Consumer Guarantees Amendment Bill

Consumer Guarantees Amendment Bill
Te Ururoa Flavell, MP for Waiariki, First Reading
Wednesday 21 July 2010;

Tēnā nō tātou katoa e te Whare. A simple browse of today’s TradeMe listings on Māori heritage would yield the following classic finds: with a starting price of $6, I could buy a vintage stereoscopic postcard of Māori children in Rotorua. It is a used postcard posted on 3 September 1906 with a genuine message on the back. For a dollar more, I could get another postcard called “In the Ngawhas, Whakarewarewa”. It is described as “In excellent condition.” For the mighty starting price of $12.50, I could buy the postcard known as “A Haka for a Penny”, featuring the children of Ōhinemutu, and categorised as a “Nice tidy piece of historical significance.”

All of these examples are from my electorate and my home town of Rotorua, which is the home town of the Hon Steve Chadwick as well. The problem is that from the luxury of our computer seat how do we know whether we are getting a good deal. How reliable is the classification of the stereoscopic postcard? Is it really 3-D or is the illusion of depth just a marketing technique? What does it mean to be in: “Excellent used condition”? Without a trademark in sight, how can we guarantee that a post card is really a tidy piece of historical significance or just a big huge rip off?

The Consumer Guarantees Amendment Bill is about giving us some confidence about the supply of goods and services by a supplier through competitive online bidding, such as with TradeMe. We of the Māori Party support the concept of safer trading using online auction websites, and the assurances that purchases of goods and services through online auctions will be protected under the Consumer Guarantees Act.
We are also pleased that this bill will require transparency on the benefits of extended warranties. From time to time some might ask how the key kaupapa of the Māori Party fit with these sorts of bills. We have rangatiratanga, kaitiakitanga, and manaakitangi, and those are values which promote excellence, accountability, and transparency. We support the notion inherent in this bill that consumers should be informed about whether any extended warranty they are considering purchasing provides any benefit, right, or convenience.

One of the issues that does create some debate amongst many Māori is the cultural authenticity of objects listed in online auctions or competitive tender. Under the Protected Objects Act of 1975 it is an offence to sell taonga tūturu—in other words, Māori cultural objects—to people other than registered collectors, public museums, and licensed dealers. It states that there should be up-front a banned and restricted items section, for example on TradeMe sites.

The question we have is about who monitors the vast range of products for sale on sites such as TradeMe. The bill requires that retailers who are offering extended warranties to consumers must fully inform the consumer about the benefits of that warranty. I remember a couple of years ago a huge furore broke out about a set of wooden stacking Māori dolls, which were selling for up to $35 a set at souvenir and gift stores around Aotearoa. Aroha Mead, a senior lecturer in Māori Studies at Victoria University said that the dolls were an insult to traditional artists. They were basically a derivative of an original Russian doll, but made in China.

The key question is whether this bill will do anything to improve the extended warranty one might get for products such as those. In closing I note that the concept of an extended warranty is frequently applied to hire purchase agreements for vehicle sales. We know that many of our *low-income communities, and particularly Māori and Pacific communities are often encouraged to sign up to these hire purchase agreements as a way of being able to buy up-front without needing to show the cash. It is an issue that will come up again of course, in particular with the next bill that is to be debated, namely the “Loan Sharks Bill”, but suffice it to say that we support the concept of increasing accountability and transparency of any of these transactions. The Māori Party is pleased to say that we will be supporting this bill’s referral to select committee.

ENDS