Worth Richard: Major Events Management Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWorth Richard: Major Events Management Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 August 2007. Volume:641;Page:11393. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RICHARD WORTH (National): In a crowded gallery and a hushed Chamber I just express concern that the Minister the Hon Trevor Mallard has not seen fit to offer comment on Part 4 of the Major Events Management Bill. I express the wish that he will do so because there are a number of important aspects that I am sure his officials would have drawn to his attention. The bill is another example of course of the type of legislative drafting technique where there are a whole lot of subparts which might inappropriately limit debate on the substantive part itself.Part 4—and National supports the Major Events Management Bill—is all about enforcement and the subparts deal with matters of general application with border protection measures which I am sure the Minister has thoughtfully considered in subpart 2 provisions relating to enforcement officers in Subpart 3 and provisions relating to civil proceedings in Subpart 4. Subpart 5 is concerned with criminaloffences and Subpart 6 with search warrants. Then of course the legislation moves on to the next part.I would like to make some brief comments about enforcement in the context of this legislation because this is an area that occupied some time in the Commerce Committee and is the subject of some change. A combination of enforcement measures is provided for in the bill to ensure the effective and efficient enforcement of ambush marketing protections. The plan of the drafters which the select committee accepted was appropriate was that criminal and civil remedies would ensure deterrents and redress whilst the extra provisions that were included for administrative remedies would expedite the enforcement of ambush marketing protections limiting the protection for harm by stopping ambush marketing at crucial times. It is quite right to say as others have said in this debate today that in the context of ambush marketing timeliness of response may often be critical to advancing the interests of sponsors and others.I start by talking about civil remedies. Ambush marketing occurs where the ambush marketer perceives that he or she will gain some benefit from his or her activities. Both as a form of deterrence and I think to ensure that ambush marketers do not get paid from their activities event organisers and—subject to the event organiser’s discretion—official sponsors that have suffered damages or loss will be able to bring civil actions. That is as it should be. The civil remedies available include an account of profits which is stripping the ambush marketers of the benefit they gain from ambush marketing activities; damages which as we all know is making good any loss suffered by event organisers; and also corrective advertising to correct public misapprehension.That is all I would seek to say on civil remedies but in addition of course to those remedies provided by the legislation there are criminal penalties. The possibility of criminal prosecution for ambush marketing activities I believe will act as a significant deterrent to those considering the possibility of undertaking that type of activity. There are analogies to be drawn in the context of the Trade Marks Act 2002. As Mr Hughes has reminded me key provisions in section 124 of that Act prohibit a person from knowingly applying a mark to the goods and services that he or she knows is likely to be mistaken for a registered trademark. So much for the civil and criminal remedies.There is this further area of administrative remedies. It is usually only possible—as my colleagues on this side of the Chamber have reminded me—to bring criminal and civil proceedings after an event has occurred. There are some exceptions but the process is complicated and it can be time consuming and expensive. Administrative remedies may very well be an effective enforcement process in this legislation. What is possible? Well enforcement officers who are appointed by the Ministry of Economic Development can do a number of things. They can issue formal warnings to ambush marketers. They can seize offending material they can obscure offending material and they can enter premises under limited circumstances.Hon Trevor Mallard: Can the member say something to wake us up?Dr RICHARD WORTH: One of the issues—and I say this to wake the Minister up from his generally somnolent state—is the police involvement in the enforcement process. The Minister should listen to this because this was a change. This was not something the officials wanted; this was something they told the Minister they did not want. But the select committee said this is what we would have and we do—in the context of exercising these enforcement powers on private land the police are to be involved. It was suggested that the police would not be much interested in that but the reality is that we need to be hugely careful as Keith Locke has said tonight in arming officials with enforcement powers. It is appropriate that when those powers are exercised they be exercised in the presence of the constabulary.I now await the Minister’s comments on what he thinks of these administrative remedies. It is a test for him I would say as to his knowledge of the legislation and the approach that has been taken in philosophical terms to provide effective remedies in the case of a breach.