Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Tēnā koe. Privileged to rise on behalf of the Greens to convey our views on the Plant Variety Rights Bill in its second reading and what a privilege to get to do it after Rachel Brooking who gave a really expansive rundown of what the bill contains. So as with the first reading I will contain our points as to the Green Party perspective on the bill. As all the speakers have noted the intent of this bill was to ensure that the plant variety rights regime met our trade treaty obligations. As submitters noted in the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee there are many interests to balance as part of this process. So I do want to commend the work of the committee in trying to balance the many different views and I'll pinpoint some of the submissions that I think speak to our Green Party concerns starting with Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa—the Māori Law Society—who I think gave a really strong submission around the fact that when designing such a regime we need to be thinking first and foremost about our Treaty obligations. In general comments they talked about how unfortunately this bill is inherently limited in terms of its ability to meet a true partnership until broader constitutional conversations are had regarding true partnership and the rights of Māori under the Treaty. When the Māori Law Society was talking about Part 5 of the bill they really encouraged us to be taking a broader look at how we meet our Treaty obligations particularly in regards to how they thought the purpose clause had been framed quite narrowly only recognising kaitiaki relationships with taonga species and mātauranga Māori within New Zealand law. They noted that in order for us to meet our Treaty obligations in full we needed to go way beyond that and I think this is something that was echoed as well with other submitters. While many of them were encouraging of the Government's intent to update the regime and were encouraging of the intent to ensure that we were looking at meeting our Treaty obligations people were I guess cautious about the fact that we're doing it in the context of a trade agreement as opposed to first and foremost constitutional issues. This was echoed by Jane Kelsey who is a professor at the University of Auckland and a really strong advocate for fair trade deals. She really emphasised that there was an unwillingness from the Crown to take full advantage of the possibility to properly look into how we enable the exercising of tino rangatiratanga and kaitiakitanga over taonga species and mātauranga Māori. In the context of this bill and in our trade obligations it does feel she reflects that it is closing the door on doing proper justice on Te Tiriti and so she's calling effectively for us to do a broader view and to sort of delay this process and take a bit of a slow-down and a breather to reflect on what it is that we need to do to ensure that we're properly meeting these obligations.Te Kāhui o Rongoā also echoed some of these concerns particularly again noting that this bill is not really reflective of an equal partnership arrangement between Treaty partners and again because it is not designed to put that at the forefront it fails to acknowledge a Māori perspective on the natural world. They reflected that in Te Ao Māori it is not possible to own a species plant and they kind of invited the committee at the time to reflect more broadly about how we design law in relationship to our natural environment. The Law Society echoed some of these concerns around taking a balanced approach to the interests of kaitiaki and breeders recommended by the Waitangi Tribunal. I want to note that the Waitangi Tribunal did find that even though the trade agreement that we're trying to kind of meet the obligations of contains a Treaty protection clause this was insufficient to protect Māori rights and our obligations pursuant to Te Tiriti. So I think there's a lot left to be desired around how we're designing this legislation. I think it is putting trade interests above broader constitutional conversations we should be having that are really really really important. So what we would encourage the Government to do is take a step back and look at what broader consultation and work we can do to genuinely put our Te Tiriti obligations first and foremost before our trade obligations because ultimately if we are thinking in that framework then in the way that we engage in trade unfortunately we'll be putting those interests before deals that we've made that don't reflect the other pieces of work in Government to move towards a more Te Tiriti - centred way of working. So for that reason the Green Party won't be supporting this bill at second reading and we look forward to the contributions from the rest of the speakers in the House.