Tanczos Nandor: Major Events Management Bill — First Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Major Events Management Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:637;Page:7501] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 I rise to give a fairly brief contribution to the debate on behalf of the Green Party and to say that although we will be supporting this bill going to a select committee we will not commit ourselves to any support beyond that. It depends on what comes out of the committee. So although we will support this reading we have a few difficulties with the bill that we think it would be useful for the House to address particularly in the select committee. 
I have listened to the debate so far and heard a lot of talk about the disagreeable nature of ambush marketing. I do not think there is a lot of disagreement about that. It certainly seems quite wrong for a company that has contributed nothing to an event by way of sponsorship or support in any way to be able to hijack the event for its own promotional purposes and make a profit from the promotional opportunities it gets out of it. That seems quite wrong. 
Having said that I have to say I have a little bit of sympathy for some of the small guys. It is one thing to talk about Nike versus Reebok for example but I have a little bit of sympathy for New Zealand small-business operators who certainly do contribute to such events through their tax dollars and who for those who are local suffer all kinds of inconvenience and hassle. They do not benefit particularly from the event because a lot of the commercial opportunities are gobbled up by the big players. If the legislation does pass I hope to see the enforcement agencies show some discretion with the idea that the legislation should be used to target large commercial operators and a little bit of leeway given to some smaller businesses. 
So we heard a lot about how disagreeable ambush marketing is and how it is a terrible thing. Chris Tremaine gave us a long list of examples of how ambush marketing has been used in the past and I do not think that any of us would say that it is not disagreeable. The question for us as parliamentarians though is whether this bill is a proportionate response to the problem. This House has a longstanding reputation and history of passing wildly inappropriate legislation in order to crush a minor problem 
The foreshore and seabed legislation is a very good example. We were talking about that in the House today during question time. Questions from the Maori Party very clearly demonstrated to us once again that we had a potential in a court finding and the extent of the rights recognised by the court had yet to be tested. We had yet to see how large an area would even be covered by any future court findings. We had no idea of that and the Government introduced a massive confiscation the likes of which we have not seen for over a century in many parts of the country in order to stamp on that. That is just one example of the kind of wildly disproportionate legislation we pass in this Parliament all the time. 
My question is not whether ambush marketing is a bad thing—not whether we disapprove of ambush marketing—it is whether this legislation is proportionate to the problem we are trying to address. I think it is something to which we should give a lot of consideration and it is something I do have some concerns about. We know that it is politically useful for the Government to be passing this legislation but is it good law? We know the real reason for the talk about fairness and whatever. The real reason we are passing this legislation is so we can make sure we lock down the Rugby World Cup and the commitments that have been made in order to secure that event. That is what this is really about. So let us be clear about that in the debate we are having. 
The Green Party has a few difficulties with the bill and I would like to touch briefly upon a couple of them. There will be an opportunity to deal with these difficulties in much more detail in later stages of the debate. I go first of all to clause 4 the “Interpretation”. This bill is an attempt to stop commercial operators promoting an association between their products or services and the event in question. We see that “association” means “a relationship of connection whether direct or implied”. The phrase “direct or implied” is kind of interesting because we are talking about not just people who make a direct blatant claim that their product is in some way associated with the event. “Implied” is a pretty ambiguous term and can cover a wide range of goods and services that are being quite legitimately promoted. So I think we have to look very carefully at the scope of the kinds of promotions that are covered by this legislation. 
The same section states that “association” includes “offering giving away or selling a ticket to a major event activity in connection with the promotion of goods or services”. So for example it seems to me that a radio station could not even give away a ticket because inevitably that would be a promotion for its own radio station. So a radio station could not give away tickets to an All Black game because it would be forbidden from doing so by this definition of “association”. That is something we should think very carefully about. Is that what we are trying to cover? Is that what we are trying to capture by means of this legislation? I am not sure despite all the talk about Reebok and Nike whether that is actually what we are trying to get at. 
I move on to Part 2 “Declaration of major event and protections for major events”. This part does not cover all events but simply ones that have been declared to be major events by Order in Council—by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the Minister for Economic Development after consultation with the Minister of Commerce and the Minister for Sport and Recreation. So they can declare that an event is a major event then the bill covers that event. 
We would like to see something added to this part because one of the conditions in relation to declaring an event to be major is that the Minister must be satisfied that the event organiser has the capacity and the intention to successfully and professionally stage and manage the event. One of the things it would make sense to say in a world where climate change is happening as a result of human activity—it is something that is on the political agenda and the Prime Minister has talked about us being carbon neutral—is that professionally and successfully staging and managing an event includes the condition that it has to be carbon neutral and a zero waste event. Surely in today’s world that should be a criterion for successfully and professionally managing an event. It seems quite sensible that that criterion would be put in here because if the draconian aspects or powers contained in this bill are to be brought to bear and we are passing law to protect commercial interests there has to be some balance in that and there has to be something going back the other way. 
It is interesting that in declaring a major event the Governor-General also has the ability to declare “a major event emblems and words”. The Governor-General can declare “any or all of the following: (a) an emblem to be a major event emblem: (b) a word words if combined with other words or a combination of words to be a major event word or major event words.” That provision goes far beyond trade-marking legislation. Again we are seeing a pretty broad application of legislation protecting commercial interests and we have to give it some real consideration if we want to cast the net as broadly as that. 
Clause 7(3) states: “Before making a recommendation the Minister for Economic Development must take into account the extent to which in relation to the major event emblems and words require protection in order to—(a) obtain maximum benefits for New Zealanders: (b) prevent unauthorised commercial exploitation at the expense of either a major event organiser or a major event sponsor.” So this is all about protecting commercial interest. There is no balancing there there is no test of reasonableness and there is no test of whether that infringes the rights of other operators. 
It seems to me that this is wildly unbalanced legislation. It contains some pretty draconian and wide-reaching elements and we need to give serious consideration as to how we can tighten up the scope of this bill.