Mooney Joseph; Dean JacquiJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise as the member for Southland in the second reading of the Plant Variety Rights Bill. National supports this bill. This bill replaces the Plant Variety Rights Act 1987 which is now over 30 years old—older than some members in this House—and has not kept up with changes in the plant breeding industry. The bill implements an updated regime for plant variety rights. It expands the protection provided to plant breeders in a number of key areas to better safeguard intellectual property rights for new plant varieties. This includes providing protection to essentially diverse and dependent varieties.The more than three-decade-old Plant Variety Rights Act is no longer fit for purpose. Reform was attempted in 2005 but didn't materialise. The current system means that New Zealand is an outlier relative to our key trading partners being Australia Canada the EU Japan and the US who are all parties to the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. Aligning our legislation with the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants will give plant breeders a predictable and strengthened intellectual property rights system in order to continue to invest in and provide improved crop varieties for the benefit of New Zealand farmers and our country.There are many significant benefits of gaining improved access to new and innovative products across the pastoral arable and horticulture sectors where New Zealand has important domestic and particularly export markets. It's hard to imagine a situation where plant breeders aren't able to secure strong legal protections for their plant intellectual property rights and to obtain a sufficient return on the investment. This would potentially result in some breeders questioning whether to bring their plant varieties to New Zealand or to continue their local research and development which wouldn't be beneficial for New Zealand.According to the New Zealand Plant Breeding and Research Association's submission New Zealand companies collectively spend over $35 million annually on plant breeding activities. Plant breeding involves a considerable investment of time and resources. It typically takes around 10 years and millions of dollars to develop a new variety for market. Moreover when breeders start to develop a new variety they rely on long-term assumptions about what farmers need and what end users such as food and beverage processors feed manufacturers etc. will want in 15 to 20 years' time from now. They factor in a range of assumptions about future needs. This all means that this bill's updated and strengthened plant variety laws are necessary for New Zealand to remain competitive with our overseas markets. Aligning our plant variety laws with the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants will help planning for plant breeding in New Zealand for the long term and incentivise the development and release of new cultivars for farmers.On this point I refer to KPMG's 2021 Agribusiness Agenda report which was issued at Fieldays last year. That report noted without the right [plant] varieties it does not matter how much land is planted [New Zealand] will never create the premiums we are looking for." That report also noted that we need the right legislative protections surrounding plant variety rights to secure the most modern cultivars. As National's spokesperson on Treaty of Waitangi negotiations I spent a little bit of time on this bill's approach to implementing the Crown's obligations to the Treaty of Waitangi in relation to the plant variety rights regime. The legislation will bring into existence a Māori Plant Varieties Committee. That plant varieties committee will consider all applications for a new variety where the variety is wholly or partly derived from a taonga species and where the material from which that variety was sourced in New Zealand. They will assess the effect of the grant on the kaitiaki relationships and in contrast to the Māori advisory committee under the Trade Marks Act 2002 and the Patents Act 2013 the Māori Plant Varieties Committee will have the power to make decisions on whether the plant variety right application should proceed which are binding on the Commissioner of Plant Variety Rights. The committee will also have advisory roles providing non-binding advice to the commissioner on whether use or approval of a proposed denomination for a plant variety is likely to be offensive to Māori. Information relevant to the applications are: novel distinct uniform stable and denomination criteria. National believes however that the scope and function of the Māori Plant Varieties Committee needs to be clarified. We believe the scope of the Māori Plant Varieties Committee should be limited to an advisory body as recommended by the Waitangi Tribunal in their Wai 262 report: Ko Aotearoa Tēnei. There are precedents for advisory bodies. Māori advisory committees operate under both the Trade Marks Act 2002 and the Patents Act 2013 to advise commissioners whether proposed trademarks are likely to be offensive or whether commercial exploitation of an invention proposed for patent registration would be likely to be contrary to Māori values. In Wai 262 the Waitangi Tribunal recommended that the commissioner be supported by a Māori advisory committee in his or her consideration of the kaitiaki interest. National believes the Waitangi Tribunal's recommendation is a more balanced arrangement—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member's time has expired. I call Marja Lubeck—five minutes."