Clark David: Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13650. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): I also rise to speak in support of the Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill picking up from where my colleague Grant Robertson left off. I cannot claim to have been kicked out of a cinema for rollingjaffas down the aisle in quite the same way that he can and so perhaps I lose some streetcred for that but I did spend the past Sunday morning in one of the cinemas that my colleague Clare Curran mentioned earlier on in the debate the Rialto.Grant Robertson: Slacker!Dr DAVID CLARK: See it is confession time now. My colleague draws attention to it. Rialto Cinemas in Dunedin was the venue. I was there for a kindergarten fund-raiser along with a young relative of mine and many many other young relatives of other folk connected to this kindergarten. I think it is an interesting example because this is precisely the kind of event that is potentially affected by this legislation.The issue we are discussing here is whether the cinemas—thearthouse cinemas the small rural cinemas and also the cinemas in the regions—are able and ready to adapt to a more free-market environment. We were told in the submissions to the Commerce Committee that some cinemas had not yet made the expensive conversion to digital that they needed more time and that this protection mechanism would enable more of these cinemas to be able to continue to contribute to their communities in the way that they do through providing a venue for entertainment and also providing a venue where things like that very fund-raiser happen.The movie I saw incidentally was calledPlanes a variant on theCars theme. I will not be rushing back.Grant Robertson: Tolstoy?Dr DAVID CLARK: Tolstoy no—no it was not. I will not be rushing back but I did leave with a warm sense that I had contributed to that kindergarten fund-raiser and that I had been a part of a community event—something that it is harder to argue is the case when one sits at home watching a DVD of the same movie currently 9 months later but according to this legislation in future 5 months later. It is certainly these popular movies that we are told are most likely to be affected by this change in the legislation.If we look at the legislation it is a very simple bill. Seldom do we have such simple bills in the House that are not members’ bills. In fact some might wonder why we are spending quite so much parliamentary time debating this bill which we primarily all agree on when it might have been rolled into an omnibus bill or similar. In any case the entire bill is contained on pages 1 and 2 of the bill because there are only two pages as my colleague points out. The guts of it is in clause 4 which flows over from page 1 to page 2 and amends the current legislation by replacing section 35(3)(a) and (b) of the Copyright Act with “(a) imports a copy of the film into New Zealand within 5 months of the date that the film is first made available to the public; and (b) knows or has reason to believe that the film is imported into New Zealand within 5 months of that date;”. It is looking at the people who might be affected by it. That changes from the previous 9-month rule. Then finally it talks about the date upon which the legislation expires and changes that from 31 October 2013 to 31 October 2016. That is all this bill contains. That is all this bill contains apart from an attractive title and some brief explanations for those at home who might be looking at this piece of paper.This is one of the simpler bills we have to deal with. But the principle is sound and the debates were robust in the select committee as we have heard. The National Party has come out in favour of market protections and the Green Party has come out in favour of the constructive destruction of the market. It is fair to say that we had a fair bit of debate before we ended in those positions. Labour too agreed that it would support this measure but only on the basis that this is the very last time that this measure will not be applied further and that this is the once and for all extension—that cinemas must adapt and must adopt the new technologies or move on.There are of course other ways to fix this problem which have not been touched on in this debate. One of them would be to make sure that ordinary citizens had enough money in their pockets to afford the price of cinema tickets. It is interesting that we have not discussed that along the way. It is true particularly in the regions where many of these theatres are that people are feeling squeezed in the small towns in this country. The kind of two-speed economy that has developed in this country has an effect where pressure is put on cinemas that might otherwise not exist. We could suggest to the Government that perhaps by doing simple things like raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour something that would actually get people over the line to be able to afford food for their families albeit not particularly glamorous at that rate would be a sensible way of tackling this problem or making sure that median wages are rising rather than falling as they have been under this Government or making sure that housing is affordable so that people are not paying extraordinary mortgages or making sure that power is affordable so that people are not faced with power bills at the end of the month that they cannot pay.Of course Labour has policies to address these issues. I mention in passing the NZ Power proposal that Labour has brought to the table. When in Government we will stop the increases in price rises—the out-of-control increases in price rises—in the electricitysector by making sure that we buy the power at a reasonable rate at the cost of production plus a fair return and then make sure it is distributed through a fair market system at the retail level. That solution would make sure that people had more money in their pockets to afford to go to the cinema—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Come back to the bill.Dr DAVID CLARK: —which is precisely the point I was making. Otherwise we might find ourselves extending that clause 4 again in this Parliament because people would not have the money to go to the cinema and we would fear a complete collapse of our cinema system. I am simply suggesting that there are other ways of addressing this issue. Through adequate wages through addressing the power issues and through addressing unaffordable housing we could perhaps come to a more sensible solution to this problem. In any case we will be supporting this bill because we think that in the meantime this transition period for cinemas is a reasonable thing to request. It is fair. They are providing a service to those small communities. While we are running this two-speed economy under the National Government we will let this go but Labour will fix the causes of the problem and then New Zealand will be better as a whole. Thank you.