Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm pleased to be standing and speaking in support of the Resale Right for Visual Artists Bill and in doing so I want to acknowledge the many very talented New Zealand artists that we have and I'd particularly like to acknowledge our student artists who I have had some dealings with over a number of years and it's always a real pleasure to be involved with student art. As many of the speakers have canvassed this is part of a free-trade agreement. So in fact we are not debating whether or not but rather how to implement this piece of legislation. But notwithstanding that I do think there are issues that need to be canvassed and I think it's important for the artists; they deserve that we canvass it fully and make sure that we understand exactly what we are doing. So I suppose the first area that I'm trying to get my head around and I think it will be useful to hear submissions from artists is around the definition of visual artwork". So you know is photography included? Is carving would korowai be included is mixed media included? Would animation be part of it? So I think there's some definition aspects where we need to listen to the artists because that is always evolving with particularly digital art evolving so quickly. The other one is around the entities and the resale. Here it says the resale must involve an art market professional or be to or from a publicly funded art gallery or museum. And I think of a number of other publicly funded entities that have quite substantial collections and if you look at the education sector often universities and polytechnics have an art procurement policy and so they will have quite substantial collections. Often those pieces of artwork will have been purchased when a student is a very new artist and so they may have been purchased at a very low price. So how would that be dealt with if there is quite a substantial change in appreciation of that artwork? Also there's a number of artists in residence schemes that operate across the country. Often those artists in residence will donate a piece of their artwork to a public entity. How would that be dealt with? Would the first sale of that be the first sale because it was donated initially or would it be the subsequent sale? So I think there are genuine details that do need to be ironed out in the select committee process. The cost of administering the collection of the commission is a worry. I've looked at the estimate that it may be around $700000 and my concern is that that could very quickly get eaten up by a hungry collection agency particularly if they are having to sift back and find relatives—50 years later—of an artist. So I would hate us to be in a position where we approve a piece of legislation that is giving rights to visual artists and yet the amount that finally gets to them ends up being a very very small amount. So I'll again be interested to hear what artists and those in the art industry say about that. Also I'm somewhat perplexed around the notion that if the income is not taken up by the artist then that will be redistributed through a cultural fund for the benefit of the artistic community. That's an incredibly broad statement so I think we'd be wanting to see some teasing out of just exactly what that means. I am incredibly supportive of our artists and as I said particularly our student artists in their very early days. I just want us to make sure that as we work through this we do it in a way that is respectful not just congratulating ourselves that we've got a piece of work here when in actual fact some of the detail may mean that the money actually getting to those visual artists doesn't occur. So I just think we need to take a deep breath and not be critical of the fact that we are wanting to look at the detail we are wanting to hear from the submitters we are wanting to get some definitions right so that we're not just virtue signalling we're not just congratulating ourselves for having passed a piece of legislation but by all accounts we may be behind some of our other countries that we might normally compare ourselves with. I understand that Australia may have had this for about a decade so there must be learnings that we can pick up from other jurisdictions that have these schemes in place to make sure that we get the detail right that the money is collected in a way that it's not all eaten up by the administration or the implementation of the collection and that those artists who need this funding and deserve this funding do actually get the funding. So with that I'm happy to support the bill to select committee stage. Thank you."