Carter David: Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Carter David: Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:642;Page:11949] 
Hon DAVID CARTER (National) 
: 
 I just want to make one more comment on the two points that have been raised by my colleagues Shane Ardern and Eric Roy. I support them both. Shane Ardern was talking about this issue around data protection and then Eric Roy followed on saying that above all we need to maintain a firm hand on compliance costs and the costs of the products involved within New Zealand agriculture.  
The really interesting dichotomy with those two issues is around data protection. We had only six submissions on this legislation and from memory I think four appeared before the Primary Production Committee. All four raised the issue of data protection. I think the select committee was let off the hook a bit in that the whole issue was outside the scope of the bill so we were able to listen to the arguments and then were not able to take the matter any further.  
If we think about one of the most pressing issues facing New Zealand agriculture we will find that it is actually around resistance to anthelmintics—and to help Hansard out that is commonly known as drench resistance. Livestock within New Zealand are building up quite a resistance to the current three families of drenches and there has been a recent quite far-reaching announcement from an overseas country that it has found a fourth family of drench that could be available to break the cycle of resistance that is fast starting to impede agriculture. The interesting question then about a company trying to bring in new products such as this drench into New Zealand is it wants protection so that it gets a lead making it worthwhile to bring the product in and it gets a competitive advantage. It is natural business practice; one would expect it.  
In New Zealand we have data protection for 5 years and the select committee heard that in other jurisdictions—for example Australia the United States and in fact in most of the Western World—the amount of data protection is considerably more than 5 years. We were quoted 8 years and 10 years. I am aware that the Government is aware of the issue—though the Minister may not be—and it has put together an inter-Government committee to look at it which includes officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry the Ministry for the Environment and certainly the Ministry of Economic Development.  
But the real issue is making sure that we have a significant period of data protection available for companies to warrant bringing these new products into our market which is not the biggest market in the world. But as soon as we give this data protection it will inevitably mean that other competitors are not in the market. Suddenly as Mr Roy alluded to the costs of remedies will then go up to the farmers and farmers in New Zealand cannot have it both ways. 
 Obviously the cheapest way to get the product to New Zealand is to have as many people as possible able to bring it in for other people to be able effectively to “steal” the data protection and get that product copied or similar and out into the market as quickly as possible. That delivers the cheapest product to the New Zealand farmer. But the risk is that if we go that way then there may be countries that say New Zealand is too small a market and that they will not go through the rigmarole of trying to get a product into New Zealand because of there being other sizable markets where they would be better off devoting their energies.  
I will be interested as to whether the Minister wants to make a comment on those big issues that were before the select committee. We were spared the difficulty of having to work through and balance the two criteria because as Mr Ardern alluded earlier it was actually outside the scope of the bill. But it is still an issue either for this Government in its dying days or for the next National Government after the 2008 election.