Curran Clare: Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Curran Clare: Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:18116] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 There are so many things to say. Essentially there are a couple of things I want to address. The Minister in the chair the Minister for the Environment opened a can of worms when he talked about fundamental principles. He started by talking about principles but then basically attacked Opposition members. He then talked about the fundamental problem with the Green Party. Well I would like to tell the Minister what the fundamental problem is with the National Government and it is that it is full of hot air. 
The Government is full of rhetoric that does not match the reality and there are so many examples of that. I would like to bring one example to the attention of members tonight that has core relevance to this debate: the importance of investing in our heritage and in our cultural content. Essentially that is the thing we are trying to protect through this legislation by providing copyright—protection of the creators’ works. Unfortunately this Government is taking away the funding the support base and the confidence from our creative sector which is a great tragedy. Unfortunately this is the awful rhetoric we are faced with from this Government. 
Let us look at some of the facts. The Minister attacked the Labour Opposition in relation to TVNZ 7. Television New Zealand appeared before the Commerce Committee last week and told that committee which saw this legislation through and did all the hard work that it was no longer a public broadcaster. Television New Zealand said it had been instructed that it was a commercial broadcaster and that was before legislation has been passed through the House to disband the public sector charter. We are making Television New Zealand into a commercial broadcaster. There is no public broadcasting in this country; there is no investment by this Government in cultural content which this legislation is designed to protect. We are ring-fencing the funding for Radio New Zealand and squeezing the heart and soul of New Zealand content. 
Basically the Minister has contributed only hot air to this debate. He does not understand the issues. If it was the actual Minister who is taking this legislation through the House who was getting up and talking about principles maybe we could have taken him seriously. This legislation and Labour’s support for this legislation is based on principles. Labour’s support for legislation is always based on principles. If we want to talk about the monopoly issue versus the failure of the market which underpins this whole issue but which this Government refuses to address then I want to make some comments about it. 
I refer members to another submission. It was a very sensible submission provided to the select committee by one David Farrar. Mr Farrar whom I may not always agree with on a number of issues makes some very sensible points in his submission about the research on economic damage that is being claimed by many organisations—not the people who create content but the organisations that represent them such as the corporates and the monopolies that David Parker was referring to. He said that some rights-holders produce reports stating that the economic damage is in the billions assuming that every single download of a work is a sale that would have otherwise occurred. This ignores the fact that many downloaders try—