Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I am pleased to rise to take a call on the second reading of the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act Repeal Bill. As the previous speaker Nicky Wagner has noted it has two main functions. I do want to commend the Blind Foundation as it is now known for its advocacy and support and the work that it does for New Zealanders who have low vision or vision impaired by blindness. The bill does two main things. The first thing it does is repeal the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind Act 2002. This Act on the statute book is no longer consistent with the way the modern Blind Foundation needs to provide services to people with vision impairment. The Blind Foundation has set up as an incorporated society because it has wanted to really become an organisation that is far more membership based and accountable to its members. It is an important aspect of ensuring that it can continue to do the work for its members.Why become an incorporated society? The Blind Foundation has made it really clear that in the passage of the last 126 years it has ensured that it has taken advantage of new ways of doing things new ways of providing services. As technology has come along it has needed to keep up with the pace of those changes to ensure that it is delivering the best types of services to its members. Its membership is very important and it takes the role of accountability to its membership very seriously. It ensures that the governance group that supports the work of the Blind Foundation is made up of people who have vision impairment who are blind or who have low vision. So it is very much accountable to the members and the people who require its services.What are some of its services? The Blind Foundation does a whole range of things from adaptive communications recreation and peer support to things such as helping people with low vision be able to orient and get on with normal types of work through the use of guide dogs special equipment and access to information through its library and through its advice services. It also provides some really specialist services to children and young people to the deafblind community and to Māori and Pacific people.The other part of this bill looks at the aspect of making amendments in respect of copyright to section 69 of the Copyright Act 1994 which provides persons who have a print disability with copies that are in Braille or otherwise modified for their special needs without infringing copyright in those literary or dramatic works." In that regard I want to talk about the Marrakesh VIP Treaty. The Marrakesh VIP Treaty is a treaty that has been signed by 16 other countries. It has two main obligations. The first obligation is to provide a limitation on or exception to copyright. Of the several million books that are provided and published worldwide each year only between 1 and 7 percent are available to people who have low vision or people who are blind. The Marrakesh VIP Treaty seeks to remedy that by allowing an exception to copyright so that those publications can then be turned into Braille so that they can be accessed by people who are blind.The second part of the Marrakesh VIP Treaty allows the exchange across borders. This is important because New Zealand has yet to ratify the treaty. It is something that the Blind Foundation has advocated for for some time. I understand that the Government is considering signing the treaty and once 20 countries have signed the treaty will be enacted and come into force. It is currently at 16 countries so I am encouraging the New Zealand Government not only to sign that treaty but also to encourage those other countries that have yet to ratify it to sign.The other aspect of this issue that I want to talk about is the Blind Foundation's work on ensuring that we have access to audio description for people who have got vision impairment. Audio description much like captioning for the Deaf community allows our blind community to be able to have the ability to have programmes on television described to them so that they can fully enjoy things such as the Olympics which is coming up in about 30 days and also test match rugby. Currently in New Zealand we provide audio description on TV ONE and TV2 only. The Blind Foundation has been very very influential in supporting that to happen and it would be encouraging broadcasters to look further to ensure that people who have vision impairment could get access to programmes on the Olympics and rugby to name just a couple.This is a bill that is useful in ensuring that the Blind Foundation can continue to adapt evolve and change for the people whom it supports and I commend it to the House."