Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Madam Chair. While we're awaiting the Minister's reply to my colleague Andrew Bayly's very important questions perhaps he could also turn his mind to this. As I've read Part 4 it is very clear that there is this Māori Plant Varieties Committee which has a veto power over the plant variety rights applications. Now looking at that too what is indigenous and what is covered in this is indigenous—well no doubt there is a set number of indigenous plants that we can all agree were here without human intervention or have turned up like that and then there are the ones that are covered because they came on waka before 1776 and that's very clear from the bill. So we should have an exact number of those with their names and the Minister has read out a list which I understand are the ones he says are going to be in the regulations which will fall under this. So if there's a set number then why aren't they in the Act? It's not as though we are really expecting that there's going to be another plant variety discovered that no one has worked out was there since 1776 so I think Andrew Bayly has got a very good point: if it's a finite number and a finite list then why isn't it in the primary legislation? We know that the regulations normally are where there are things that there are going to be changes to. Are we seriously anticipating there will be changes to this? Then the other point that I would ask the Minister to give thought to is: are we going to be stuck with the law of unintended consequences? So if we take kūmara which he has referred to and which we know came on waka with Māori when they came to New Zealand they came from somewhere else. So there are kūmara elsewhere. They were brought here and are very important to the culture of Māori and I think of many New Zealanders who are non-Māori. Having said that we know that kūmara or another name for what we would call kūmara are elsewhere in the world and there is from what I can see from this nothing to stop people in the plant-breeding business in say Australia or Peru producing and looking for new ways of making plant varieties of kūmara while New Zealanders here in this land that values kūmara so much could be perhaps prevented from moving forward and discovering and creating new varieties. I wonder if it is one of the unintended consequences that New Zealand could be kept in a time warp around products or very important plant varieties to us—what is the term that's being used—Andrew Bayly: Non-indigenous species.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —non-indigenous but significant plant varieties—while other jurisdictions who do not consider those plant varieties as so significant that they can't be changed or can't have rights granted in them might charge ahead and come up with varieties that are pest-free that are pest-resistant that are able to grow with little water and all these sorts of things and New Zealand is left sitting there saying In this era of climate change and all the effects of that do we have to import the stock from Australia?" There's that situation and so I'd like to hear from the Minister on that as well. So I back up Andrew Bayly and I'd ask that other question. Thank you Madam Chair."