Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Madam Speaker. We've heard a lot spoken about this bill this afternoon—the Plant Variety Rights Bill—and we're in its second reading. We've been told it's very important which seems a bit strange that we've waited a year to have it come back to the House if it's that important. I was pretty concerned to get a message from one of our major exporters this afternoon about this bill. We are as of course we all know an exporting nation. Without exports we'd basically just have no money frankly but lots of food. We are an exporting nation of plant breeders who are developing high-value varieties and we should be encouraging those breeders to do so with their low environmental impact and their healthy and high-yielding varieties and encouraging investment and innovation and making it easier for them to be able to have these varieties protected and their returns generated. The comment was that this bill falls well short. So Andrew Bayly who spoke earlier this afternoon and I have just discussed this and neither of us were on the select committee at the time. We are going to be following this up and looking at putting in some Supplementary Order Papers in the committee stage of the House because I think the whole of Parliament should be on the side of helping our New Zealand plant breeders to do the very best that they can to invest in and to want to invest in new varieties. As we know people are actually the key to so much of our export market. Some of us can well remember Chinese gooseberries little hairy green things that we had to climb up a vine—I know Madam Speaker you may well remember that too—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Hmm hmm.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —and go and collect them and then stick them in a cupboard so that they could ripen before the birds got them. Thankfully some very enterprising scientists decided to change the way in which that plant was bred. So now we've talked this afternoon about Zespri and the excellent work that they do helping the economy and helping to make New Zealand a richer place but we also need to remember that they're constantly trying to improve what they're doing and what they're selling. They are under constant attack from overseas. We all are aware of plant stock being taken stolen used overseas and actually then used to undermine the work of our New Zealand exporters. So it is really important that we get this right. I think this is the sort of thing where we can take a pretty apolitical view on it which is looking to see what's the best piece of legislation. So once I get some more information I'll discuss it with our caucus and then with Jamie Strange the chair of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee and with the Minister. We had some concerns noted by some of the submitters and there were some submitters who were absolutely wholeheartedly delighted that something was happening—it is time for this legislation—but they did have some other views as well. They thought it was very good to have the first comprehensive review of the Plant Variety Rights Act since the 1980s and to try and put in place some robust plant protection laws. It's also the issues around what is taonga and kaitiaki and what should be included is certainly one that's caused some submitters some concerns. I think that there are some good points raised around knowing exactly what is included in that and I think we should be able if we're putting these sorts of provisions in place with an entire five-person Māori committee when the whole of the Plant Variety Rights Office in the ministry only has five staff—this is a very heavy weighting when around 7 percent of applications will potentially be affected by the Treaty provisions. I think we need to be a little sensitive to obviously concerns by Māori relating to taonga but we also need to be very concerned that plant breeders themselves may wonder as to whether or not the plant that they are seeking to breed from is going to be covered by this or be caught up in any sort of legislative or bureaucratic nightmare. So I think we do need to have some more clarity on that. Hopefully that can be addressed in the committee stage of this bill because as we so often see with legislation these days we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about our country issues in it—those between Māori and the Crown and everybody else—and have so little understanding that we are in a highly competitive environment and that our enemies are not within but are actually overseas. We need to very much focus on the fact that if we are going to benefit all of New Zealand the best way forward is for us to be on the side of those people who are trying their very best to build our economy. We in the National Party believe that it is important that we need to acknowledge the Māori interests but we also need to be very much aware of the commercial needs and flexibility and speed of decision making. I'm very privileged to have the wonderful portfolios of science research and innovation and technology and what is really clear to me when meeting so many scientists—and we have scientists in New Zealand whom we should be very proud of working away and also in the technology and innovation area—is that whatever we think we're working on in this country someone else in another country is probably working much harder with far more people with much more money going into it. So our people have to be able to work with absolute speed and I think that's one of the concerns that we were alerted to by some submitters. It's certainly one that gives me some cause. Having spent now quite a lot of time with New Zealand scientists it is just how fast they have to be and if they're not fast another country will have developed something or somehow they've got hold of that technology or that innovation. So we've got to be really careful that when we're trying our very best to make sure that all the peoples of New Zealand are properly respected and honoured we do so understanding that the rest of the world is actually getting on and they don't care about us. They're not going to care about our wellbeing they're not going to care about anything else and so we just do need to make sure—and I think that it could be addressed by a statement as to what is actually covered. We all know about kūmara and we all know about various other plants. We need to make sure that we don't end up in having an enormous amount of time hearings and money going and working out whether or not something is going to be covered. Otherwise we might as well give up and go home and give it all to Australia because they already seem to have something called manuka honey by the way which comes from a place called Manuka in New South Wales. I thought that was a pretty dirty little Aussie trick myself but it turns out they really do have it and it's another tea tree variety. So we just need to be really careful with that. So I'm going to be taking some advice from the people who are actually working in science in this area and I'll put up some submissions. I'll talk to as I said the caucus but also to our colleagues on the select committee and the Minister to see if there's any willingness to just improve a few things there because otherwise it's just going to be yet another bill that we have to fix up when we become Government in 18 months' time. Thank you Madam Speaker.