Faafoi Kris: Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFaafoi Kris: Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 02 July 2013. Volume:691;Page:11481. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):Tēnā koe. I join other members of this House who have acknowledged the unveiling of the commemorative plaques that now adorn our Chamber. I acknowledge the service that the men and women of our Defence Force and our Police Force have had in those three theatres and obviously I pay tribute to those who paid the ultimate price in those areas and also to their families some of whom were here earlier tonight for the unveiling.As has been said by our two previous speakers to this motion the Hon Trevor Mallard and the Hon David Parker the Labour Party will not support this motion to truncate the select committee process. The process around this bill the Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill actually started before it got to this House. The discussion document was put out to the industry by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and it is dated February 2013. There was a relatively good period of time when those who wanted to have their say got to have their say as part of the agreed document. The process went horribly wrong today when 1 minute before we started debating this piece of legislation we got to see the legislation.Then the process got even worse when the Minister in charge of the bill the Minister of Commerce said he wanted to truncate the period in which the public and members of this industry will have to give their submissions to the bill and also for parliamentarians to scrutinise the details of this bill. Another member on this side of the House—I think it was David Parker—said that this is a relatively simple bill. Reading it we certainly would agree with that and that is why we have agreed to support its referral to the select committee.We are not going to support this referral motion because although it might be a simple bill that does not mean that the process can be thrown to the wind. The process cannot be thrown to the wind so that you can start playing around with the time for the report back and also when the select committee can sit. At the moment the Minister would like this bill to be reported back on 16 August which is slightly shorter than the usual time but also he wants permission for the select committee to sit when the House is sitting and also to sit on Fridays.We questioned the need for such a simple bill—a bill that we have seen for only the last maybe 2 or 3 hours—to go through that select committee process and not receive the scrutiny that other bills would receive. This is becoming a growing trend with the Government. I understand that the Government asked to truncate the select committee process on the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill which is going through the Law and Order Committee. That is anti-democratic. It does not give the right amount of time to those people who want to come and give their submissions on those bills and have their say if parliamentarians have that extra scrutiny.They are two very different bills. One really does change the way that the Government can access telecommunications companies and the information that they have and this bill simply looks at changing the way that parallel imports and the ban of parallel imports are administered here in New Zealand. But the Government is using the same roughshod process to try to get things through quickly. Also I failed to mention that the House is under urgency and this bill has been introduced. The Hon Craig Foss is the Minister in charge of this bill. I thought he might have learnt his lesson with Novopay. Taihoa a little bit. Do not rush things too much. Do no rush things too much because if you rush things you can find that things get bungled and that certainly was the case of Mr Foss’ experience with Novopay. So we do not want that to be the experience with this bill. The Minister wants it to be reported back earlier than usual and also to change the way in which this bill is considered by the select committee.I would like to borrow some words from Gareth Hughes. What we have seen in the last 2 or 3 hours is a shocking process. This is a simple bill but we do not need to see it treated this way through what the Government hopes to do through the select committee process. I do hope that maybe some people who own the 120 cinemas around the country will be able to make some submissions during this shortened select committee process if the Government gets its way.Hon Trevor Mallard: Dick Werry.KRIS FAAFOI: Dick Werry the owner of the Light House Cinema inPētone and also the Light House Cinema inPāuatahanui and the Light House—Hon Trevor Mallard: Central Wellington.KRIS FAAFOI: —in Central Wellington would certainly be one of those people who would like to submit—Hon Trevor Mallard: Wigan Street.KRIS FAAFOI: —on this process. Thank you very much for those exact details. He certainly is someone who is showing movies and if there were parallel imports of those movies he would have an issue with that because of the competition. He does show a lot of arthouse movies to very specific audiences and if those movies were to come in pretty much straightaway from their introduction in other parts of the world that would certainly close down his window of availability to get those movies shown at his cinemas.Of course there are other big multiplex cinema operators around the country and most of them I am sure would love to have had a bit more time to consider this bill particularly the regulatory impact statement which is not redacted—a change for this Government. Around 57 percent I think it says of those operators have gone from the old film technology into the digital technology in showing their films which is a big change from the time when Trevor Mallard started going to the movies.I just want to go back to one part of the process which has been mentioned earlier during this debate and that is the fact that—and if people are watching Parliament TV tonight as a form of entertainment as opposed to watching a movie credit to you—we were given only 1 minute to have a look at this piece of legislation.Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s why you’ve got to be careful about the process later on.KRIS FAAFOI: That is why you do have to be careful about the process later on. Because we had such a short period of time to be able to mull over what we thought about this bill we should have the standard amount of time to look at this bill through the select committee process. Someone who wanted to come and submit to the select committee—who went to Parliament’s website and looked at theHansard to get some more information about what this bill is about—might not get as much information as they wanted to because on this side of the House we did not have enough time to think about the legislation. We got only 60 seconds to think about some of the ins and outs of it.Thankfully though we have had plenty of opportunities to talk about this bill through this referral motion. This bill could have been treated a different way. As has been mentioned there could have been a much better collaboration process if as per usual the Minister had given us a confidential copy of the bill much earlier and then this bill may not have been put through this urgency process. Then as many speakers on this side of the House said we would not have created such a fuss over this because it would have been what we understood to be a normal process where we would have the time to mull over the details of the bill and then give a considered approach to it. Also I do not think we would have had to have a change in the time that the select committee can give this scrutiny.As I said we hope that some of those local cinema operators can come along and give their opinions about this. Many people during this debate have given their first and favourite movie options. The first movie for me—it is unfortunate that this is to be put inHansard —wasThe Smurfs and the Magic Flute  and my favourite movie would beCrimson Tide .I would like to reiterate just to finish up that we do oppose this motion for the fact that the process has been dodgy from the beginning—since this legislation has been put forward to the House. The public and the industry should have the full time available to them to make submissions and if the Government can just take the warning from this side of the House that if it did it collaboratively then we would not be doing this through such a roughshod process. Thank you.