Curran Clare: Regulatory Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Curran Clare: Regulatory Reform Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Sitting date: 22 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4702. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 I would like to take a call on Part 5 of the Regulatory Reform Bill and I would like to say that my colleague Jacinda Ardern made some very good points about the amount of money that could have been saved on this issue on this particular part of the bill which is around film video and publication classification and how it is a travesty that this bill is going through Parliament only now. I have just done a quick calculation as to how much could have been saved and it is at least around $6 million or $7 million that could have been saved if this bill had gone through when this issue was first raised with Ministers. Essentially that represents almost half of the budget of TVNZ 7 which was canned just over a month ago. One has to ask oneself and one certainly has to ask the other side of the Chamber and the Minister in the chair the Minister of Internal Affairs why if this issue was raised—and I am going to outline specifically what the issue is—it was not addressed at the time especially if this Government is so intent on regulatory reform and cutting red tape. 
I would just like to draw the Committee’s attention to what the issue is. It is really about bringing the labelling of DVDs and video games into the 21st century and creating a harmonisation between the classification of films that are shown at the movies and the DVDs that we watch in our homes. The issue is that most DVDs and some video games that are supplied to the public have to have as my colleague Jacinda Ardern said labels affixed—that is an interesting word “affixed”; it is not a word we normally use—to them showing their rating or classification. Currently those labels take the form of stickers. They are time-consuming and expensive for the industry to actually affix because it has to do it manually. 
We heard two submissions on this particular part of the bill and it was explained to us in depth as to how all of those DVDs had to be brought in and reclassified because of this anomaly in the law. The DVDs had to be watched and if the classification needed to be changed then new labels had to be affixed which meant that they had to be done manually. So that is a group of people sitting around sticking labels on. This creates an enormous amount of cost instead of allowing the harmonisation of the difference between how the actual movie gets classified with how the DVD gets classified. It also means that consumers—as I think probably a number of us have discovered when we go to the DVD store if any of us still go to the DVD store—can be confused as the majority of DVDs and games are imported and yet they carry the New Zealand sticker label and a foreign printed label. So when you are actually going in and having a look to choose the DVD often it is a bit hard to tell which actual classification it has. 
What this bill does is it allows the industry the flexibility to either print or physically affix the labels which as we have heard is expected to result in substantial compliance savings. Those savings are lower than initially estimated because of the reduction and this I suppose is an issue that does go to the change in technology. My understanding from the submitters who did come to the Commerce Committee is that the DVD industry is still alive and well. Having recently joined a DVD shop myself I am aware of just how alive and well it still is. Not all New Zealanders are downloading movies illegally from the internet— 
Kris Faafoi 
: Or legally. 
CLARE CURRAN 
: —or legally—they actually do still go to the DVD shop. And there is something to be said for going to the DVD shop especially when you have got children but the confusion is—