Chen NaisiNAISI CHEN (Labour): Madam Speaker you can say that I've been on quite the journey in the last 48 hours. When I found out that I was going to speak on this bill to be honest this is quite a subject matter that was foreign to me. So I started to read all of the notes and I realised what we were doing as a party as a Government was something that was so fundamental in the structure that we see plant variety rights in this country. But then it wasn't until this afternoon when I was ready to come into this House for this debate that one of my friends Jaxon stopped me in my tracks to tell me his story to this bill. I was quite shocked that we had someone in this building who actually had a personal connection to this bill and let me tell you his story.His family are all plant breeders and so actually their siblings—I think if I remember correctly there are three—each has a plant variety named after them. So his name is Jaxon so he has the Jaxon Blue plant named after him—and I think that is so neat.What happened was that under the current plant variety rights system at the moment their family applied to have their variety and their intellectual property (IP) protected but it was so complicated that they had actually to engage an agent to do it for them. But what happened was that that agent actually tricked them and then put his own name under the ownership of IP of that plant variety. So when I hear colleagues on the other side of the House say that we are hindering innovation that's just absolutely untrue. We're hoping we're helping plant breeders in this country to truly protect their IP in this industry by modernising the regime so that it is up to a 21st century standard so that the digital system and the digital registry that we will hold will actually make it easier for every single plant breeder in this nation to protect their IP to keep innovating and to have the confidence in the system we have in this country to stand by it and to do well in this industry. It gives me great pride to be part of a party that protects our plant breeders' rights and it gives me great pleasure to stand in support of a bill which actually makes everyone's lives a little bit easier. Right now I just wanted to talk a little bit about as a migrant how proud I am that this bill will support our Te Tiriti obligations. I often get asked by my community why as a migrant we should be so passionate or why am I so passionate about tikanga Māori. My reply has always been that Te Ao Māori the world views that Māori people have built up on this land are so rooted on the land that we stand on. They have wisdom built up from generations to teach us how to interact properly with this land that we stand on. And so through that wisdom we're able to make the best of this land but also we are able to best protect this land as well. That's something as a migrant community we need to do but I believe all of New Zealand needs to be able to do as well. And so through the inbuilt mechanism of this bill and the authority of the commissioner that we will set up and we will continue to support they will be able to have the legislative—and also the authority to make rulings on which plants we do need to protect in line with tikanga Māori and I think that is something so incredibly precious to our country. Finally I just wanted to end on the fact that I think it's really really important that we have the support of industry. As a member of the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee I really look forward to hearing all the submissions because I believe there will be lots and lots of submitters who are absolutely passionate about what they do in the sector or in the line of plant breeding. I really look forward to seeing a lot of the products that they have come out with—absolute ingenuity. Some of them will be quite humorous. I look forward to all of the different names. I look forward to a lot of different types of plant breeding and all the beautiful plants that they will be able to show to us. But what I will end on is a quote from the New Zealand Plant Breeding and Research Association in regards to this bill. They say that Plant breeders are pleased to see the Plant Variety Rights Bill introduced into Parliament this week. The current legislation is some 34 years old and dates back to 1987." So I really look forward to working on modernising this regime and look forward to working with the select committee and all of our submitters."