The bill repeals the Business Payment Practices Act 2023 and revokes the secondary legislation made under it, ending the planned reporting regime before it took effect.
Parliament advanced this bill under urgency (committee of whole house, first reading, second reading, third reading) — moving it through faster than usual, with less time than normal for public submissions.
These are claims MPs made in Parliament’s debate — not verified facts.
This bill repeals the Business Payment Practices Act 2023, which had established a mandatory disclosure regime. Under that scheme, large businesses above a size threshold had to register and publicly report how promptly they paid their suppliers' invoices. Repealing the Act removes that reporting obligation and dismantles the associated public register. It affects large companies that would otherwise have to disclose their payment times, and the small-business suppliers the disclosure scheme was intended to help.
It is a government bill that repeals a named Act (the Business Payment Practices Act 2023) before its reporting regime became fully operational. The argument in favour is that the scheme imposed compliance costs and administrative burden on business without clear evidence it would actually speed up payments, and that market and voluntary approaches are enough. The argument against is that slow payment squeezes small suppliers' cash flow, and public transparency about poor payers was a low-cost way to pressure large firms into paying on time.
See the Parliament.nz ↗ site for the full bill.