Robertson Grant: Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13649. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I am sure that my colleagues will make excellent contributions in a few minutes’ time when they get that opportunity. I want to pick up where my colleague Clare Curran has just left off in terms of talking about the role of not just regional and provincial cinemas but also the independent ones that are in the cities. The Chair remarked briefly earlier that he could in fact remember the days of silent films in the cinema and no doubt standing for the national anthem and generally behaving yourself. I have to confess to the Committee that I was once removed from the Century Theatre in Dunedin for the rolling ofjaffas down the aisle so—Kris Faafoi: What a waste.GRANT ROBERTSON: That is right. If Kris Faafoi had been there there would not have been anyjaffas available to roll down the aisle. Those sorts of cinemas have a very important place in our history and indeed in the present day in many places.I want to make special mention of a cinema that Clare Curran mentioned which is the Penthouse Cinema in Brooklyn here in Wellington. In fact the cinema’s owners made contact with me as the Copyright (Parallel Importing of Films) Amendment Bill was making progress through the House and they made the point very strongly that as an independent cinema it operates within the industry in quite a different way from the large chains that we know of—Reading Cinema and so on. It is not operating on a business model that is in tune with being able to automatically get a film on release put it out and reap the benefits of that as a business in the same way as those large cinema chains do. It usually continues to rely on a local community that will come along to a film and it will not necessarily be immediately upon its release. So this is not just a problem for provincial New Zealand; it is about the different business models that operate within the cinema industry in New Zealand.I think that as a Parliament we had hoped that by now we would have moved to digital technology operating in such a way that all cinemas would be in a position to be able to deal with the removal of what was a 9-month grace period and is now a 5-month grace period. That has not happened and it has not happened for a host of different reasons. Some of those are to do with the way in which the cinema industry generally is actually struggling because people despite anything to do with parallel importing are no longer going to the movies in the way that they did. But I back what Clare Curran has said. This is actually about part of New Zealand’s culture and about ensuring that those independent cinemas can continue to have their place. So I do support the bill in its current form but I do recognise that it is not the long-term solution. There is absolutely no doubt that as a Parliament we will have to accept at some point that this legislation will expire and that the time will come in which there will not be this kind of grace period. But the fact is that the cinema industry does need this and the independent cinemas do need the extension that we have now got.The second point that I want to make is actually around the broader issue of copyright as it is discussed in this bill. It is quite clear to me that the issues of copyright have got away from this Government and that the review that was promised should have happened. The situation I do not want to see New Zealand get into is one where ourcopyright law ends up being dictated by somebody else. That is the danger that we run if we do not look at our own copyright law in the next year at the latest because the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement currently does contain language around copyright. There is no doubt that even if it does not emerge out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the Trans-Pacific Partnership takes longer to complete than is hoped by the proponents of it it will include some references to copyright or later agreements that New Zealand signs internationally will start to impact on our copyright law. If we take seriously our role as a Parliament and representing the Sovereign in this country then we should be in control of an area like copyright. We should bring New Zealanders along with us in terms of what they want to see a regime contain.The kind of legislation we have here is sort of incremental—“We need to change a bit here and a bit there and extend this exclusion out.” That is actually not the way to run copyright law in New Zealand so I would encourage the Government to get on with the job in that regard. I know that there is a wide variety of views in this Parliament and across New Zealand around what the future is for copyright but let us make a New Zealand solution to that not take one that is imposed on us.Jonathan Young: Well it’s international.GRANT ROBERTSON: Jonathan Young says it is international. He is right; it is in an international context. But do we want the decisions about that being taken by negotiators in a room somewhere around the world or do we want those decisions to be driven by us and what is in the interests of New Zealanders? I would suggest that the latter is what we should be doing and that is what the Government should take heed of.I am not going to take up the full part of the rest of this call. I just want to note that as the cinema industry does evolve over the next few years we should make sure that the Government and others are alongside it so that we do not end up back here in 2016. I do not think there is an appetite in this Committee to see this extended any longer but I do support the bill so that those independent cinemas can continue to provide the service they provide. I hope this Parliament recognises that we hope that cinemas in New Zealand in the future will not just be those provided by the large international chains but will still represent the communities that they serve.