Prosser Richard: Geographical Indications (Wine and Spirits) Registration Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Geographical Indications (Wine and Spirits) Registration Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 17 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9907. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call in this first reading of the Geographical Indications (Wine and Spirits) Registration Amendment Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill’s referral to the select committee. This is an area of particular interest to me being a winemaker by trade and I am sure it will be of particular interest to Mr Stuart Smith when we come to consider the bill at the Primary Production Committee under the most able and affable chairmanship of Mr McKelvie.Good things take time and good wine is no exception. It would seem—or at least I would hope because it certainly seems the case—that good legislation is no exception either. I say that because the genesis of this amendment bill lies in the primary Act which is the Geographical Indications (Wine and Spirits) Registration Act 2006. The explanatory note of this bill says that the primary Act was enacted in 2006 but never brought into force. I am grateful for the explanation that Mr Smith gave about the reasons why it was not enacted at the time because it did seem a little bit like making hay while the sun was shining. I wondered whether perhaps back in 2006 things were going so well that Parliament was not very busy. Maybe the House was up to speed with everything and the Government did not have much to do and on that basis it thought it could enact a few laws and just have them on the back-burner waiting to be brought into force if and when there was a rainy day and it needed to be done in a hurry. But I digress a little.The Act was never brought into force and now that it is about to be we have discovered that there are a few things that are not quite right with it. There are things that need to be remedied and brought up to speed as it were before we bring the Act out of mothballs dust it off and fire it up. Hence we are here debating this amendment bill. It is not a monumental piece of legislation. It is not going to set the world on fire. I very much doubt that the 6 o’clock news on either channel will run this as a headline.Hon David Cunliffe: Well I don’t know.RICHARD PROSSER: Well you say that but you never know.Hon David Cunliffe: It’s been a quiet week.RICHARD PROSSER: It has not been that quiet I think. But nevertheless it is an important piece of legislation and it is important that we get it right. So to do that we need to understand why it has come about and what the reasoning and purposes for it are. We will pull all this to bits again in the select committee. We will examine the entrails of the original legislation and so forth.But there is no substitute for going back to the beginning. When I discovered that the Act had been lurking around for 10 years my curiosity was piqued somewhat. So I went back into the archives. I went back and had a look at the Hansard from when the original legislation was introduced. It is intriguing looking back 10 years into Hansard and seeing some of the names that pop out of the pages. Some who have been in the House a long time will remember them and many who were outside the House but followed the proceedings of the House will remember them. They are names that were household names back then walking the corridors of power and so many of them are not here any more but some still are.The Hon Judith Tizard was the Associate Minister of Commerce at the time and moved the original bill back in December 2005. It was 13 December which quite by coincidence—at least I imagine it is by coincidence—was the 363rd anniversary of the day that Abel Tasman first sighted New Zealand. I mention this because it would not have occurred to Captain Tasman back then that perhaps three and a half centuries later the legislature of the islands that he was looking at for the first time would be debating a bill to give recognition to geographical indications of areas that might possibly be bearing his name. I doubt that the Hon Judith Tizard gave that possibility very much thought either. In fact her speech from the files of Hansard gives no indication that that may have been the case.She did however outline the purpose of the bill which was “to put in place a modern efficient and cost-effective process for the registration of geographical indications of wines and spirits which both serves the purposes of our industries and meets our obligations under the TRIPs agreement.” The TRIPs agreement is the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of International Property Rights. The Minister went on to outline quite a bit more about what the bill was intended for and why it would be a very good thing for Parliament to pass it.It was not to everyone’s satisfaction I have to say because she was followed by a certain Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith who began his contribution by expressing frustration at what he perceived was the Minister’s lack of understanding of the bill. He chastised her in the inimitable way that Dr Smith did—and I presume still does—for gabbling and for not having the “faintest notion” of what the bill was about. He roundly castigated her for her lack of proper pronunciation. Mr Assistant Speaker I am sure you will appreciate as will others in the House that when you have been castigated by Lockwood Smith for improper pronunciation you certainly know you have been castigated.But he did support the bill. He expressed the National Opposition’s support for it—get used to that term gentlemen—as did Mr Doug Woolerton from the New Zealand First Party in his inimitable laconic style and also Keith Locke and Shane Jones but not the Māori Party. I found this quite intriguing. Before he was an “Hon” Dr Pita Sharples railed against the bill. He said that it breached the Treaty. He began his speech actually by saying it was going to contribute to the extermination of the tuatara. It all seemed to make sense as his speech unfolded. He proclaimed that his party’s opposition to the bill was on the basis of the recognition of tino rangatiratanga. So I will be fascinated to see whether or not the Māori Party supports this amendment bill. Perhaps there is enough in it enough that has been changed to change the minds of the Māori Party members. Maybe they will find it within themselves to revisit that original opposition.So here we find ourselves in the 51st Parliament bringing modification to an Act that was originally initiated by the 48th Parliament and some of the changes that the amendment bill brings about are technical and some are minor. There is nothing as I say earth-shattering—there is nothing in here that I can see in the first reading that we will violently oppose. There are some questions obviously that I will look forward to examining as I say in greater detail in the select committee. The fixed term for a geographical indication limiting it to 10 years with an ongoing right of renewal is obviously a feature of this amendment. It may be a good thing or it might just be a cynical ploy to extract even more in the way of fees from an industry that is already horribly overburdened with taxes and levies and duties but I will reserve judgment on that until we have had submissions from the submitters to the select committee.The provisions relating to the origin of wine we certainly agree with in that the 85 percent requirement for grapes to have been grown in the particular geographical location remains but it also enforces the requirement for the other 15 percent to be at least from New Zealand. It is one thing to say that a Pinot noir is a Central Otago Pinot noir if 85 percent of the grapes were grown in Central Otago and the other 15 percent were perhaps grown in Waipara but it is quite another matter to call it a Central Otago Pinot noir when the other 15 percent—one-sixth of the wine in fact—were grown in Chile Tasmania Bulgaria or anywhere else.So at this stage I do not intend to take too much more of the House’s time but I reiterate that New Zealand First will support this bill’s referral to the select committee and very probably beyond. I look forward to examining it there particularly regarding the safety of the tuataras. Thank you.