SpeechHon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): The member is obviously energised about this particular aspect of the bill. I will repeat for him—he has commented that I made only short comments. It's because I've said these things before and I had taken it that the member had engaged with the early material but I'm happy to repeat for the member my comments and for the record because I think if that is a thing that's energising the member let's put it on the record. So this is about the safe harbour provisions for some intellectual property arrangements. Now the bill would remove the three provisions that prevent scrutiny of certain conduct when it involves intellectual property. The provisions are out of date as the member has challenged—that on its own is not a sufficient ground. That's shorthand for the reasons that I will give now. They reflect a legacy of discredited thinking and if you want to put them in the vernacular basically they cause confusion and ultimately they prevent scrutiny of conduct which raises genuine competition concerns. So I do want to make it totally clear. I recognise the importance of providing business with the confidence to invest in the development of intellectual property and actively make it available to markets. So I just want to make that clear to the member. Robust intellectual property rights incentivise innovation making them complementary I would argue to competition law. Therefore it's redundant to have carve-outs for intellectual property. Most intellectual property arrangements are helpful to the competitive process but it does not mean that they should be immune to scrutiny under competition law. The safe harbours make a universal assumption as they stand now that certain practices will never be anti-competitive just because they relate to intellectual property. So that's where the current law stands. And it's a very bold assumption and one that undermines the integrity of our competition law—again other members believe that without safe harbours the Act will over-penalise and over-deter certain conduct. We can see from the departmental report that officials have made a careful study and that that study challenges any such view. I would argue intellectual property arrangements should be subject to the same scrutiny as any other type of property arrangements. At the very least I suggest we can be confident this policy will produce far fewer errors than the universal assumption that some conduct is never anti-competitive simply because it involves intellectual property. So again I want to stress the importance of the guidelines that the Commerce Commission will update to support intellectual property owners to realistically assess their obligations. I expect these guidelines to be detailed and provide assurance and clarity for the business community as indeed similar guidelines in Australia have done for the community there and I know from speaking to people that they've taken comfort in their particular approach. I do want to thank submitters who've written to me for pointing out the benefit of those guidelines in Australia because they have come down and taken the concern away from those that initially had it. Now the member I'm sure is going to again repeat arguments in this area. I just want to let the committee know because I've addressed these quite thoroughly a couple of times that if he raises the same issues again I'm not going to leap to my feet every time. If there are other areas of the bill he wants to scrutinise of course I'm very open to that.