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John Duffy: Consumer NZ Chief Executive comments on increased fines for breaching the Fair Trading Act · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: Change coming for those who reach the Fair Trading Act
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  Speaker 2: finds will increase from six hundred thousand dollars to five million.
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  Speaker 2: Cases are going to move from criminal to similar reason
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  Speaker 2: for that is it's easier prosecution, or so they claim.
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  Speaker 2: John Duffy is Consuming New Zealand's Chief executive and will
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  Speaker 2: us John Morning.
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  Speaker 3: Morning, Mike.
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  Speaker 2: Good move, great move, fantastic move. What sort of move
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  Speaker 2: is it?
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  Speaker 3: It's pretty good. It's probably one of the most consequential
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  Speaker 3: reforms of the Fair Trading Act in a generation. But
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  Speaker 3: as with everything, it wasn't quite everything that consumer advocates
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  Speaker 3: were looking for. But the changes to the penalty regime
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  Speaker 3: very good, very pleased.
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  Speaker 2: Will it be a deterrant.
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  Speaker 3: I think so for more companies. There will always be
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  Speaker 3: those companies, you know, big multinationals with deep pockets. Five
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  Speaker 3: million dollars is still a drop in the bucket for
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  Speaker 3: those types of companies. If you compare it to Australia,
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  Speaker 3: they're maximum penalties fifty million Australian dollars. But for kind
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  Speaker 3: of medium sized and domestically located companies. This is a
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  Speaker 3: serious deterrent.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, right, would you cite Australia as an example of
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  Speaker 2: something that does work or not?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, I think the regulator there has real teeth.
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  Speaker 3: And that's not to say our regulator is not doing
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  Speaker 3: a good job. It's to say that the HBC in
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  Speaker 3: Australia is armed with the right tools, and they have
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  Speaker 3: a broader range of tools beyond just big fines. They
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  Speaker 3: can issue infringement notices, They have unfair contract provisions that
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  Speaker 3: can be more easily enforced than the ones here in
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  Speaker 3: New Zealand, so that there's a range of other tools
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  Speaker 3: they have. But this will certainly help embolden our Comics Comission.
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  Speaker 3: We think particularly the move from criminal to civil And.
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  Speaker 2: So are these mistakes or is this deliberate behavior? In general.
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  Speaker 3: It can be both, but typically where you have a
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  Speaker 3: business making it genuine error, they will have a potentially
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  Speaker 3: have a defense under the fear trading active of reasonable mistake.
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  Speaker 3: And also sure they might make a mistake. They might
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  Speaker 3: have put out some misleading advertising something like that. Consumers
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  Speaker 3: may have suffered some instrument typically that would be reflected
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  Speaker 3: in any fine that the court imposed, they'd look at
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  Speaker 3: the circumstances of the case and go, actually, this is
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  Speaker 3: at the mild end of the spectrum. We're not going
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  Speaker 3: to give a five million dollar fine. We might give
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  Speaker 3: something lower, but for that really deliberate, intentional stuff, having
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  Speaker 3: a five million dollar fine possible should be a real deterrent, all.
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  Speaker 2: Right, John, appreciate it, John Duffy, who's the Consumer's Chief executive.
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