Tizard Judith: Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Bill — First Reading 
Tizard Judith: Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:648;Page:17221] 
Hon JUDITH TIZARD (Associate Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage) 
: 
 I move  
That the Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Bill be now read a first time. 
 At an appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Government Administration Committee and that the committee report finally to the House on or before 22 August 2008. 
The Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Bill will establish a scheme that makes payments to New Zealand authors in recognition of their books being available for use in New Zealand libraries. As Associate Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage it is my pleasure to introduce this bill which gives legal recognition and support to New Zealand authors. As Minister responsible for the National Library of New Zealand I applaud the acknowledgment the bill makes of the public benefit of having New Zealand authors’ books widely available to New Zealanders through libraries. 
The bill will establish a new scheme to replace the New Zealand Authors’ Fund currently administered by Creative New Zealand under section 31 of the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Act. The bill repeals section 31 of that Act. The Authors’ Fund was established by a Cabinet minute on 2 July 1973. It approved “the establishment of a scheme for making payments to authors for the library use of their work”. This scheme had been foreshadowed in the Labour Party manifesto in 1969 and 1972 and was originally I understand the idea of Professor Keith Sinclair who was a Labour Party candidate in 1969. In 1972 the then Prime Minister Norman Kirk said: “one of the purposes of the public lending right is to make it possible for authors’ earnings to be increased to a point where they could provide authors with time to put into writing.” 
New Zealand was the first English-speaking country to introduce such a scheme. The fund was administered by the Department of Internal Affairs until it was transferred in 1991 to the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand now of course Creative New Zealand. The Hon Doug Graham in creating the organisation that became Creative New Zealand had proposed that the Authors’ Fund would be taken up or indeed lapse—as he said to me it would—under that organisation. So basically he had proposed that it would die. 
In 2000 it was then put into the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Act through the work of Richard Northey the Hon Christine Fletcher and me and I am very proud of the fact that the Authors’ Fund exists today because those members of Parliament decided to take that action. So we received the Authors’ Fund in the form it is and in 2002 the Government topped up the fund by half a million dollars with the assistance of the Green Party. I acknowledge the work that Sue Bradford did in enabling that extra funding to come into the Authors’ Fund. There was also of course other money allocated which was used to promote books and New Zealand writing in other ways. 
Under the Authors’ Fund authors have the expectation of payment rather than explicit entitlement to payment based on the library holdings of their work. The available fund is divided amongst eligible authors and is on the basis of the number of books held in libraries and as the number of authors and the number of books have increased the book rate has gone down. This situation and the lack of clarity around the entitlement or expectation has developed and the Government’s specific purpose in funding this scheme to provide for these payments needs to be clarified. Section 31 of Creative New Zealand’s legislation follows the 1973 Cabinet minute and states that the purpose of the scheme is to provide compensation for loss of royalties as a result of books being available in New Zealand libraries. However such loss is very difficult to quantify. Payments under the scheme represent compensation in only the broadest sense. In reality payments have come to be seen by authors as a justified income stream and a form of recompense to which they are entitled as fair payment for allowing their works which often have taken years of research writing illustrating and developing to be available for wide public use in libraries without every individual having to buy a copy. 
Mandating the current scheme within Creative New Zealand’s legislation and requiring that agency to fund and administer it has proved an uneasy fit on occasions. The New Zealand Authors’ Fund provides payments from a set fund to authors who are registered for the scheme based on eligibility criteria. Creative New Zealand’s core business on the other hand is to disperse its funding through application-driven processes contestable funding decisions based on merit and its own strategic priorities for the development and expression of the arts across New Zealand at arms length from the Government. Creative New Zealand supports the transfer of the Authors’ Fund from its responsibility. 
In line with comparable schemes overseas such as those in the UK and Australia the bill establishes a public lending right scheme that recognises there is a public benefit for the use of books in public libraries for which authors deserve and should be entitled to payment. Internationally there are 28 such schemes. In line with international practice the bill does not include in the scheme non-book material held in libraries such as CD-Roms audio tapes music scores on-line services videos or CDs. We are willing to consider this issue further and will if convinced include such material in future policy. 
There has been an ongoing call for stand-alone legislation to give clear direction on the scope eligibility criteria and administration of the public lending right scheme to replace the current legislative arrangement for the New Zealand Authors’ Fund. Providing for the scheme within stand-alone legislation will give the public lending right statutory protection and reduce the risk of it being abolished. Stand-alone legislation would also bring New Zealand in line with comparable arrangements in Australia and the United Kingdom. 
The provisions of the bill reflect calls from authors and take account of a major review of the Authors’ Fund that was completed in the year 2000. This followed the Labour Party’s 1999 manifesto commitment to “develop a satisfactory statutory basis for administration of the Authors’ Fund in consultation with authors and Creative New Zealand;” and to “work towards a book rate that properly compensates authors for loss of royalties”. I recognise that this process has taken rather longer than I had thought when I put those words into the Labour Party manifesto in 1999 but I would also argue that this Government has done a great deal for authors and literature across New Zealand of which I am very proud. This bill has been developed with input from representatives of the New Zealand Society of Authors and many others. 
The details of where the newly established public lending right scheme will be administered are a matter for debate and I would expect submissions to discuss this. Both the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the National Library have been suggested. Both have advantages but may have conflicts. My preference is not to establish a stand-alone organisation as this will always be a comparatively small fund and we want as much of the money as possible to go to authors. 
Until now the New Zealand Authors’ Fund guidelines were issued from time to time with no required consultation with authors or with the Minister. The bill requires regulations to determine the criteria on which authors books and libraries are to be included in the scheme and changes to legislation will be subject to both consultation with an advisory group established for the scheme and recommendation from the responsible Minister to the Governor-General. 
The bill requires the chief executive of the administering department to appoint an advisory group in consultation with the responsible Minister and the advisory group will consist of representatives of authors and librarians employees of relevant Government departments and others who have appropriate experience knowledge and skills. The establishment of such a group is something that authors have strongly advocated. The responsible department will make annual payments under the scheme in accordance with the regulations and each registered author will receive an annual payment based on a book rate that represents an amount payable per copy of eligible titles held in New Zealand libraries. 
The amount of funding available to the scheme will be subject to the usual Budget cycle processes. In May 2008 the Prime Minister the Rt Hon Helen Clark who is also of course the Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage announced that an additional $2 million will be added to the Authors’ Fund over the next 4 years raising its current annual funding to $2 million. The Authors’ Fund will continue to operate as currently administered by Creative New Zealand until the date the Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Act comes into force. 
The bill gives recognition to the vital contribution that New Zealand authors make to the Government’s cultural provision. As a comparatively small market of 4.2 million people New Zealand will not be able to support all writers to write full-time without significant exporting of New Zealand literature in spite of the very high rate at which we buy and read books especially New Zealand books. By establishing a public lending right there is a clear recognition of the entitlement to rather than the expectation of payment to authors for the books they write that are read across New Zealand. I also note that we are about to see the only district in New Zealand without a public library the Chatham Islands get one which will mean that every New Zealander will have a library. 
I am grateful to all of the parties that have given their support to this bill and I urge them to support the first reading and the bill’s referral to the Government Administration Committee for the calling and hearing of submissions and further consideration. I commend this bill to the House.