Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise on the third reading of the Plant Variety Rights Bill in its final reading before it actually becomes law. As the previous speaker has said the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee has done a lot of work and I'd like to thank all my colleagues in the select committee. We work as a team in the committee I think and regardless of different parties I think we tend to agree on what is actually good for the nation. And I'd also like to thank all of the submitters on the bill and also the Minister Dr David Clark for participating very actively during our committee stages. Although there were some frustrations in certain areas I think he endeavoured to answer them fulsomely and I appreciate his efforts and all of the officials and the clerk of the committee who have put in extreme hard work to get this bill to this point.On this side of the House as my learned colleague Barbara Kuriger actually said we support moving to a new plant variety rights regime that gives effect to the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV-91). Because it's an international treaty we have to actually do this. But I think as Ms Kuriger said there were certain things that we did actually talk through during the committee stages particularly in terms of the kaitiaki rights. I think you know for a person who comes from a different country with specific cultures that we have very big pride in—for example our dress our food—Stuart Smith: And golfers.MELISSA LEE: And golfers. But sometimes the cultural appropriation by other people gets us really riled up. So we understand the issue in terms of cultural appropriation and the kaitiaki relationship that we need to have for traditional plant varieties and the culture that exists in this country. The cultural appropriation almost happened in my case where as a young person coming from Korea and having grown up singing a particular song called Yeon-ga" in Korean—I sang it thinking it was a Korean song and it goes like this: 비바람이치던바다It starts like that. But it sounds very much like a te reo Māori song and it's actually "Pokarekare Ana" but Koreans sing a slightly faster and funkier version of it.Tāmati Coffey: Show us!MELISSA LEE: Not going to be singing—not doing that today. But I thought as a child growing up it was a Korean song without knowing that it actually came from Aotearoa and moving to New Zealand and learning that it actually came from here I was absolutely shocked because all Koreans thought it was a Korean love song. To think that it was actually the New Zealand soldiers and Navy personnel who went to the Korean War in 1950 that passed on the song and the Korean verses and the lyrics are exactly the same or have very similar wordings to te reo Māori words actually gives it a bigger meaning for me. So the kaitiaki relationship and not the cultural appropriation by Korean people of "Pokarekare Ana" I think we actually get to understand—that we understand. So we were talking about the kūmara that it is actually a traditional plant variety of the Māori people that came on the first waka to Aotearoa but the thing is that in the 1950s the black rot literally decimated the kūmara stock that existed in New Zealand. What we wanted to get to was: where does the kaitiaki relationship actually sit when the original plant stock was decimated and it was in fact Joe and Fay Gock who developed a new plant variety that resisted the black rot and they literally distributed this particular plant variety free of charge to the rest of New Zealand? It was their gift to New Zealand and where does the kaitiaki relationship actually sit for that particular variety? That was a question that I believe never really got answered but I think we sort of got to a point where the Minister said that the intellectual property (IP) does belong to the Gock family and I think that protection is actually acceptable.I don't think the Gock family wants New Zealand to pay for the gift that they've given the nation but I think the recognition that they have the kaitiaki rights and the management of their particular plant variety—and it's not just the Gocks; it's people who innovate in horticulture or agriculture. Their IP and the kaitiaki relationship: does it only sit with the Māori community or is it for everyone who wants to protect the variety that is developed in New Zealand and Aotearoa so that we protect our IP against the rest of world who may actually culturally appropriate—or horticulturally appropriate—what is rightfully a New Zealand variety?This has been a long journey to this point and I shouldn't take too much more time because I think we need to make sure that this gets passed and we basically put the UPOV-91 regime in place and make sure that people have time to clearly know where they sit in terms of the new plant variety rights. So I commend this bill to the House."