Faafoi KrisHon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Civil Defence): Can I just acknowledge first of all as we do on members' day the member for having the bill pulled from the ballot. This is obviously the second of her bills that is on the Order Paper today. Unfortunately she was unlucky with the result of the first one and I'm sorry to say she's going to be unlucky with the result of this one too.Can I just spend some time giving a little bit of context to this debate in the five minutes allotted to me. The last time the patent legislation was amended in this House was 2013. If my memory serves me correctly that was when the Opposition was the Government. If they thought it was such a great idea to introduce second-tier patents into the New Zealand realm of intellectual property (IP) then maybe they should've done it then. I think there was probably a reason for them not doing it at that stage: because of the fact that across the Tasman and in other like nations second-tier patent systems have proved to be completely and utterly ineffective. So while giving the member credit for the ambition of trying to get this to the point of it becoming law first of all it won't and it won't probably because of the same reasons that her Government back in 2013 saw fit not to introduce a second-tier patent system.What we do know about the previous Government in terms of its ambition for innovation was that it was quite happy for the levels of R & D spending here in New Zealand to languish at about 1.3 percent of GDP while the average for other like nations in the OECD sat at 2.4 percent. But what I can say to that point in terms of what question I would expect to hear from the Opposition—What are you going to do about it?"—is that I'm very happy to say that my colleague sitting to my left the Hon Megan Woods has taken action to increase that amount and saw fit to have this Government introduce $1 billion worth of R & D tax credits to take the level of investment higher than the previous Government to help grow this economy to ensure that the businesses that we do want to make sure are internationally competitive will get the support to do that. I actually think that's a concrete measure to make sure that our businesses that want to be innovative and more internationally competitive do get the assistance that they deserve.There have been a number of companies who have spoken out actually against this bill since it was pulled from the ballot. One I think of most note is one of our rather large exporters Fisher & Paykel who said not only should we not do this; if it is introduced it will make things harder for them as one of our large exporters make them less competitive and hand competitive advantage to their overseas-based competitors. So if the Opposition wants to hand an advantage to our overseas-based competitors against one of our largest exporters in New Zealand Fisher & Paykel then by all means put pieces of legislation like this in the biscuit tin because it is going to prove that in a very short amount of time since they've been removed from office they've become out of touch from the real needs of those companies that want to help grow the economy. And this piece of legislation will not help do that.So I just want to reiterate the good work that this Government is doing taking a paltry level of R & D spending from 1.3 percent to closer to the average in the OECD of 2.4 percent. If you look at the figures I think it was—and I want to get this right and I'm going to make sure I check my notes. In 2012 New Zealand ranked as the 13th most innovative country in the world. Now in 2017—based on the 2017 figures—we slipped to 22nd. So the previous Government who are now the Opposition really need to start putting their money where their mouth is if they're going to start introducing pieces of legislation that want to increase the levels of innovation in New Zealand because their track record and the evidence of their track record and their ranking in the innovation stakes speak to a different story than the one they spouted for nine very long years.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just before I call the next speaker I just will confirm that the times have gone out. However I have them here—5 minute speech; I'll give you a bell at one minute."