it in that time frame? And if it’s not going to be three months, then is there a need for a better look at what is included in those reviews, if they are that onerous that someone sufficiently qualified cannot prepare them within three months?

I’ll move him on to also clause 11. This one is the big one that the Finance and Expenditure Committee gave some consideration to. It is around governance probity, and it is one of the most important changes that he is making. It also gives rise to regulation-making powers, which the Regulations Review Committee was able to write to the Finance and Expenditure Committee on. So this is a useful one for him to clarify: the level of independence—what his initial provision was, which required members of the boards to be independent. The committee considered that the better level of independence was the board’s independence.

I want to ask him two things about this. Given that it’s industry practice now that the reviewers of the boards that are initiated by the systems themselves are members of other schemes, how would those other schemes show independence from the board at a board level? Because if a board is independent from the reviewer, then is it the case that no one who is a member of another board which does a similar sort of thing can possibly be independent?

I also want to ask him, then—this is obviously not, then, the ordinary legal meaning of “independence”. Independence usually has a meaning that is defined by conflict, and conflicts are financial conflicts. They are conflicts for you or your spouse or someone who is your dependant or who has an arising financial interest in something that they could be considered to be conflicted by. But if a board has that level of independence, then that’s not what it is. So if we’re stepping outside of the ordinary meaning of independence, has he sought advice on what that would be? If you had, for example—I mean, it’s an ordinary and real example—a board here that was all of the same members administering one scheme and all of the same members administering another scheme, would a conflict arise?

I’ll also ask him my question about the level of independence and probity that he expects now that we’ve set it at the board level—whether he would expect that to be something which was reported on in the annual report as well, the level of independence. Because, before, while he was sort of drawing a line in the sand that excluded any conflict, now he’s accepting a conflict. I think that’s the right call. I have already canvassed that I think there is a shallow pool of directors who are going to be on these boards. We need to accept that New Zealanders deal with this all the time in a professional manner.

But, given that he’s gone from all out to all in, is it appropriate, then, that on the annual reporting side, he would make a provision that would allow the annual report to capture either the conflicts of interest register-level reporting or what the Financial Markets Authority requires, which is a bit more than that, which is the actual transacting. Because where a financial interest arises, I think that’s where he would draw the line to bring them within the regime—given that he’s now pushed all of those conflicts out, bring in the ones where actual financial benefit arises, bring in the ones where actual payments are made by schemes to people who would otherwise be the reviewers but, for some other reason, are members or beneficiaries of financial payments.

16:25

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Minister. I just want to touch on clause 8, the section 68 replacement, because for consumers, transparency is very important and people should be able to see whether a scheme is resolving issues quickly and fairly or whether complaints are stacking up. However, raw data alone doesn’t help most people. What matters is clarity and plain language. If done well, these reports can empower consumers; if not, they just risk becoming a doorstop of paperwork that no one actually reads outside of Wellington. My question on that piece is around: how will these reports be made useful for ordinary people, not just officials?

And then the other piece is it’s not just individuals interacting with these entities. It could be sole traders and small businesses as well. And with yourself, Minister, being the small-business spokesperson, I just wanted to know if there were any specific metrics around small businesses and sole traders that you would like to see inside this annual report.

16:26

At the risk of repeating myself around whether the public can have confidence that there’s going to be enough transparency in the findings of these reviews into the dispute resolution schemes, I point the member to the annual report—section 68(1) and (2), inserted by clause 8—as to the statutory obligations of each scheme to publish the key findings of their annual reports, and that includes the key findings of the actual dispute resolution reviews. So I have given an assurance that there might also be the possibility of putting those dispute resolution reviews—linking them once they’re published—through to the MBIE site. And so there will be a lot of ability for the public to be able to see these independent reviews once they’ve been published.

16:27

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a brief question for the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. I had trouble hearing him, and I think he said that it was his intention—he can give me a nod if he likes: I think you said it was your intention to publish on the website?

Once they’ve been published online, yeah.

Great. OK. Understood. That’s great. I think that settles the question.

The question that I had was just around—I’m at clause 12. It’s still very loud in the Chamber, Madam Chair. I am sorry. I’m at clause 12, where he’s entering a new section 79AAA into the primary Act. My question is: should the validity point point back to his new section 67B, inserted by clause 7?

His new section 67B is requiring him to consult before the review happens. I’m asking him whether—because he’s said “must” not “may”; that’s not something I would have done. But should it still be valid, even if he gets his timing wrong, whereby he’s made notice, say, and has then consulted—it seems to me that given you’ve got these other provisions, Minister, where you’re taking a kind of high-trust model with the scheme providers, wouldn’t it also then be appropriate that if notice provisions, say, of terms of reference were done in the wrong order, the consultation provision wouldn’t be the thing that got in the way of that?

I raise it because consultation provisions for Government have been subject to litigation since bringing litigation against the Government was enabled, and that is one of the things that can trip Governments up. Wouldn’t it be appropriate to just point section 79AAA also to section 67B? It would be a small change.

16:29

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have, for me, one final question on clause 12, new section 79AAA. This is in relation to the letter that was sent to the select committee from the Regulations Review Committee, and this is to do with the breadth of clause 12, which talks about a “failure to comply” with the requirements of section 79(1)(caa). The failure to comply means that nothing in section 79AAA will be affected if they fail to apply to the regulations. That’s to do with the appointment of a person—an act of a board. And the question which potentially may have been responded to—again, I’m not on the Finance and Expenditure Committee. But the question I have—and it’s important to be on the Hansard—is: what, then, is the repercussion if there was a failure to apply? Because it doesn’t invalidate anything. So I have just one simple question for the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs on that.

16:30

The member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan raises a very good point, and it probably needs a full answer, so bear with me.

The failure to comply issue that he’s raised, the rationale for section 79AAA here is that it protects consumers from legal uncertainty and prevents technical challenges to past decisions. It mirrors section 34 of the Crown Entities Act 2004, does not remove consequences, and scheme approval can still be withdrawn under clause 5.

16:31

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Arena Williams’ two tabled amendments to the heading of clause 4, replacing “mandatory” with other words are out of order as not offering a serious alternative form of words.

Dan Rosewarne’s tabled amendment to the heading of clause 4 replacing “mandatory” with “necessary” is out of order as not offering a serious alternative form of words.

The question is that Ingrid Leary’s tabled amendment to clause 5, deleting subclause (1), be agreed to.

The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, deleting subclause (2), be agreed to.

Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 5, deleting subclauses (1) and (2), is out of order as being inconsistent with previous decisions of the committee.

The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 6 be agreed to.

Helen White’s tabled amendment to clause 6 is out of order as being the same in substance as a previous amendment.

The question is that Dan Rosewarne’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(1), replacing “may” with “must” be agreed to.

The question is that Dan Rosewarne’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(1), replacing “may” with “must” and “1 or more” with “2 or more” be agreed to.

The question is that Ingrid Leary’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(1), making reviews mandatory unless there are good reasons not to, be agreed to.

Dan Rosewarne’s remaining tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(1), is out of order as being the same in substance as a previous amendment.

Ingrid Leary’s remaining tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(1), is out of order as being the same in substance as a previous amendment.

The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(2) replacing “may” with “must” be agreed to.

The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(2) replacing “may” with “must where reasonable” be agreed to.

Dan Rosewarne’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(2) replacing “may” with “ought to” is out of order as not offering a serious alternative form of words.

The question is that Dan Rosewarne’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(2) inserting paragraph (f) be agreed to.

The question is that Ingrid Leary’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(2) inserting paragraph (f) be agreed to.

Members, we have 20 tabled amendments to clause 7, new section 67B(3) replacing the word “person” with different terms. I’ll put the question on four of those amendments to test the will of the committee.

The question is that Arena Williams’ tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(3) replacing “person” with “consumer advocate” be agreed to.

The question is that Dan Rosewarne’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(3) replacing “person” with “reasonably capable and financially literate adviser” be agreed to.

The question is that Ingrid Leary’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(3) replacing “person” with “person who has recognised financial skills” be agreed to.

The question is that Lemauga Lydia Sosene’s tabled amendment to clause 7, new section 67B(3) replacing “person” with “financial adviser” be agreed to.