Cunliffe DavidHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): I rise in support of this bill along with my colleagues but I do so with some comments that I think go to the heart of the bill's conception construction and implementation. If I can use a medical analogy—this bill was flawed in its conception it was mangled in its gestation and it would have been stillborn were it not for the midwifery that was offered by the Opposition. I am sure that the Minister will have learnt some salutary lessons from this process. In all my time in this House I have probably never ever seen a worse officials' performance in front of a parliamentary select committee. To say that they were not frank would be a great compliment. To say that the information presented to members of this House was partial would be undoubtedly kind. There were real issues of probity when it emerged under cross-examination from my colleague Mr Cosgrove that the officials briefing the New Zealand Parliament in a confidential closed session were at the same time carrying out negotiations with their Australian counterparts without reference to the select committee and without volunteering that information until it was dragged out of them. I note that there are none actually present in the Chamber today. Can I just say that I hope the Minister will take those matters up with the chief executive concerned because it was frankly a display that was not befitting of the high standards that the New Zealand Parliament and the New Zealand Government normally expect. Let me restate before I get into the meat of the bill where we in the Labour Opposition and the Government do agree because there is some common ground and that is the basis of why we are in fact offering our support for this vote. Firstly of course we support free and fair international trade. In general we support closer economic integration with our largest market our neighbour Australia provided that that operates in terms of New Zealand's national interests. We supported the closer economic partnership agreement. We support within limits the single economic market limit that was actually kicked off by the Hon Dr Michael Cullen and his counterpart Mr Costello in Australia. But it is worth noting because it is an underpinning of this bill that the current Government changed the rules from pursuing those options that were in the interests of New Zealand and in the interests of Australia to pursuing anything that was in the interests of the totality which means usually that it would be in the interests of the larger player but may not be in the interests of the smaller one. I say that the job of the New Zealand Government is to look after the New Zealand national interest and we were vigilant in this committee and the Government dropped the ball. The level of research contained in the regulatory impact statement and the materials presented to the committee were desultory. There was no cost-benefit analysis to speak of to support the Government's contention that the bill as proposed would have reduced compliance costs to New Zealand business. The Labour Party supports the idea as we support New Zealand business that we do want to remove unnecessary compliance costs. And if it were the case that the patent attorneys profession was shall we say gold plating or featherbedding that would be a legitimate target for Government action except that there was actually no evidence presented to the Commerce Committee that that was in fact the case in any quantifiable manner. The only submissions that were available to the select committee from both the institute and New Zealand businesses said the opposite—that the bill as drafted would have increased compliance costs to New Zealand and would have defeated its own purposes. And submitters pointed out that the Government's officials had not consulted with them in an open and broad-based manner. It was a bad process supporting a questionable idea. The performance of advisers in the select committee was not up to par and that is putting it mildly. Not only was there not any form of rigorous cost-benefit analysis but officials were not frank about the level of analysis that did exist. In other words it sounded like there was some until they were cross-examined and we found out that the emperor had no clothes on. That should not be the case in the New Zealand parliamentary process. Secondly as I have said officials of the New Zealand Government were having a parallel negotiation with their Australian counterparts which resulted in the amendments that have been brought to this House. The trouble was they must have been giving them information about a confidential New Zealand parliamentary process while it was happening and without being frank to us that that was going on. Again it was cross-examination from my colleagues that slowly but surely dragged out of the officials what was actually going on and it was reprehensible and bad process. Thirdly officials contradicted themselves because they said that this bill was designed to enrich the intellectual property environment of New Zealand. Yet all of the evidence all of the submissions rang warning bells that in the medium- to long-term the opposite would be the case. The reason for that which was contained in submissions was that it shifted the centre of gravity of IP formation and protection away from New Zealand to Australia reinforcing a pre-existing process that corporate control and corporate head offices were already largely moving across the Ditch and high-end professional services were following them and this would mean that the IP community was likewise. Although that may not have been a critical issue in the first year it may have been a very significant issue over 10 years or 20 years when it became more and more difficult to sustain intellectual property protection and IP law and practices in New Zealand and so trade marking and copyrighting would be done in Australia—yet another reason why if you are an innovator you would not locate in New Zealand. That is a step that if that had played out—and it actually will not to an extent that we consider dangerous because of the amendments—it would have been directly contrary to the stated goals not only of the New Zealand Labour Party but of the Government itself: that we want to have a higher value higher-income high knowledge economy. Why would we export our knowledge production processes to our nearest competitor? It made no sense. All right if there had been evidence of a major cost advantage but there was none. All right if corporate New Zealand had lined up behind it but they did the opposite. All right if there had been good consultation and a reasonable level of acceptance by the profession but there was the opposite. Just imagine that had been done to the New Zealand Law Society or the Bankers' Association or Federated Farmers or the Road Transport Federation. Why does the Government have it in for the intellectual property profession? It beggars belief. Well what was the end of this story? As I said the bill was subject to a forceps delivery. There was quite a bit of pain. Two thirds of the bill was removed without anaesthetic. The single application process and the single examination process which were the heart of the bill no longer exist. They have not been amended; they have been amputated. The only thing that is left in this shell of a bill a fig leaf for ministerial process was the joint training process that allows New Zealand patent attorneys to be trained in Australian universities. Fair enough because there currently is not a proper course in New Zealand although Victoria wants to put one on. I do think that although we support this bill we are going to need to monitor the long-term impact of the educational opportunities on both sides of the Tasman. Summing up as you will gather from my remarks I have rarely seen a worse select committee process than this. I would like to commend my colleagues for the way in which they handled that. They were temperate but they were also not going to let the issues go when officials were trying to do an end run around the New Zealand Parliament. I am pleased that they were able to hold them to account. I commend the Minister actually for having the courage to make the amendments that he has made which has afforded us the opportunity of supporting the bill. As I say we support the principle of reducing cost where that can reasonably be done for the New Zealand business community we support good international trade rules and we support within reason a closer relationship with Australia. We will watch with interest to see what contribution the remains of the bill make.