O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): This is quite a technical bill and those people who do not understand that now were asleep before Minister Finlayson started if not by the time he had finished. I will not go into the technical details of the bill—I know that the chairman of the Primary Production Committee will probably do that—other than to say that Labour supports the bill. It is basically about updating the protections for people who do some research to investigate whether a product is safe to use in the New Zealand agricultural system.The select committee worked across the board with all parties to try to get the most sensible outcome here and the balance was one of ensuring that the people who did the work—the research—and spent the money got some ability to recoup that investment by being able to sell their products for a specific purpose for a reasonable period of time be that from 5 to 8 years or to 10 years. We have heard the Minister explain the adjustments that the select committee on balance thought were necessary to ensure that the people who spent the money got some ability to get a return on it. Why is this important? Well Kiwis are great innovators and the terms that the Minister used—innovative products non-innovative products and all the rest of it—which put most of us to sleep are effectively about trying to protect Kiwis from ourselves because when we see a chemical that kills certain weeds or certain pests in a crop or when we get provided with that chemical the classic Kiwi farmer or grower will say: Well that could be quite good to use on this other crop or pest." That probably occurred in the past more often than it should have but in the new world of maximum residue levels of off-label use—and that is the kind of innovation—the reality is that all of our food products all the produce that comes from our country are scrutinised by the importing countries around the world to ensure that we have not by mistake or by design incorporated the use of a product that they may consider a contaminant. The ability now for people to test right down to parts per million if not parts per billion and identify an unwanted chemical means that we have to ensure our systems are right up to speed and do not allow the use of chemicals in an inappropriate way. But we want to continue to innovate so just as we are breeding new plant species improving productivity rates across the board and looking to chemical companies to assist us to control disease we want to make sure we are doing it in the right way. The major change in this bill is actually encouraging the innovative use of products but only when the research has been carried out to ensure that if they are applied there is no danger to consumers or to the land or to the people applying the chemicals. So there will be research that arrives at recommendations and if you pick up a can of chemicals and you have got very good eyesight or you have got a magnifying glass you can read the instructions because they are quite detailed—and they have to be. It is important that people get trained to use chemicals properly to ensure that they do not use them at twice the rate they should meaning that there are chemicals left behind in the food they produce. It is important too that they apply them at the right time. All of these things are absolutely crucial if we are to run the finest safest food production systems in the world. So what we have done in this bill is we have made some adjustments to say to the companies—they might be New Zealand companies or they might be offshore companies that are selling into New Zealand: "If you see the potential for the use of an active ingredient in one chemical and you think it may be useful on another crop then you can do that but you have to abide by the process to get registration. But if you do that we'll ensure that you get 5 years' or 8 years' or 10 years' protection of the intellectual property that you've developed." The alternative is that someone just comes along gets access to that information writes a different recommendation on their spray or changes a compound and then sells it for a price just under that of the company that has done all the work and makes perhaps an unfair profit. We need to encourage innovation across the agrichemical sector and we need the sector to be able to make a fair return. There is always an interesting debate about what is fair and what is excessive. On the other hand the farmers and the growers want to buy the product as cheaply as they can. They want competition in the market. They want two or three or four people producing the same kinds of chemicals so that there is competition to keep the prices down. But there does have to be discipline and that is where Government and agencies such as Agcarm and others come in—to ensure that in having healthy competition we do not cut corners and we do not put at risk any part of our food production system and do not end up with a product offshore being tested a residue being discovered and that consignment being rejected or sent back to New Zealand with the reputational damage that that would cause us. I think every member of the select committee had that at the back of their mind—that we are trying to protect our food production systems. As I say I am sure that the chairman of the committee will explain in detail the reasons for the change in the time line protections. They were quite complex I have to say but as chairman of the committee he is in the positon to do that plainly. I will speak to the general principles and say that Labour does support the bill. We have worked with committee members to come up with what we think is a fair and reasonable solution that protects those who are doing the innovation and those who are carrying out the research but does not protect their rights so as to remove competition and downward pressure on those chemicals. The reality is that the production of the chemicals themselves usually costs very very little but the research required to get them approved as safe and to get them approved to be used in a safe way that must be upheld—that is where all the money has to be spent. I guess it is an ongoing dilemma in the pharmaceutical sector but also in the agrichemical area. I am not going to speak for too much longer other than to say that I think we have a reasonably robust system. I think we do need to keep ahead of international guidelines around maximum residue limits. We do have traditional practices in agriculture that need to be updated and upgraded and we need to look carefully at a number of things that we are still using that might end up being unwanted over time. The ongoing use of conventional fertilisers and other chemicals such as glyphosate are coming under scrutiny around the world. In Europe they are looking to ban it. I have to say that we have got to stay ahead of that and look for alternative safer chemicals—or chemicals that they consider are safe—so that we can continue to sell our high-value produce into high-value markets around the world. So Labour supports the process we have gone through as a select committee and supports the outcome of this but does leave a word of warning by saying that this is a very active area of monitoring and management. The passage of this legislation will be good for a short time and we will then need to stay ahead of monitoring of maximum residue levels and other chemicals that we are using across New Zealand to ensure that our reputation is not ever undermined by the sale of produce that people perceive may be unsafe for consumption. Labour supports this bill."