Curran Clare: Television New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Curran Clare: Television New Zealand Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:672;Page:18762] 
CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) 
: 
 I am pleased to take another call in the Committee stage of the Television New Zealand Amendment Bill and to talk to the section with regard to archived works. I will revisit what I see as being the critical issue in this bill—that is the issue of the public good. We have talked about that in relation to a number of issues a number of subjects throughout the discussion. 
As we know this bill has two main intentions. The first which Labour fundamentally opposes is to remove the charter and replace it with a minimalist statement of functions. The second is to create the scheme that has been talked about tonight so that those publicly funded works—those very important publicly funded works; the works that are part of our cultural heritage and the identity of who we are as a nation—that were made before 1989 and that are now held in the TVNZ archive can be made available for rescreening. That scheme was called the archived works scheme. I say—and it is important that I do get the chance to say this in this debate—that that scheme has some merit. There was a very interesting discussion in the select committee about this issue. In fact much of the discussion concerned how to make the scheme possibly work. Unfortunately the other major part of the bill which is the removal of the charter was just unacceptable—absolutely unacceptable—and it meant that Labour could not support the bill. 
I will talk a little bit about the archived works scheme and what it represented because it is worthy of some discussion particularly giving credit to the number of submitters and the discussion had with them and the notice the select committee took. The select committee did a lot of work on this issue and I acknowledge the work the officials put into this bill. 
The archived works scheme was described as proposing and enabling a rescreening of those works that to date had been unavailable for reuse because of the need to negotiate with the multiple contract holders. It is important to take this seriously because it was about seeking to find a balance between the public-good objective—I will say that again: the public-good objective—of releasing those works for current and future generations to see and acknowledging the rights of those who were contracted to work on those programmes. 
There were 48 submissions; 16 of them were essentially pro forma submissions but there were a number of important submissions from different agencies. Those agencies took this issue quite seriously and as a result of that discussion the select committee made a number of changes to the bill in its report back to the House. I will briefly touch on them in order to give weight to the work the select committee did. In those changes the committee recommended that the definition of “archived work” be changed to make it clear that it would apply only to works made on or before 27 May 1989 for which TVNZ owned the whole copyright. The select committee also recommended that not only must archived works be screened free to the viewer—I will repeat that: free to the viewer—but they must not be screened between the hours of 6 p.m. and 10.30 p.m. on any day of the week on Television One and TV2. That provision was essentially about making sure that profit was not being gained from that screening. 
The rights of persons with an interest in archived work were to cease. The select committee recommended it be made clear that the cessation of rights of persons with an interest in archived work would apply only to the contractual rights in copyright under the Copyright Act 1994 and that oral and performers’ rights would remain unaffected. The select committee also recommended that the fund must contain a sum determined—