Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I don't usually like to start a contribution by agreeing with Labour members but I'm actually going to do that in relation to a couple of them. So firstly Naisi Chen talked about the importance of the potato in New Zealand's culture I don't think it's too far to say. As a starchy white matter best consumed in moderation myself I feel I'm uniquely qualified—well not uniquely qualified but well qualified to speak on the virtues of the potato so I thought I would chip in there Madam Speaker. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Oh no—order! We can—CHRIS PENK: There's the one—come on! ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): No that's too—no. CHRIS PENK: The other member with whom I'm going to have to agree is Angie Warren-Clark. She said that it's a fascinating bill and actually I would reluctantly agree with her. But I found other aspects more fascinating than others perhaps. So I'll trouble you to go through at least some of those in as close to 10 minutes as I can manage. My colleague and friend Joseph Mooney gave basically a 10-minute speech that he did his best to compress into five minutes. I don't want to lift the curtain too much on the internal workings of the National Party but suffice to say I am going to give basically a five-minute speech that I'm going to try and compress into 10 minutes Madam Speaker so wish me and everyone luck.The reason that I do actually find the bill quite interesting at this its second reading is that it is at the intersection of a number of different other bits of law and other kinds of law such as the Treaty of Waitangi as others have mentioned and Rachel Brooking among others has given somewhat of a dissertation on that very helpfully. But also I found really interesting the international obligations and the way that this bill interacts with those and actually reflects the way that they interact with each other.So first of all I guess it's worth pointing out the overall purpose of the bill—lower case p". I mean it's got a purpose provision of course and that's significant in itself. But the whole—Hon Paul Goldsmith: Get to the point.CHRIS PENK: —basic idea—Mr Goldsmith urges me to get to the point. I'm trying very hard not to Mr Goldsmith in the way that a bad lawyer can delay a trial by weeks and a good one by months. I'm two minutes in and just sort of getting to the purpose of the thing which is of course to update an existing bit of legislation the 1987 version thereof: the Plant Variety Rights Act 1987. So it's in the manner of an update and part of the reason for the update apart from the fact that it's worth having a looking at something that's been on the statute book that long is to reflect on the fact that that in turn was ensuring that we met international obligations. Those have changed so it's appropriate that this legislation in turn also changes. Of course there have been discussions and indeed findings of the Waitangi Tribunal that are relevant. The decision known as Wai 262 has already been referenced so I won't go any further down that path but suffice to say that there is a body known as the Māori advisory committee—abbreviated to MPVC within for example the legislative statement and no doubt the bill itself—which is established effectively by a recommendation of the Waitangi Tribunal in relation to that particular case. The other key recommendation which flows through to this legislation is the grant of a PVR which is to say—he said looking for the acronym—a plant variety right essentially and to refuse that grant if that would affect a kaitiaki relationship with a taonga species—that is to say something that has value or is treasured I suppose in that sense in the nature of a plant variety. Others have talked about what it means to have a plant variety and of course not merely identifying or defining that as a "seed" but as other sort of forms of plant as well. I'm not a botanist by any stretch of the imagination but I do recognise of course that that's important that we fairly recognise the importance of good coverage in that sense.So the bill does a number of things that I think are quite interesting. One is that it encourages breeders to seek to identify kaitiaki and engage with them. My understanding as best I can know without having participated in the select committee process is that that should form part of the basis of an application and would be a relevant consideration in the way that that's viewed in terms of whether an application is approved or not and that information is confidential within that process. So it's encouraging that relationship and encouraging that consultation but it might be that I suppose a specific kaitiaki is not identified at that point in which case the committee would have the job of considering the impact if a PVR—the plant variety right—were to be granted and the effect on kaitiaki relationships with Māori in general. So that seems the basic sort of mechanism of how that operates and I think that seems pretty sensible to recognise existing rights as I say under the Treaty of Waitangi but I think it's also worth talking about the international obligations—so I'll do that now with your indulgence Madam Speaker.So the obligations in the first instance come from the CPTPP which is one of those abbreviations that sort of seems harder if anything than the whole thing. It's like World Wide Web which of course is only three syllables and you get www which is nine of the buggers—nine syllables I mean Madam Speaker and for the Hansard. So under the CPTPP we hear that New Zealand is required to "either 'accede' to" UPOV-91—to which I'll return—"or 'give effect' to" UPOV-91 through a sui generis system. So lots to unpack there even leaving aside the split infinitive "to either 'accede' " but I think other than that it's probably not terribly objectionable.So the UPOV-91 is of course the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants and that obligation that we have to various other nations within the international rules-based order is given effect to within CPTPP—which we all know so well that I won't bother to spell it out. What we're hearing there is that New Zealand either needs to give effect to that under the most recent version of that international convention or to say that there should be a system where there is a recognition in a sui generis way. So for those have enough Latin to have fudged their way through law school they'll recognise that that means something that's unique or literally in itself—a class of its own I suppose we might say. It's somewhat oxymoronic because of course if something's by itself it's not really in a class. But anyway there we go. One way or tother we do need to recognise this international obligation so the bill does help us to do that because it's got a number of key provisions that reflect the strengthening of plant breeders' rights within UPOV-91. One of these is extending the exclusive rights to those who are given the right to include production or reproduction conditioning selling or offering for sale importing or exporting and stocking for any of those purposes. But it does actually at the same time provide exceptions for the rights of private and non - commercial use experimental purposes which I presume is important in an R & D kind of a way and it extends the terms of a PVR—the right itself—and that's consistent with the minimum requirements in UPOV which I understand are 25 years for woody plants and their root stock and potatoes—they're our potatoes; we've been looking forward to those—and 20 years for all others. So again it's a matter of consistency and alignment and I think that there are some pretty good lawmaking practices that have been reflected in the bill as it comes before us. To some extent these probably reflect the work of the select committee. I think I'm looking at the select committee chair across the way—I am. I'm getting a nod from Jamie Strange. He's claiming it in any case. So congratulations to you sir and your team for working hard on this bill. It seems to me just from where I stand as an outsider to that select committee process that it appears as though there's been a really good robust discussion and a constructive one at that so we probably have in front of us a bill that is all the better for it.So the public interest test for compulsory licence is probably quite self-explanatory. I wouldn't even mention it except that I have so there we go—moving on—but we also have got the repealing of the offence provisions in the previous version of the Act and we're here because they're adequately covered by the pieces of legislation. I think that's good lawmaking to say that where in the statute book we've got coverage and overlap we don't want either duplication or contradiction between different pieces of legislation and on a similar note to provide remedies consistent with other intellectual property regimes. So we are concerned about intellectual property of course and I do acknowledge of course that cultural considerations research and development technology and lots of different public policy areas do come together. But at its heart it's recognising the right of a person or of a people again with that tangata whenua element emphasised—but it is their right to have a particular relationship so to speak with different plant varieties that we're concerned with.So there's a lot going on in the bill. At this its second reading National as we've said does continue to support its passage through the House. I do commend the bill to the House."