O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): In spite of saying in my first speech that I was not going to be going into the area of technical detail I will. But before I get into that area can I just say that basically in summary and I failed to say it in my first speech this bill is about protecting us from ourselves because Kiwis are great at No. 8 fencing wire issues—that is that innovation and using things for a purpose they were never intended for but finding a way of utilising them in a very smart way. Kiwis have always done that in taking a spray or a chemical product and using it somewhere else. I know it has happened unfortunately and in fact it has been identified where sprays for pests on plants have been applied to cattle because farmers have thought: Well that's a very smart way of dealing with the lice." So occasionally the residues have turned up. Kiwis have always done that; we do not want to encourage it. But this bill actually allows for innovation but then allows for the systems to be in place where companies have done this to identify and track it properly. Can I get into more technical areas. The Green Party has an amendment that it is going to table in the Committee and Labour will support it. It is one in which the Greens have identified the issue where the core component in any agricultural compound is tested and trialled the intellectual property comes with the application and it is assessed. What the Greens have maintained—and there is some truth in this—is that the other agents that might be mixed in the normal application of that should be tested as a combined compound and we should know exactly what the impacts might be. For example a wetting agent that I use when applying sprays is in fact in some ways more toxic than the spray itself. I do not know how that operates on the plant. Obviously it assists with the core component of the spray being taken in by the plant but whether that results in a residue or some other unintended consequence is not always fully tested. That is I guess the proposition being put forward by the Green Party. I think Labour considers it a reasonable question—that if there is a new compound all the components of that are properly tested. We cannot guarantee that at the moment because the active product—the one that actually carries out the work of the compound in getting rid of the plant or pest or disease or whatever—is the only thing that we test because it seems to be the toxic one or the effective one. There are many other compounds put into that that assist with the uptake or the transfer within the plants of that toxic material and indeed if it does need to be tested and identified then Labour supports the Greens in saying: "Well why not actually ask the question?". I do not think it is going to undermine in any way what we are trying to do here which is to protect intellectual property and protect the wisdom gained in innovative use or off-label use as it is called here. So I hope Minister Goodhew—and I know she is giving consideration to this. It is something that was discussed briefly. The Greens have raised it in the Primary Production Committee. We did not get into too much detail on it because the select committee members I guess like Parliament and like the rest of New Zealand—their eyes probably start to glaze over when you get into these highly technical areas of chemistry and biology. We did that at school and a few of us at university for a while some unsuccessfully but nonetheless they are highly technical areas. But most New Zealanders who buy food at the supermarket and most people who buy New Zealand products offshore trust us to have a robust system in place. I think that what we are passing tonight will ensure a robust system and a fine balance between commercial tension and keeping the price of products down but ensure a fair return on the investment for the people who are creating or utilising safe products that as I say worldwide are trying to address the 50 percent of total world production that is lost because of plants diseases and unwanted organisms that get in and infiltrate some of the crops that we grow around the world. It is not an insignificant issue that we are trying to address but we are just putting in the boundaries of this intellectual property protection for New Zealand and other countries will have different regimes."