Tirikatene Rino; Mallard TrevorRINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to speak at the third reading of this bill the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill. Yes this is a technical bill but the essence of it is that we have listened to all of the submitters who unanimously encouraged the Primary Production Committee to extend the data-protection periods. We listened carefully to those submitters and acting as a committee we implemented those changes and I think we have come to a bill that is going to be welcomed by our agricultural and horticultural sectors and also the suppliers of agricultural compounds agrichemicals and veterinary medicines alike. This is an example of the select committee working together and crafting the piece of legislation and improving it. I believe that what we have done is strike a balance. I believe we have struck a better balance because clearly the data-protection periods from the incumbent piece of legislation and even the initial bill that was proposed were inadequate. They were inadequate and therefore the industries were asking our committee and asking Parliament to give greater consideration and more extension to those periods. So we have done that. We have done that and why have we done that? We want to make sure that those companies get an extended period of protection that allows them to recover their upfront investments into research and supplying highly technical confidential information that they have to supply with their applications for registration of these products. The changes enable them to recoup that investment that they make. But also we are not into creating monopolies. We do not want this protection to be unlimited but we have set a fair duration for all the different categories of applications that are provided under the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act. We have struck that balance and why do we want to do that? We want to ensure that there are opportunities and incentives for the suppliers of these products to actually submit new registrations new uses and new reformulations to other parts of our agricultural industries. So this bill will encourage those registrations to hopefully be flooding in thick and fast so we can help broaden and deepen our productive sectors our primary sectors and grow the wealth and grow the productivity of our beautiful country and our export sectors. This is I believe—and as previous speakers have said—about us striking the right balance. We do want to see those new products come into the market and come into the registration process. That will benefit new fledgling industries particularly in our smaller niche product areas. Many—in fact the vast majority—of the products that are registered have a very very small customer base and so there is a lot of upfront investment required in the business case. Without that protection it is hard for those suppliers to make that business case work. So with this bill we do want to encourage a greater variety of new products to be coming forth provide more protection for our plants and more treatments for animals and to increase the productivity of our primary sectors primarily. This is a big market that we are talking about too. Although we are a major producer in Aotearoa we are talking about over half a billion dollars' worth of agricultural products and veterinary medicines. That is not an insubstantial number—over half a billion dollars—and as for our sheep and beef farmers and the on-farm costs Mr McKelvie would be well aware of the costs that are involved as a percentage of the on-farm costs that these products create. There are a lot of these products but only a small amount of them have very large turnover large sales. The vast majority of them are very small niche products and therefore they do need that extra protection and also the encouragement of new applications and new registrations to come through so we can meet the needs of our horticultural and agricultural sectors. So with that I will not prolong my contribution but I do commend the work that we have done as a committee. We have crafted a fine piece of legislation here and I am sure it will be to the benefit of our farmers and our horticultural producers right throughout the country and I commend it to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The question is—Steffan Browning: I thought we were having another National Party one.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Is the member calling?Steffan Browning: Yes I am Mr Assistant Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Steffan Browning.