Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you very much for the interventions by the previous two members David Clark and Clayton Cosgrove. I should not have to explain to the previous speaker David Clark why he is here. I do not know why he is here myself. But the purpose of this bill is a very clear one and that is to introduce a modern licensing regime for the patent attorneys. There seems to have been a great deal of confusion on the other side where it has conflated two different elements of the bill.The fundamental part of the bill is to introduce a trans-Tasman licensing regime for patent attorneys because the one that we have been operating under for a number of decades does not have some basic elements such as a code of conduct any disciplinary regime and all the sorts of things that we would normally expect to be part of a licensing regime.As has been mentioned the idea in the trans-Tasman setting with the agreement between the two Prime Ministers was to introduce that trans-Tasman regime as part of the broader single economic market that we have been making good progress towards. The idea of that is to have a quality patent attorneys industry across the Tasman so that New Zealand businesses can protect their intellectual property more effectively.The two elements that they—my friends across the other side of the Chamber—keep on referring to relate to the single patent application and the single examination processes. These were two processes. When this was introduced—Dr David Clark: This is the main substance of the bill.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: No. It is not the main substance; it was one of the substances. The primary substance of the bill was introducing a patent registration regime. If I could relate the history for the benefit of the members when the bill was introduced to the House in November 2015 it included the proposition that it was a bespoke trans-Tasman single patent application and examination process.Running parallel to that had been a long ongoing conversation at the World Intellectual Property Organisation the WIPO level to develop an international examination process called the Electronic Patent Cooperation Treaty (ePCT) system. There was a great deal of uncertainty as to whether or not that would actually occur. So when we introduced the bill we included the trans-Tasman operation as a good way of operating but we were also conscious of the fact that it was possible that an international regime could come along and supersede it. That indeed is what has happened subsequent to the bill's introduction. In June this year—to the surprise of many actually—the WIPO ePCT system had been concluded and had general agreement around that. So the rational thing to do given that development was to say that it no longer makes sense to try to develop a bespoke trans-Tasman single examination process when we can achieve the same thing at an international level.We got very strong feedback through the process and that is why that part of the bill has been withdrawn. We are left with a bill that does a very effective job I believe in drawing together a trans-Tasman patent regime for the registration of patent attorneys. I do welcome the broad support that this bill has across the Committee. I do welcome the contribution from the member Mr Cosgrove to say that there is no politics in patents and I think we should keep it that way. Thank you very much.