SpeechPart 1 Preliminary provisionsHon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I'm very pleased to open proceedings on the Plant Variety Rights Bill. I do want to thank at the outset the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee for their consideration of the bill and of course all those who submitted. The committee itself made a number of I think useful improvements to the bill after listening to the submitters and the bill is stronger for it. I also want to specifically acknowledge the industry stakeholders the Māori organisations and the individuals who provided their time and expertise to help develop this legislation. I'm quite convinced that the opportunity for many plant puns lies ahead of us in this debate today. As I look at members opposite I can see the talent there.I want to make some introductory comments to this part.Hon Member: We'll stop sowing seeds on this soon.Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: They're sowing the seeds of—yeah I concede. The bill governs an area of intellectual property law referred to as plant variety rights" or "PVRs" which give an exclusive right to exploit a plant variety they have developed in order to earn a commercial return from their investment—Simeon Brown: Grow up!Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: —breeding it; leaf it out! The bill fulfils our obligations in relation to PVRs under both the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership so it is an important step in meeting the terms of obligation for that trade agreement and also meets our obligations related to the Treaty of Waitangi.It strengthens plant breeders' rights by aligning the PVR regime with the current international standard for PVR protection known as UPOV-91—and for those watching at home UPOV is the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. It provides protection for kaitiaki relationships with taonga species and mātauranga Māori as recommended in the Waitangi Tribunal's Wai 262 report. And the bill will promote innovation in our plant breeding industry and so support economic growth in critical areas of our economy such as horticulture and the arable and pastoral crops that underpin farming in New Zealand.Specifically to Part 1 Part 1 sets out the purposes of the bill the definitions and the transitional provisions. In response to issues raised by submitters the select committee made two significant changes to Part 1 of the bill and so I just want to address each of them in turn. The first is around the Treaty clause. Māori submitters raised concerns around how the Crown's Treaty obligations were referred to in the original purpose clause arguing that the phrasing appeared to limit the Crown's obligations to protect kaitiaki relationships. These provisions were examined by a cross-agency group including the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment Te Puni Kōkiri Te Arawhiti the Crown Law Office and the Parliamentary Counsel Office. The new purpose clause 3(b) is a straightforward statement of what the bill does without implying that in general this is all the Crown's Treaty obligations amount to. A new Treaty clause in 3A then sets out how the bill recognises and respects the Crown's Treaty obligation.Hon Member: Well done; that was a hard road to hoe!Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: They're still barking at me from across the way! The other main change in Part 1 is the definition of "essentially derived variety" referred to as an "EDV". This is a new concept introduced by UPOV-91. If a new variety is essentially derived from an initial variety then the rights holders of that initial variety also have rights over the EDV and they will come between them to some kind of agreement as to how those rights can be exploited. The definition in the introduction version was arguably quite narrow in an attempt to provide more clarity to what is a somewhat ambiguous definition in UPOV-91. Ultimately where the select committee landed in response to submitters was that actually it was better to leave the UPOV-91 as it was as our trading partners have done. So the select committee made that change to the bill.Finally on this part under the transitional provisions any PVR grants made or applications filed before the relevant provisions of the new legislation commence will be considered under the current legislation the Plant Variety Rights Act 1987. Given that grants were made on this basis with contracts then drawn up based on those provisions it is only fair that those provisions are maintained after the new legislation commences. Otherwise an action that was not an infringement prior to the commencement of the new legislation could suddenly become so and that doesn't seem right.So in closing this bill brings Aotearoa in line with the international community cultivates innovation in plant breeding and supports economic growth while protecting our taonga plant species and mātauranga Māori. I don't share concerns held by other members about issues such as the term of a PVR but I do welcome constructive debate on these topics. Thank you Madam Chair."