Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to be talking on the Plant Variety Rights Bill in its second reading. This is my first opportunity to talk on this bill and it's very interesting. I wasn't able to sit on the select committee so it's something I've had to pick up and it's very interesting just reading the background to the bill. As anyone involved in the industry knows New Zealand has been at the forefront of developing particular plant species for many many years. We have some very fine scientists and we're world-recognised for certain species. Of course in my own electorate of Port Waikato the Pukekohe long keeper onion is one such species that has actually lasted a long period of time and of course it was developed by the growers of Pukekohe and is so-called because of its ability to last a long time when in storage which of course now with modern methods of storage is not quite so important. But at the time it was developed it was a very useful onion variety.Of course if we reflect back to the sale of PGG Wrightson back in 2010 I think it was—it is a very substantial business that most people recognise in the farming-agriculture sector as a company that provided services to farmers in terms of buying and selling property cattle sheep and livestock in general. But the other most important aspect of that business which was ultimately acquired by Agria a Chinese company was of course its seed business. When the takeover offer was made people sort of underestimated the seed business and over-inflated the livestock aspect of the business. Of course Agria bought it primarily because of its seed business and has subsequently sold it a few years later for about $400 million to a Danish company and that just shows you the value of seeds and seed propagation and seed intellectual property (IP).So this bill seeks to update a very old Act. It's 30 years since it's been properly modified. We will support the bill but with certain caveats and we will be putting forward Supplementary Order Papers at the time of the committee of the whole House. The bill as the Minister noted deals with the issue of plant variety rights or PVR—that's what that stands for. Largely in terms of meeting our requirements under the CPTPPA—of course the National Party signed—well tried to push the TPPA but the new agreement is called the Comprehensive TPPA—Hon Dr David Clark: Come on—Progressive". ANDREW BAYLY: All right. "Comprehensive" "Progressive"—there's not much difference. Let's just call it marketing Minister. Anyway our concern of course was that in meeting the obligation New Zealand made sure that its plant varieties met the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants or UPOV-91 if you really want to know Mr Speaker—I can see you are watching very carefully on this. We were keen to make sure that we give effect to meeting those requirements as opposed to implementing something that is rather acceding to those requirements and we think that in having that flexibility about what we do with the plant species that are developed in New Zealand it is very important that we meet international requirements but we don't necessarily have to roll over entirely. It's an important point of difference.With regard to the bill it has some very specific issues that it deals with. One is to deal with this issue of intellectual property and this is essentially what this bill is about. It is a piece of intellectual property and I've got to say that this is an area that I find that the Minister has not focused on sufficiently particularly in the area of commercial intellectual property. This is just the question of plant IP: how we protect that which has been developed or is native or indigenous to New Zealand. What it does like with music IP or whatever it might be is it extends the term of protection for woody plants to 25 years and for all other plants basically for 20 years. There is a special carve-out for potatoes—Hon Member: Ha ha!ANDREW BAYLY: —and of course coming back to my electorate potatoes are an important export crop Mr Duncan Webb and I'm sure if you come up to Pukekohe—oh I'm sorry; Jamie Strange—you might find how important that is to our local economy.There's also an exemption for farm-saved seed which is where you've used the seed and a farmer is then able as a right to use it in the subsequent year if that seed is available on their property. It also defines what's called EDV—essentially derived variant—which means a new variant doesn't have to look exactly like the former species. It can have other scientific differences but it doesn't have to exhibit the importin such as cosmetic features or how it looks that differentiates it from another variety. So anyway the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee did a very good job I think in terms of working through some of the technical detail and I think strides have been made in that area. But I think the main thing for us is first of all we've got to recognise that New Zealand and its IP around its plant varieties need to be protected incredibly significantly and comprehensively. One of the issues we've got is obviously with an industry like Zespri with development of new plant varieties—and we've seen instances where the varieties have been taken offshore—we need to be very very careful and I know my colleague the Hon Judith Collins is going to talk more about that. But we need to be going into this environment with our eyes open that intellectual property—and it takes years to develop these plant species—is protected and New Zealand can capture the economic value from developing and selling these plant varieties in the open market. So that is the first point of principle; it's absolutely vital that we get to that point.We also have some concerns about clarifying the role of the Māori Plant Varieties Committee. The original proposal was a five-person committee. Of course there's only five people in the plant part of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment so this is a doubling of the numbers and we have some concerns about in fact what should be the role of this committee. Our view is that it should be an advisory committee. At the moment some of the wording in the bill talks about it having a much greater role and as some of the growers have highlighted it's quite difficult to understand who might you go to get approval from—this term kaitiaki—and is it a hapū you have to go to or is it an iwi? What is the process if there are competing claims and how do you go about making sure that you know that you've got the right approval? As the Minister noted there is the right to go the Māori Appellate Court but that whole process needs to be very very clear. It doesn't look that clear to me from my first reading and it's certainly something I'll be asking the Minister during the committee of the whole House stage.The actual definition of taonga and kaitiaki—what that means. There's a definition that if plant species were brought on the original waka to New Zealand that would form part of that definition. If they're "indigenous" to New Zealand what does that mean? Certainly some species like mānuka have migrated and been hybridised over time and so how do we define that and there's a worrying thing that a lot of this is going to be written up. There's a definition and a list of these particular kaitiaki that are going to be included by regulation which means it's not subject to House oversight because regulations are passed once the bill comes into force. I think just the general process around doing that and in going through that process we want to make sure that there's absolute clarity because we do not want our plant breeders to be in a situation where they're disadvantaged economically and cannot get the material advantage that has come about through their hard labours and for the benefit of New Zealand so that everyone in New Zealand can benefit. This is about growing the economy creating more jobs and moving to a smarter environment. That is why this bill is so important and it's important that we get all elements as appropriate as possible. Many thanks."