Tizard Judith: Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Tizard Judith: Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:650;Page:19278] 
Hon JUDITH TIZARD (Associate Minister for Arts Culture and Heritage) 
: 
 It is an enormous pleasure for me to stand in the Committee stage of the Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Bill to address some of the questions that have been raised but also to give a bit of background on this legislation. As Christopher Finlayson has said this legislation is a result of a promise made by the Labour Party in its 1999 election manifesto. We referred the issue of the public lending right or the Authors’ Fund as it then was to the Arts Council and Mr Finlayson happened to be the very excellent chair of the Arts Board. I was grateful to the council and the board for taking this issue up. They are independent bodies and they have the responsibility for the Authors’ Fund almost by accident. 
The public lending right or the Authors’ Fund was set up by a Cabinet minute in 1972 as a result of the work of people like Keith Sinclair who was a Labour candidate in 1969. He was a professor of history at Auckland University and a significant author as both a poet and historian. He had realised that people who did not have university or other public salaries and who put their efforts into writing—people like Janet Frame—were often extremely poorly paid for their writing effort. Those authors are people who have defined the way New Zealanders see themselves. They have taken our collective and individual cultures and created something that is new and in many cases beneficial to New Zealanders. But even where authors are writing about the dark underbelly of New Zealand society or indeed of humanity it adds of course to our knowledge of ourselves and our society. 
I believe that what all artists do is vital to us. We celebrate we commiserate and we mourn using their words. Who could imagine the burial of the Unknown Soldier when that serviceman’s remains were returned from France to New Zealand without the beautiful poetry of Vincent O’Sullivan? The memory of that and of the tuis singing in the pohutukawa trees will remain with me forever. It crystallised the emotion and the background of that ceremony. 
We as a Government have said that all artists need to be compensated better for what they do; they are both the soul and the critic of our country. This bill is part of that work. Up to 2002 in response to the report on the Authors’ Fund we looked at the amount of money involved and I thank the Green Party for its excellent Budget bid in 2002. It has meant that $1 million more has gone to authors both directly through the Authors’ Fund and the Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement and indirectly through support for example for New Zealand publishers who are looking at book exporting. The Ministry of Economic Development has also assisted that work and we are very pleased at the response to that.The public lending right issue to a small extent went away for a while after those developments. 
However the New Zealand Society of Authors came back to us and said it wanted stand-alone legislation and this is the result of that very good representation. I acknowledge the Society of Authors and the many people who have been chairs and committee members of its predecessor PEN New Zealand. I am thinking particularly of Kevin Ireland Tessa Duder Gordon McLauchlan and Dame Fiona Kidman. A huge number of people have been involved and undoubtedly I will leave many of them out. I also congratulate and thank Dr Lydia Wevers for her wonderful job in chairing the group after we had that Budget announcement in 2002 which led to the range of initiatives that include the increased funding for the Authors’ Fund. We have also seen an extraordinary expansion in the number of number of New Zealanders who are writing books that are being published. 
We come to this legislation and I say yes to a large extent and in pragmatic terms it does repeat the definition of “author” that is in the present scheme. It does that mainly because there was no ability to discuss that more widely. Sandra Goudie I am afraid suggested the bill had not been referred to a select committee but of course it was. The Government Administration Committee although it called for submissions and heard some of those submissions was not able to give the House a recommendation in time. That is why we have Supplementary Order Paper 246 in my name. To the largest extent that it can that Supplementary Order Paper keeps the present definition of “author”. It is a limited scheme. It does mean for example that overseas-based New Zealand authors who are not paying income tax in New Zealand as defined under section YD 1 of the Income Tax Act 2007 are excluded. Indeed I say to Mr Finlayson if Katherine Mansfield was alive today she would probably be excluded although I suspect that any tax she paid was probably paid through her father so she may well have been covered. 
The reality is that this scheme is very focused on authors who are writing in New Zealand primarily for a New Zealand market although we look at wonderful New Zealand writers like Lloyd Jones who are finding increasing international audiences for their work. There is a process at present for dividing the Authors’ Fund amongst the various copyright-holders and I cannot imagine that Vincent O’Sullivan would in any way assert that by writing the foreword he had written Owen Marshall’s book. The present scheme divides that and there is an ongoing debate which I think the House will have to address at another stage about who is covered. This scheme is very much designed to support authors who are not otherwise compensated. When writing a book as a textbook one is selling textbooks and as an author being compensated for that. The idea of this scheme was not to compensate people who through the course of their work were being paid to write whether that was through a university or another educational institution. The scheme was not designed as a Christmas bonus for those people. It is intended as a recognition of people who are to a large extent full-time writers. 
The only other question I have to deal with is Sandra Goudie’s one about Braille and audio copies. Audio copies are not covered but the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind has an arrangement with authors and their works are recognised. It is not always possible to pay for every copy that is used particularly by people with sight disabilities. 
I commend this bill to the Committee. I thank members for their attention to the Supplementary Order Paper and the bill and I look forward to the bill proceeding.