Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Oh good—I was hoping Minister Clark was going to get to his feet but obviously the Minister's saving himself for things to come up.I wanted to talk to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 93 in the name of the Hon Todd McClay. This relates to clause 14 which is in Part 1. In it he proposes a new section 36 after subsection (2) which states (3) Nothing in this section applies to any conduct carried out by a person where that person can demonstrate … (a) it engaged in the conduct for the dominant purpose of protecting a legitimate business interest; and (b) the conduct was reasonably necessary to protect that legitimate business interest." There is a further addition to this in clause 14 new section 36A after subsection (5) which is: "Nothing in this section applies to any conduct carried out by a person where that person can demonstrate that: (a) it engaged in the conduct for the dominant purpose of protecting legitimate business interest; and (b) the conduct was reasonably necessary to protect that legitimate business interest." So there were two definitions: "reasonably necessary" and for the conduct.So this clause as Madam Chair will be aware relates to intellectual property (IP). Now intellectual property is a crucial part of any commercial activity. In fact one of the interesting things if you look at the Government's balance sheet is intellectual property is only worth $3 billion. In my view it's highly understated. But for most companies people are the most important thing but the next most important thing is intellectual property. In some instances companies will want to protect that and they'll go through a patent application process. They might go to the next stage down which is a licensing arrangement or they may choose because the difficulty in around—protecting the commercial IP is very very difficult.What this bill does is that it is going to do away with the right for businesses to protect their IP and it's a reference to what's called intellectual safe havens. It's interesting under this bill—I'm just trying to find supporting [Looks through papers]—I had a number of people write saying they did not believe that under the current proposal in this bill the intellectual property safe harbours should be done away with. My question really to the Minister is: what is the commercial justification for this?Because even where companies have a significant market share none the less they will want to create intellectual property and they will want at times to share that property. The trouble with dealing away with the safe harbour rules is that it becomes difficult. In our view—and I think this is what the Hon Todd McClay's SOP is about is making sure that we do not disincentivise people to first of all create IP but secondly to adequately use it and share it. The big issue is that companies do want to share their IP but the removal of the protections under the safe harbour provisions in this bill will mean that businesses think twice before doing it. I just would suggest to you Madam Chair—and I'm hoping the Minister's going to respond because first of all I'd like him to explain what are the safe harbour IP protections that we're talking about and then secondly why he's chosen to remove them in this bill. Because as I say I think there are a number of reasons but let's hear what the Minister's going to say and then we can move on from there."