Parker David: Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11479. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour):As the Hon Trevor Mallard has said we will be opposing the motion in part because the Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill has been introduced under urgency. I just wanted to state some of the principles that lie behind why it is that we generally have longer select committee processes than will be provided for with regard to this bill if this motion is passed. The Standing Orders were changed in this Parliament because there is recognition across Parliament that one of the few protections that we have against unwise legislation lies in having a proper and fulsome select committee process—a select committee process that is long enough for the issues that are or might be of concern to be thought about properly by submitters who could have time to reflect on complexities and submit and then there should be time for select committees to properly consider the issues that are raised by submitters.Let us take this case in point. In this situation we are dealing with a conflict involving monopoly rights of copyright holders some of whom want to restrict the parallel importing of films and who say that that is in part because they want to protect the local cinemas. I for one am a believer in copyright. I believe that it is important that we protect the rights of the creators of creative content to get an economic return on their creativity for a period of time.If we did not have copyright we would be worse off as a society because the creative work of authors film makers painters and sculptors would be less. They would not be able to get as much of a return for their creative efforts because someone else would be able to just rip them off the next day and produce a copy that could be sold at a cheaper price and that would not enable the salary or the profit to be paid to those who produced the creative content. Therefore you would have less creative output in society.These things have to be founded on their underlying principles. The other side of that—and we see this issue coming up in the Trans-Pacific Partnership at the moment—is that if you extend the term of copyright beyond a fair period then the disadvantages that accrue to society of having conferred monopoly rights to a monopoly property right in respect of copyright are extended in a way—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Could I remind the member that when we are debating motions such as this it is a very restricted debate. It is not a debate on a much wider subject; it is actually restricted to the special powers on the instruction of the Committee of the whole House to have a truncated report-back period for the Commerce Committee. Standing Order 286(3) applies. I ask the member and other speakers to just be mindful of that. Although you can certainly canvass other things debate must be restricted to the special powers or instructions that this motion is about.Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker and I am just about coming to the end of this point.The point I was trying to make is that some speakers have said that this is a simple bill that there is only a small number of clauses and that therefore there is no difficult principle involved and we can have a truncated period. I was trying to illustrate that this tension between length of copyright and the interests of protecting creative contentcompared with not extending copyright periods beyond the period that is necessary to generate or to encourage that creative content is where the policy tension arises. It is quite proper for other parties like the Green Party to say that they have not made up their mind on this yet and they are abstaining in the vote on this legislation at its first reading. They have not yet got to the position that they know whether this legislation should be supported or not and neither has New Zealand First. That shows that there are some complexities that surround this legislation which means that a fulsome select committee process could be necessary in order to tease out the issues.I do not actually understand properly where the tension lies here. Is it really the copyright holders who are saying that they want there to be a restricted period free from parallel importing? If that is the case then I am quite sympathetic to that view. Some of the parallel imports may actually be in breach of copyright because the right to copy and distribute DVDs might have been constrained in their agreement with the original copyright holder. I am not sure whether this is being driven by the copyright holder of the film or whether it is being driven by the cinematic industry and I think that that is a very relevant thing that the Commerce Committee should have time to explore.I thought that the comment made by the Hon Trevor Mallard in his contribution was valid too. Why is it that this legislation is so late as to be introduced now when according to the Government it has to be passed by 31 October 2013 to meet the expiry date of the existing legislation? Well the answer is that it is up to the Government to introduce legislation in sufficient time for it to be properly considered in advance of deadlines like this and I am surprised that it did not introduce the legislation earlier so that it could have a decent select committee process.The second point that follows is given the reality that the Government is now where it is—and if you had a normal sort of 6-month period from now you would go past 31 October. Well Trevor Mallard made two good points. Firstly with a relatively simple bill like this you would expect that the select committee would clear this off its agenda and bring it back to the House well within that 6-month period. The Government controls the majority on the Commerce Committee. It could ensure that there was a fair not overly prolonged period and that it could get the bill back pretty promptly. Would that be by 16 August in a way that enabled the new legislation to be passed by 31 October 2013? Well it would be then or thereabouts and if it were a bit late what would be the great harm caused by a hiatus? Does anyone really think that for a hiatus of a 1-month period the industry is going to change what it does and bring in parallel imports in respect of films that might be released overseas during that short window? I do not really think that would be likely to be a big problem.Hon Trevor Mallard: If so what’s the problem? And if so is the world going to fall apart?Hon DAVID PARKER: No that is right. If there were a slight detriment from that occurring in the occasional case the world is not going to end. As a consequence the more proper principle to be given primacy is to not override the normal select committee process which this Government has got into the habit of doing and is doing often. We have had it in respect of not only this bill but other bills. We have had it done under urgency. We have had bills pushed through all stages under urgency with no select committee process as was the case I think in respect of the ouster clause ousting the jurisdiction of the court in respect of family members who provide care for disabled members of their families. That was an even worse example of an abuse of power but this is somewhere in that spectrum. It is not nearly as bad but it is still bad.We have had other things done through poor process in respect of Supplementary Order Papers being introduced that did not go to a select committee but that introduced new concepts. We saw that in respect of the truncation of the right to protest at seawhich was done by way of a Supplementary Order Paper that did not even go to a select committee. So there is a habit forming with this Government which is abusing the proper processes of the New Zealand democracy.I commenced my contribution by saying that in New Zealand we have very few protections against hasty or ill-considered legislation because we have but one House of Parliament and as a consequence the protections that are to be found in select committee processes are all the more important. One of the most important processes is allowing time to enable people who might have a contrary view to that which is espoused in the legislation to understand the issues to get others who are in support to back them and to get the fourth estate on their side. Members of the fourth estate might have a view on this but they will not really have much time to get their heads around this bill because the report-back period is so short. What this effectively means is that to have a report-back period ending on 16 August the advertising period has to be much shorter than that so there will not be much time for the public to make submissions on this bill.Having said all of that I do not want to say that this is as bad as those other examples where we have had ouster clauses ousting the jurisdiction of the court or truncating civil liberties through a Supplementary Order Paper but I do think this is poor process. For that reason amongst the others that Mr Mallard has articulated we will be opposing this motion.