Goodhew JoHon JO GOODHEW (Associate Minister for Primary Industries): Mr Chair I thank you for the opportunity to bring us back to the bill. I just want to traverse a little bit of the history. I want to acknowledge the work that the Primary Production Committee has done and what we have heard here this evening is that the select committee is largely in agreement about the way forward and the problem that this bill seeks to solve—and I acknowledge that previous speakers have talked about it taking a jolly long time to get us as far as we have got. In terms of the agricultural compounds sector and the veterinary medicines sector they are very very keen to get this bill passed but it has evolved over the time when there has been consultation with the sector prior to bringing this bill to the House. Data protection is really really important. It provides time for the businesses to recoup what it costs them to bring that data protection into the field of play in order to get registration and be able to have their product in New Zealand. So New Zealand misses out. Why? Well we miss out because we are a small country with quite a small market and therefore it is quite late in the patent-protected period that a company will try to give New Zealand the benefit of a product that will help our agricultural sector. New Zealand has been very very keen to have access to the sorts of medicines and compounds that are available to other agricultural nations that are much bigger than ourselves and this bill seeks to bring that about. I have to say very clearly to the Committee that despite the rhetoric of the previous speaker Steffan Browning this is not a Trojan Horse for dangerous compounds to get into the country. This is simply about evening out the business playing field for our primary production industry. I want to just use a couple of examples and you know generating supporting data is really expensive. Estimates range from $10000 to $500000 for research studies so the company bringing a new product to the market is certainly going to want to recoup that. It is also very important that I refer back to the fact that we are not talking about patents; we are talking about data protection on a compound that is likely quite late in its patent life. I want to answer some of the questions that have been asked by previous speakers. Does this legislation apply to Pacific countries? I think it is important that we assert to the member who raised this that we are talking about agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines not health products or medicines like that. This legislation extends the period during which the Ministry for Primary Industries cannot use data provided in one application for registration to assess another application. That is the crux of what we have got here. I also want to address the amendment put forward by the Green Party member. Just to be clear for the Committee section 20 of the principal Act lists the matters that the director-general must take into account when deciding on an application for registration. It already requires the director-general to take into account all relevant scientific and technical information and any submissions received including from consumer groups. This amendment is simply unnecessary. So I thank the Committee very much for the considered way this has been discussed here tonight and I hope that we can move this forward because the sector has certainly waited a very long time for it.