Brooking RachelRACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's quite strange for me to be speaking on this bill because once upon a time in 1998 I was flatting at the great University of Otago—that's been raised a number of times this evening in a very different context—because my flatmate she was doing her honours dissertation in law on Wai 262. And of course that was a claim at the time. It was lodged on 9 October 1991. This was many years later in 1998 and I remember thinking at the time Well this is brave to be doing your dissertation on something that's likely to become prominent soon and maybe not last for that much longer." I was a little bit wrong in that thought! Of course the final recommendations from Wai 262 came out on 2 July 2011 and there's been a long response and it's an ongoing response to that very important decision from the Waitangi Tribunal. Back in 1998 I was a student of ecology doing marine botany physiology—so I appreciate a lot of the substance of this bill—and of course my law degree. So I'd also comment just quickly that a part of this legislation part of the bill that we're looking at is a review of legislation that's now old. It's 30-plus years old. We need to look at it and make it better. We've heard just from David Bennett about the importance of arable farmers and seeds and we need to have good legislation around those intellectual property rights. A lot of what this bill does does improve that legislation and you know it's right that bills that are 30 years old are normally ripe for review. There's a few of them to be doing this term. So what I would like to concentrate really on is the integration of Wai 262 with this property regime and that's because the current legislation hasn't had a Treaty clause or any other process. We can see in the departmental disclosure statement that there's been a lot of consultation. You see here there was an issues paper in 2018 an options development hui in 2019 another options paper in 2019 and then an outstanding issues paper in August 2020. So this is work that has been well canvassed and that's good because it's important. Now we can see that the bill is trying to rectify the issue that there's been no acknowledgment of the Treaty. So at clause 3 the purpose clause in subclause (b) there's a reference to the Treaty and then we have the new Part 5 and that's the most important part in terms of incorporating those Wai 262 ideas and concepts. So at clause 52 there's the Treaty clause and I will go to that. This is a very well-developed Treaty clause that takes people through what is to be done to recognise and respect the Crown's responsibilities to apply the principles of the Treaty. Then another interesting part of this Part is at section 54 and that has some definitions and interpretation for this Part of the bill. It introduces a concept of sort of three tiers of different types of plants. One of them is native plants—that's quite simple—and then another is plants that have arrived in New Zealand without human assistance. And then there's a third which is non-native plants that have arrived with human assistance but that's on a waka before 1769 and are listed in regulations as significant. Then there are these two key concepts in this Part of the bill. The first one is "kaitiaki relationship". That's defined in clause 54 and "in relation to a plant species means the relationship that any particular person iwi hapū or group has or Māori in general have as guardian [or] trustee or caretaker of—(a) an indigenous plant species; or (b) a non-indigenous plant species of significance". Then there's another concept in here of what a "taonga species" is. This isn't defined and in part I think that comes from the Wai 262 decision. On page 65 of that decision there's a discussion at 2.2.2 of taonga species and it's saying "As we have said taonga species are the species of flora and fauna for which an iwi hapū or whānau says it has kaitiaki responsibilities." Then it goes on a few paragraphs down: "Most of all we were told of practical relationships developed over 40 generations between iwi and taonga species used for food". It goes on: "Claimants spoke at length on the uses of plants and treatment methodologies while others spoke of the life cycles and characteristics of these species." So that hasn't been defined because it's related to the relationship and that's been a decision of Cabinet. What Part 5 does is it sets up this scheme with the Māori Plant Varieties Committee and in clause 55 we have the requirements of the knowledge that those members have to have. That's knowledge of mātauranga tikanga Te Ao Māori and taonga species which I was just talking about. The committee can prepare guidelines and then it assesses applications and makes decisions on whether or not there is a kaitiaki relationship. So that assessment is provided in clause 61. Then if that's demonstrated they can consider whether or not there's agreement between the parties or if there's a need for conditions. And yes it is very explicit in the bill that they make a decision. I refer to Hon Todd McClay's speech earlier where he was questioning this—it's very clear in the bill.This is a very important piece of legislation in terms of New Zealand responding to that document Wai 262 that decision that took such a long time and involved very many people and for that reason I commend this bill to the House."