SpeechGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to passionately support this bill to the House. I was a little bit late so I'd like to thank the National Party for donating a second slot to me. Copyright's something I'm incredibly passionate about. It's something I'm quite proud to across my career—on reflection—have stood on the right side of the copyright debates of the last decade. Look at section 92A under the previous Labour Government which was never fully enacted. Look at the Skynet debate we saw in the mid-2010s—the massive debate and the hilarious debate amongst some of the first memes ever produced about our Parliament—and of course the Trans-Pacific Partnership where terms have been extended which officials did say did carry a financial cost for Kiwi consumers.In this case I'm really glad that we're seeing cross-party support for something which is going to make a huge difference for the 168000 Kiwis with a print disability. It's wonderful to be here supporting the bill unanimously. I'm even more heartened because this legislation was improved in select committee and again I'd like to thank members from both parties Labour and National.Now here the key test was the commercial availability test. One of the major copyright proponents in New Zealand is Paula Browning. She's been tweeting me a huge amount about this issue. But I was glad I was able to respond to Miss Browning that we saw cross-party support to change the legislation to remove the commercial availability test in the select committee because what this House and what these parties want to do is make it easier for Kiwis to access print accessible copies. Secondly what this House wants to do is make sure that we're encouraging our producers to create accessible content. What we heard in the select committee was that only 10 percent of material is actually produced that's disability print accessible. Now of course I made a moral argument to the members of the committee that it was just the right thing to do and I pointed out that only four of the 55 Marrakesh Treaty countries—Australia Singapore Japan and Canada—applied this. The other 49 didn't. I made a moral argument that it was the right thing to do because we want to encourage access because we heard very clearly from the universities from the disability community in New Zealand that having the commercial availability test simply gave them the right to wait for months on end the right to send emails which could be ignored the right to search multiple databases many which don't even exist at this point in time to then finally get the material. What we also heard is that many disabled students in New Zealand don't actually get print accessible copies of their textbooks until their course has actually been completed. I mean this is madness. So I'm glad that all parties agreed this moral argument but I also support the National Party who made quite a clear economic argument which was the sense that by removing this commercial availability test—and given the fact that it's much much cheaper for a producer of content to be providing accessible content at the time of publishing rather than the incredibly expensive and incredibly time-consuming onerous process of someone individually actually transcribing the material—this is acting as an economic incentive.I think that's a wonderful thing that we can do for New Zealand consumers. This is about modernising our Copyright Act which dates from a pre-internet age in 1994 extending the lengths—the series of exemptions. This is a great day forward for sensible modern copyright reform. It's going to really help those consumers but most importantly it's also going to encourage those producers because ultimately in this digital age we want more and more producers. I'd quite rightfully respond to the criticism of Paula Browning that we also have a challenge in this House and as a Government to make sure that we are living up to the high standards articulated in this debate. We should be striving that Government information is produced in accessible formats. While we're sending a clear signal to publishers in New Zealand let's also take on board a clear challenge for this House and this Government to make sure we're doing it. The Green Party is incredibly proud to support it. We're proud to have made a positive difference and we'd like to thank other parties for supporting my amendment to remove that commercial availability test.