Plant Variety Rights Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Plant Variety Rights Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I move, That the Plant Variety Rights Bill be now read a second time.

I want to at the outset of my contribution thank the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee members for their hard work in considering this bill, and to the chair, Jamie Strange, I acknowledge you across on our side of the House but over the other side there. The committee has recommended a number of important changes to the bill in response to the submissions that they received. The bill deals with a niche and often technical area of our intellectual property regime, but it’s also one that captures a degree of public interest.

At the outset, I’d also like to acknowledge all the industry stakeholders and Māori organisations and individuals that have played a vital role in the review of the PVR regime. Your expertise has been crucial in refining the proposals that we find in this bill.

The bill governs an area of intellectual property law referred to as plant variety rights or, commonly, simply as PVRs. It’s focused on promoting innovation and economic growth by encouraging the development of new varieties of plants. Many of these new varieties underpin success in key areas of the economy like agriculture or horticulture.

Angie Warren-Clark: Or kiwifruit.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Our beloved kiwifruit, a good example—a very good example—whether it’s gold or green, or even red these days, that’s often mentioned. But there are, of course, plenty more examples of innovative new plant varieties that are of benefit to society.

Another example I might perhaps cite just for illustrative purposes is that there’s a grass that has been developed after many decades of trials that deters birdlife by lowering the amount of insects that are harboured within the grass. That particular grass has the potential to be used near airports to reduce the amount of bird-strike, and I would suggest that that is a good thing.

The PVR regime needs to strike a balance between rewarding plant breeders for their efforts, because we want to reward and encourage innovation and economic development, but we also need to provide access to new varieties for growers and consumers—so it’s striking a balance between those different aspects so that society as a whole can benefit. Now, the bill strikes this balance by strengthening intellectual property rights to encourage that innovation while still freely permitting breeders, commercial and recreational, to build on that innovation and grow new varieties.

On top of all that, what makes this bill unique, perhaps, is that it also recognises the kaitiaki relationships with taonga species and it protects them, should they be impacted by a PVR grant. The bill there has two overarching purposes related to New Zealand’s international and domestic obligations. The balancing of these obligations around innovation and protection of kaitiaki relationships reflects New Zealand’s unique position in the world and our unique approach to plant variety rights, and I think it’s an approach that we in this House can be very proud of. Again, I do want to acknowledge the committee and their work to strike the right balance in this regard.

So, first off, the bill enables New Zealand to meet its international treaty obligations through the CPTPP, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. That agreement—the CPTPP—requires us to align our laws with UPOV-91, the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants 1991 agreement. Giving effect to UPOV-91 will ensure our laws are consistent with international best practice and intellectual property law, and better reflect the realities of modern plant breeding.

Secondly, the bill will also ensure that our PVR regime is consistent with the Crown’s obligations under the Treaty. Ko Aotearoa Tēnei, the Waitangi Tribunal’s report into the Wai 262 claim, found that kaitiaki relationships with taonga species are entitled to a reasonable degree of protection. The bill establishes a Māori Plant Varieties Committee, whose primary role will be to assess the likely impact of the grant of a PVR on kaitiaki relationships with taonga species. If the grant of a PVR is likely to adversely impact that kaitiaki relationship and this impact can’t be mitigated, then a PVR may well be declined.

The bill goes further in strengthening kaitiaki within the PVR system than was recommended by the Waitangi Tribunal because this Government recognises the need to better protect taonga species, taonga works, and mātauranga Māori. The establishment of a Māori Plant Varieties Committee with genuine decision-making power to protect kaitiaki relationships we believe reflects true partnership.

The select committee did an excellent job in scrutinising the bill, and I want to cover a couple of the key changes that have resulted. The first is the inclusion of a right of appeal to decisions made by the Māori Plant Varieties Committee. The bill as originally introduced did not include an appeal right, which meant that these decisions could only be challenged through judicial review. Instead—and we think this is important—the legislation will now provide adequate pathways for those whose rights are affected to challenge a decision made by that committee. The bill as reported back, therefore, includes a right of appeal to the Māori Appellate Court. This was recommended by the Chief Justice following consultation with her colleagues, the Chief Judges of the High Court and of the Māori Land Court.

The committee recommended a number of other additional amendments to strengthen this legislation. Some of the headline changes include revising the purpose clause and including a separate Treaty of Waitangi clause to better reflect the Crown’s obligation, aligning the definition of an “essentially derived variety” with the wording in UPOV-91 to achieve international consistency, extending the term of a PVR for potatoes from 20 to 25 years, and adding a requirement to consult with Te Puni Kōkiri before making appointments to the Māori Plant Varieties Committee.

So, in conclusion, this bill brings Aotearoa into line with the international community, it supports innovation and economic growth while protecting our taonga plant species, it meets our obligations under our free-trade agreement, it supports progressive trade that benefits New Zealanders as a whole, and, at the same time, it stays true to our history and identity as a nation founded on a partnership as reflected in the Treaty of Waitangi. So it is a real pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on the Plant Variety Rights Bill in its second reading. This is my first opportunity to talk on this bill, and it’s very interesting. I wasn’t able to sit on the select committee, so it’s something I’ve had to pick up, and it’s very interesting just reading the background to the bill.

As anyone involved in the industry knows, New Zealand has been at the forefront of developing particular plant species for many, many years. We have some very fine scientists, and we’re world-recognised for certain species. Of course, in my own electorate of Port Waikato, the Pukekohe long keeper onion is one such species that has actually lasted a long period of time, and, of course, it was developed by the growers of Pukekohe and is so-called because of its ability to last a long time when in storage, which, of course, now with modern methods of storage, is not quite so important. But at the time it was developed, it was a very useful onion variety.

Of course, if we reflect back to the sale of PGG Wrightson back in 2010, I think it was—it is a very substantial business that most people recognise in the farming-agriculture sector as a company that provided services to farmers in terms of buying and selling property, cattle, sheep, and livestock in general. But the other, most important aspect of that business which was ultimately acquired by Agria, a Chinese company, was, of course, its seed business. When the takeover offer was made, people sort of underestimated the seed business and over-inflated the livestock aspect of the business. Of course, Agria bought it primarily because of its seed business and has subsequently sold it a few years later for about $400 million to a Danish company, and that just shows you the value of seeds and seed propagation and seed intellectual property (IP).

So this bill seeks to update a very old Act. It’s 30 years since it’s been properly modified. We will support the bill, but with certain caveats, and we will be putting forward Supplementary Order Papers at the time of the committee of the whole House.

The bill, as the Minister noted, deals with the issue of plant variety rights, or PVR—that’s what that stands for. Largely, in terms of meeting our requirements under the CPTPPA—of course, the National Party signed—well, tried to push the TPPA, but the new agreement is called the Comprehensive TPPA—

Hon Dr David Clark: Come on—“Progressive”.

ANDREW BAYLY: All right. “Comprehensive”, “Progressive”—there’s not much difference. Let’s just call it marketing, Minister. Anyway, our concern, of course, was that in meeting the obligation, New Zealand made sure that its plant varieties met the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, or UPOV-91, if you really want to know, Mr Speaker—I can see you are watching very carefully on this. We were keen to make sure that we give effect to meeting those requirements as opposed to implementing something that is, rather, acceding to those requirements, and we think that in having that flexibility about what we do with the plant species that are developed in New Zealand, it is very important that we meet international requirements but we don’t necessarily have to roll over entirely. It’s an important point of difference.

With regard to the bill, it has some very specific issues that it deals with. One is to deal with this issue of intellectual property, and this is essentially what this bill is about. It is a piece of intellectual property, and I’ve got to say that this is an area that I find that the Minister has not focused on sufficiently, particularly in the area of commercial intellectual property. This is just the question of plant IP: how we protect that which has been developed or is native or indigenous to New Zealand. What it does, like with music IP or whatever it might be, is it extends the term of protection for woody plants to 25 years and for all other plants, basically, for 20 years. There is a special carve-out for potatoes—

Hon Member: Ha, ha!

ANDREW BAYLY: —and of course, coming back to my electorate, potatoes are an important export crop, Mr Duncan Webb, and I’m sure if you come up to Pukekohe—oh, I’m sorry; Jamie Strange—you might find how important that is to our local economy.

There’s also an exemption for farm-saved seed, which is where you’ve used the seed and a farmer is then able, as a right, to use it in the subsequent year if that seed is available on their property. It also defines what’s called EDV—essentially derived variant—which means a new variant doesn’t have to look exactly like the former species. It can have other scientific differences, but it doesn’t have to exhibit the importin such as cosmetic features or how it looks that differentiates it from another variety.

So, anyway, the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee did a very good job, I think, in terms of working through some of the technical detail, and I think strides have been made in that area. But I think the main thing for us is, first of all, we’ve got to recognise that New Zealand and its IP around its plant varieties need to be protected incredibly significantly and comprehensively. One of the issues we’ve got is, obviously, with an industry like Zespri, with development of new plant varieties—and we’ve seen instances where the varieties have been taken offshore—we need to be very, very careful, and I know my colleague the Hon Judith Collins is going to talk more about that. But we need to be going into this environment with our eyes open that intellectual property—and it takes years to develop these plant species—is protected and New Zealand can capture the economic value from developing and selling these plant varieties in the open market. So that is the first point of principle; it’s absolutely vital that we get to that point.

We also have some concerns about clarifying the role of the Māori Plant Varieties Committee. The original proposal was a five-person committee. Of course, there’s only five people in the plant part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, so this is a doubling of the numbers, and we have some concerns about, in fact, what should be the role of this committee. Our view is that it should be an advisory committee. At the moment, some of the wording in the bill talks about it having a much greater role, and as some of the growers have highlighted, it’s quite difficult to understand who might you go to get approval from—this term kaitiaki—and is it a hapū you have to go to, or is it an iwi? What is the process if there are competing claims, and how do you go about making sure that you know that you’ve got the right approval? As the Minister noted, there is the right to go the Māori Appellate Court, but that whole process needs to be very, very clear. It doesn’t look that clear to me from my first reading, and it’s certainly something I’ll be asking the Minister during the committee of the whole House stage.

The actual definition of taonga and kaitiaki—what that means. There’s a definition that if plant species were brought on the original waka to New Zealand, that would form part of that definition. If they’re “indigenous” to New Zealand, what does that mean? Certainly, some species like mānuka have migrated and been hybridised over time, and so how do we define that, and there’s a worrying thing that a lot of this is going to be written up. There’s a definition and a list of these particular kaitiaki that are going to be included by regulation, which means it’s not subject to House oversight because regulations are passed once the bill comes into force. I think just the general process around doing that and in going through that process, we want to make sure that there’s absolute clarity, because we do not want our plant breeders to be in a situation where they’re disadvantaged economically and cannot get the material advantage that has come about through their hard labours, and for the benefit of New Zealand so that everyone in New Zealand can benefit. This is about growing the economy, creating more jobs, and moving to a smarter environment. That is why this bill is so important, and it’s important that we get all elements as appropriate as possible. Many thanks.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on this bill. On a probably rather rare occasion, I agree with much of what Andrew Bayly, the previous member, said, and I do appreciate his invitation to visit his electorate in the north Waikato region. In fact, I was actually passing through his electorate on the Te Huia train recently, and as I looked out the window, I saw the beautiful fields there. I’m sure the member would like to join me at some point on that journey as well, which obviously passes right through his electorate.

I stand as the chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, a role that I am certainly honoured to hold in this Parliament at this time. In that role, on behalf of the committee, I’d like to thank the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, the Hon David Clark, for bringing this bill to the House in a timely manner.

In terms of the requirements under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). It was the TPPA; now it’s changed to the CPTPP, but it’s basically a trade deal that was signed in 2018 with a number of countries around the Pacific Rim. It’s already had significant benefit for New Zealand’s economy, and I’ll move into that a little bit soon.

I’d also like to thank all of the staff who have worked incredibly hard on this bill, as they work incredibly hard on all the bills that go through this House. I know all the members regularly join with me in terms of thanking the staff at this wonderful institution that we have.

I’d like to thank the submitters who submitted on this bill. It really was a pleasure to hear from these submitters. We had a very diverse range of submitters, primarily in the horticulture area. As we’ve heard from the Minister and the previous speaker, there has been a slight change in the bill in terms of the potato area, where there’s been a change from 20 years to 25 years, and that was based on one of the submissions. We had a submitter come in who brought potatoes with them, and, actually, really went into the details in terms of the R & D and the investment that goes into a potato. Now, I’m sure many people would cook up a potato at dinner and eat that potato without really thinking about how much money has gone into creating that potato.

As I move on in this bill, I will give other examples of intellectual property (IP) and R & D and how we protect those really important New Zealand businesses in terms of their trade agreements. The R & D goes in early, and often there’s quite a long time before businesses can reap the economic benefits of that R & D that goes in. If they put the R & D in and don’t have the protection of the IP, then those businesses will fall over. So it’s absolutely important that this bill goes through the House.

The bill represents a new and uniquely New Zealand approach to plant variety rights. We’ve signed up to the CPTPP, as I said before, and we’ve already seen benefits—particularly in our kiwifruit industry—in terms of some of the free trade in areas like Japan, but what we’ve done is we’ve taken a uniquely New Zealand approach. We have fulfilled the requirements of the CPTPP, but we’ve done it in our way, so we’ve linked in the Treaty of Waitangi, some of our local indigenous plants—we’ve taken the opportunity to protect the IP around those—and we’ve done a few other things that are unique to other countries but we have satisfied what’s required under the CPTPP.

I’d just like to touch on kiwifruit a little bit. Our kiwifruit sector returns over $3 billion a year through our economy. I was at the Fieldays around two years ago, and the next Fieldays is coming—a little plug there—in November. It’s an absolutely wonderful event which showcases much of our agriculture and horticulture from New Zealand businesses. While I was at the Fieldays, I tasted a red kiwifruit from Zespri—

Angie Warren-Clark: Wa-hey!

JAMIE STRANGE: —and I acknowledge other members in the House who have also tasted one of those red kiwifruit. And—[Speaker gestures]—oh, there we go; even the Speaker of this House has tasted these red kiwifruit—the reason I highlight this is as an example of what’s possible in our horticulture sector and the value-add that we can add in terms of bringing money into New Zealand. Zespri—full credit to them—have done an absolutely fantastic job—

Simeon Brown: When are they making blue ones?

JAMIE STRANGE: —in terms of developing—yes—red rather than blue on this occasion, Simeon Brown. But who knows? Maybe a blue one might come at some point. We’ll have to wait and see. But, look, I highlight this in terms of the value-add and in terms of the IP.

Now, if Zespri don’t have certainty on the IP for that red kiwifruit, then it begs the question: will they make that significant investment? If they don’t have guarantee of that IP, there’s a good chance that they won’t make that investment because the risk is too high. So what the Government is doing here is lowering the risk threshold for wonderful businesses, New Zealand businesses like Zespri. So it’s certainly important. For example, SunGold, which I believe is the biggest seller, returns $1 billion to New Zealand’s economy every year, and there are many other examples right across the horticulture sector of this value-add.

So, as I was saying, the bill satisfies the CPTPP. It makes good strides in terms of protecting IP and it does it in a uniquely New Zealand way.

Inadequate plant variety rights legislation has been a problem for 30 years in New Zealand, and this Government is solving this problem. I acknowledge the support from the National Party, and, hopefully, other parties in this House will also support this bill as it goes through.

Trade is the lifeblood of our economy. We are a small nation. The reality is, as a small nation, we can’t and we shouldn’t make all the products, so we make the products that we specialise in and we sell them to the world. Other countries make products that they specialise in and they sell them to the world. If we didn’t have free and open trade across the world, countries the size of New Zealand would really struggle. Our standard of living would be nowhere near where it is at the moment.

I’d like to acknowledge the arable sector in New Zealand. The previous member spoke about seeds and the IP that goes into seeds, and he is exactly right. I think it’s important that we continue to highlight this. Look, as someone who lives in the city, I feel like I have a connection to our rural New Zealanders. Both my uncles are in the agricultural sector; both have farms. I’ve worked on those farms, and it’s important for people who live in the city to have an appreciation of our agricultural and our horticultural sector and some of the risks that they take in terms of business. They are very dependent on the weather at many times and we have seen in terms of climate change some of the challenges that are coming, and, as a Government, we will continue to work with those in the agricultural and horticultural sector to support them. But everything that we can do, we will support.

Just touching on some of the changes that the select committee made—and the Minister highlighted them, but just to dig into them a little bit more—the first is the inclusion of the right of appeal to decisions made by the Māori Plant Varieties Committee, and our select committee felt that this was important in terms of fairness. We felt that there needed to be a right of appeal and we’re, obviously, making that recommendation to the House. In recognising that Māori should be self-determining about issues affecting Māori, the bill as introduced did not include an appeal right, which meant these decisions could only be challenged through judicial review. But it’s important for legislation to provide adequate pathways for those whose rights are affected to challenge a decision. The bill as reported back includes the right of appeal to the Māori Appellate Court.

Just a couple of other changes: revising the purpose clause and including a separate Treaty of Waitangi clause to better reflect the Crown’s obligations; aligning the definition of an essentially derived variety with the wording in UPOV-91—and, obviously, it’s important that we are consistent with UPOV-91 to achieve international consistency—as I mentioned before, extending the term of a PVR for potatoes from 20 to 25 years; and, finally, adding a requirement to consult with Te Puni Kōkiri before making appointments to the Māori Plant Varieties Committee.

This is an excellent piece of legislation. It’s certainly needed, and in a country like ours, where we are so dependent on trade, this bill will support our horticultural sector—our many businesses who do absolutely amazing work in the horticultural sector. So this bill will continue to support them as they trade internationally. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’ve heard a lot spoken about this bill this afternoon—the Plant Variety Rights Bill—and we’re in its second reading. We’ve been told it’s very important, which seems a bit strange that we’ve waited a year to have it come back to the House if it’s that important.

I was pretty concerned to get a message from one of our major exporters this afternoon about this bill. We are, as of course we all know, an exporting nation. Without exports, we’d basically just have no money, frankly, but lots of food. We are an exporting nation of plant breeders who are developing high-value varieties, and we should be encouraging those breeders to do so with their low environmental impact and their healthy and high-yielding varieties, and encouraging investment and innovation and making it easier for them to be able to have these varieties protected and their returns generated. The comment was that this bill falls well short.

So Andrew Bayly, who spoke earlier this afternoon, and I have just discussed this, and neither of us were on the select committee at the time. We are going to be following this up and looking at putting in some Supplementary Order Papers in the committee stage of the House because I think the whole of Parliament should be on the side of helping our New Zealand plant breeders to do the very best that they can to invest in and to want to invest in new varieties. As we know, people are actually the key to so much of our export market.

Some of us can well remember Chinese gooseberries, little hairy green things that we had to climb up a vine—I know, Madam Speaker, you may well remember that, too—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Hmm, hmm.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —and go and collect them and then stick them in a cupboard so that they could ripen before the birds got them. Thankfully, some very enterprising scientists decided to change the way in which that plant was bred.

So now we’ve talked this afternoon about Zespri and the excellent work that they do, helping the economy and helping to make New Zealand a richer place, but we also need to remember that they’re constantly trying to improve what they’re doing and what they’re selling. They are under constant attack from overseas. We all are aware of plant stock being taken, stolen, used overseas, and actually then used to undermine the work of our New Zealand exporters. So it is really important that we get this right.

I think this is the sort of thing where we can take a pretty apolitical view on it, which is looking to see what’s the best piece of legislation. So once I get some more information, I’ll discuss it with our caucus and then with Jamie Strange, the chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, and with the Minister.

We had some concerns noted by some of the submitters, and there were some submitters who were absolutely, wholeheartedly delighted that something was happening—it is time for this legislation—but they did have some other views as well. They thought it was very good to have the first comprehensive review of the Plant Variety Rights Act since the 1980s and to try and put in place some robust plant protection laws.

It’s also the issues around what is taonga and kaitiaki, and what should be included is certainly one that’s caused some submitters some concerns. I think that there are some good points raised around knowing exactly what is included in that, and I think we should be able, if we’re putting these sorts of provisions in place, with an entire five-person Māori committee when the whole of the Plant Variety Rights Office in the ministry only has five staff—this is a very heavy weighting when around 7 percent of applications will, potentially, be affected by the Treaty provisions. I think we need to be a little sensitive to, obviously, concerns by Māori relating to taonga, but we also need to be very concerned that plant breeders themselves may wonder as to whether or not the plant that they are seeking to breed from is going to be covered by this or be caught up in any sort of legislative or bureaucratic nightmare.

So I think we do need to have some more clarity on that. Hopefully, that can be addressed in the committee stage of this bill, because, as we so often see with legislation these days, we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about our country, issues in it—those between Māori and the Crown and everybody else—and have so little understanding that we are in a highly competitive environment and that our enemies are not within but are actually overseas. We need to very much focus on the fact that if we are going to benefit all of New Zealand, the best way forward is for us to be on the side of those people who are trying their very best to build our economy. We in the National Party believe that it is important that we need to acknowledge the Māori interests, but we also need to be very much aware of the commercial needs and flexibility and speed of decision making.

I’m very privileged to have the wonderful portfolios of science, research and innovation, and technology, and what is really clear to me when meeting so many scientists—and we have scientists in New Zealand whom we should be very proud of, working away, and also in the technology and innovation area—is that whatever we think we’re working on in this country, someone else in another country is probably working much harder with far more people with much more money going into it. So our people have to be able to work with absolute speed, and I think that’s one of the concerns that we were alerted to by some submitters. It’s certainly one that gives me some cause. Having spent now quite a lot of time with New Zealand scientists, it is just how fast they have to be, and if they’re not fast, another country will have developed something, or somehow they’ve got hold of that technology or that innovation.

So we’ve got to be really careful that when we’re trying our very best to make sure that all the peoples of New Zealand are properly respected and honoured, we do so understanding that the rest of the world is actually getting on and they don’t care about us. They’re not going to care about our wellbeing, they’re not going to care about anything else, and so we just do need to make sure—and I think that it could be addressed by a statement as to what is actually covered.

We all know about kūmara and we all know about various other plants. We need to make sure that we don’t end up in having an enormous amount of time, hearings, and money going and working out whether or not something is going to be covered. Otherwise, we might as well give up and go home and give it all to Australia, because they already seem to have something called manuka honey, by the way, which comes from a place called Manuka in New South Wales. I thought that was a pretty dirty little Aussie trick myself, but it turns out they really do have it, and it’s another tea tree variety. So we just need to be really careful with that.

So I’m going to be taking some advice from the people who are actually working in science in this area and I’ll put up some submissions. I’ll talk to, as I said, the caucus but also to our colleagues on the select committee and the Minister to see if there’s any willingness to just improve a few things there, because otherwise it’s just going to be yet another bill that we have to fix up when we become Government in 18 months’ time. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Lovely to be standing here speaking on the second reading of the Plant Variety Rights Bill, which, of course, we’ve heard has gone to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. They have heard the submissions and reported back to us. So thank you to that committee, their staff, and everyone that submitted. That is a small select committee, small but busy. They seem to have a lot of bills in front of them at the moment. I have not had the privilege of being on that particular select committee, but I am on the Regulations Review Committee—like, I see, some other members in the House today—and we did give them some feedback, and that was listened to and reported on in the select committee report. I’m also on the Environment Committee, and I think it’s with that hat that I am speaking on this bill today.

Madam Assistant Speaker Dean, I’ve chosen today to wear my camellia brooch, one that was presented to me from you, because, of course, we are talking about the intellectual property of plants. I’m sure that there are—or I know that there are—people in New Zealand who breed things like camellias and rhododendrons.

Now, this is an interesting bill for a number of reasons, and I’m going to focus particularly on the provisions that have come from the Wai 262 inquiry and reports. But it’s interesting because, of course, it is about intellectual property and that’s always interesting. We are updating this plant variety right (PVR), which we’ve heard about from the other speakers. We’ve heard about the economic importance of having good regulations in New Zealand in this area and regulations that fit with international agreements. It’s also interesting because it has some definitions in it, and one of them, at clause 31, is a whole section in itself on the meaning of “novel”. It’s not a meaning of “a novel”; just the meaning of “novel”, and there are a number of these very clear definitions in the bill, which I commend to the House because it’s very good to have clarity on definitions.

It also recognises the recommendations from the very long-running Wai 262 inquiry. There are explicit provisions on the Treaty relationship, and, as we’ve heard from the previous speaker, the Hon Judith Collins, there’s a lot—and we heard it from the Minister as well—here about Māori involvement and saying what a kaitiaki relationship is with a taonga plant species and if this relationship should be protected. I will go to that in a minute—to those definitions of what a taonga species is and how that kaitiaki relationship works.

We’ve heard from the Minister in the first place that this bill sets up a regime for these PVRs. So you can apply, and there’s a process where your application will be considered with various different criteria, and one of those criteria is whether or not Part 5 applies. Part 5 is the part about these kaitiaki relationships and taonga species. If Part 5 applies, whether or not the Māori Plant Varieties Committee has said it can proceed or not will determine how the application goes, and, of course, they can also say that there should be conditions. So that’s how those two issues link together.

I wanted to first of all look at the purpose of the bill, because the purpose includes “to protect kaitiaki relationships with taonga species and mātauranga Māori in the plant variety rights system:”. That’s at clause 3(b), and then there’s a specific Treaty clause, which says “This Act recognises and respects the Crown’s obligations under the principles of under the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi in relation to the law on plant variety rights, through the provisions of Part 5”—which I’ve just mentioned—“and related provisions that support the purpose of Part 5.”

Then “kaitiaki relationship” is defined in the definition section and it’s “in relation to a plant species, means the relationship that any particular iwi, hapū, individual of Māori descent, or Māori entity has, or Māori in general have, as guardian, trustee, or caretaker of—(a) an indigenous plant species; or (b) a non-indigenous plant species of significance”. That second point is a very interesting one, because not only does this bill apply to indigenous species that we can think of—perhaps we could think of the cabbage tree, which might have some importance. Obviously, lots of the harakeke—the flax—also have importance, but it may be that these non-indigenous plants can also have significance and be taonga species. So the obvious one that comes to mind is the kūmara.

That works when we look to Part 5 of the bill—so that is from clause 52. Then, at clause 53, there is more on this “non-indigenous plant species of significance;” and the interpretation in clause 54 is “ ‘non-indigenous plant species of significance’ means a plant species—(a) believed to have been brought to New Zealand before 1769 on waka migrating from other parts of the Pacific region; and (b) listed in the regulations as a non-indigenous plant species of significance”. So it’s important that that “and” there does require these non-indigenous plant species that are taonga species to be defined in those regulations, and there are later provisions about how the regulations are made.

I just note that in relation to some of the other speeches, we heard concern from the member Andrew Bayly about who applicants would ask about whether or not there was a kaitiaki relationship with a particular species where an application for a PVR is made. One of the functions of the Māori Plant Varieties Committee is to give such guidance, so, hopefully, that will appease that concern.

In summary, this is a really important piece of legislation. It’s updating these intellectual property rights that needed to be updated for international law reasons, but it’s given very much a New Zealand feel and tries to really respond to our Treaty relationship and respond to that Wai 262 report by introducing this idea of the Māori committee being able to make recommendations or make decisions and suggest conditions as well, if that’s appropriate, for where the kaitiaki relationship with a taonga species might have some adverse effects. So, for those reasons, I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe. Privileged to rise on behalf of the Greens to convey our views on the Plant Variety Rights Bill in its second reading, and what a privilege to get to do it after Rachel Brooking, who gave a really expansive rundown of what the bill contains. So, as with the first reading, I will contain our points as to the Green Party perspective on the bill.

As all the speakers have noted, the intent of this bill was to ensure that the plant variety rights regime met our trade treaty obligations. As submitters noted in the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, there are many interests to balance as part of this process. So I do want to commend the work of the committee in trying to balance the many different views, and I’ll pinpoint some of the submissions that I think speak to our Green Party concerns, starting with Te Hunga Rōia Māori o Aotearoa—the Māori Law Society—who I think gave a really strong submission around the fact that when designing such a regime, we need to be thinking first and foremost about our Treaty obligations. In general comments, they talked about how, unfortunately, this bill is inherently limited in terms of its ability to meet a true partnership until broader constitutional conversations are had regarding true partnership and the rights of Māori under the Treaty.

When the Māori Law Society was talking about Part 5 of the bill, they really encouraged us to be taking a broader look at how we meet our Treaty obligations, particularly in regards to how they thought the purpose clause had been framed quite narrowly, only recognising kaitiaki relationships with taonga species and mātauranga Māori within New Zealand law. They noted that in order for us to meet our Treaty obligations in full, we needed to go way beyond that, and I think this is something that was echoed as well with other submitters. While many of them were encouraging of the Government’s intent to update the regime and were encouraging of the intent to ensure that we were looking at meeting our Treaty obligations, people were, I guess, cautious about the fact that we’re doing it in the context of a trade agreement as opposed to, first and foremost, constitutional issues.

This was echoed by Jane Kelsey, who is a professor at the University of Auckland and a really strong advocate for fair trade deals. She really emphasised that there was an unwillingness from the Crown to take full advantage of the possibility to properly look into how we enable the exercising of tino rangatiratanga and kaitiakitanga over taonga species and mātauranga Māori. In the context of this bill and in our trade obligations, it does feel, she reflects, that it is closing the door on doing proper justice on Te Tiriti, and so she’s calling, effectively, for us to do a broader view and to sort of delay this process and take a bit of a slow-down and a breather to reflect on what it is that we need to do to ensure that we’re properly meeting these obligations.

Te Kāhui o Rongoā also echoed some of these concerns, particularly, again, noting that this bill is not really reflective of an equal partnership arrangement between Treaty partners and, again, because it is not designed to put that at the forefront, it fails to acknowledge a Māori perspective on the natural world. They reflected that in Te Ao Māori it is not possible to own a species plant and they kind of invited the committee at the time to reflect more broadly about how we design law in relationship to our natural environment.

The Law Society echoed some of these concerns around taking a balanced approach to the interests of kaitiaki and breeders recommended by the Waitangi Tribunal. I want to note that the Waitangi Tribunal did find that even though the trade agreement that we’re trying to kind of meet the obligations of contains a Treaty protection clause, this was insufficient to protect Māori rights and our obligations pursuant to Te Tiriti. So I think there’s a lot left to be desired around how we’re designing this legislation. I think it is putting trade interests above broader constitutional conversations we should be having that are really, really, really important.

So what we would encourage the Government to do is take a step back and look at what broader consultation and work we can do to genuinely put our Te Tiriti obligations first and foremost before our trade obligations, because, ultimately, if we are thinking in that framework, then in the way that we engage in trade, unfortunately, we’ll be putting those interests before deals that we’ve made that don’t reflect the other pieces of work in Government to move towards a more Te Tiriti - centred way of working. So for that reason, the Green Party won’t be supporting this bill at second reading, and we look forward to the contributions from the rest of the speakers in the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak to the Plant Variety Rights Bill. I just want to note the previous remarks from my Green colleague where he noted that the Treaty obligations should be in front of trade. I find that a striking indictment, given that we are a primary-producing country at the bottom of the world with about $50 billion - odd worth of product that goes north of here, so how you balance that view I’m not quite sure to be quite honest.

But none the less, the plant varieties bill speaks to acceding to the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV-91). I think we’re all cognisant of the importance of staying in line with our trading partners, and I’ll name a few. Just for the sake of the House, I wasn’t in the select committee that sat through the first submission process so I’m not intimately versed, but I will go back and name a few of the countries. I believe it was South Korea, Australia, Russia, Canada, USA, and others that have acceded to UPOV-91, and we are arguably outdated.

It came to my attention through talking to some interest groups that did speak to the concern of what the plant varieties legislation meant for them that there had actually been no cost-benefit analysis done by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in regards to what ultimately this piece of legislation would bring to industry in terms of additional cost.

Just quickly, for the sake of the House, ACT does support this bill in the second reading. But there are reservations in it—and let’s just go back.

The International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) is an inter-governmental organisation based in Geneva, and the mission of UPOV, which currently has 77 member States, is to provide and promote an effective system. So I think we all agree on how deeply important it is to protect intellectual property (IP) to create an environment in New Zealand that those that come to New Zealand to invest in IP have the protective mechanisms and frameworks to support that investment. Seventy percent of the plant varieties sanctioned for investment here in New Zealand come from offshore and there are—as you can imagine—for many, many international partners that would choose to invest in that technology in New Zealand a degree of reservation.

As you can imagine, the ACT Party—and I think this was canvassed by our National colleagues earlier—highlighted concerns about the commitment to adhere to the Treaty elements in the legislation. Now, this is not that we have umbrage with New Zealand’s adhering to our Treaty obligations. Where the issue comes in is that there is a designation for a plant varieties committee that speaks to taonga and kaitiaki and the likes. When we are making determination of what is taonga species—and I just want to mention the previous member Rachel Brooking, who brought up kūmaras. I live in Northland. I’ve been there for 33 years, and I see kūmaras going in the ground every spring and coming out in early summer. I can also tell this House the amount of investment in technology—IP in this instance—that has gone into that industry has by virtue had significant investment. A lot of it has actually come from overseas. I know a lot of growers in Northland travel overseas routinely seeking to get better hybrids and better hybrid technology, and by virtue of that are investing significant money doing so.

When we talk to what the plant varieties committee will do and what it will mean for those that seek to invest in plant varieties and IP and the technology there in New Zealand, I think it’s important we actually engage in the discussion of what their role is, and I’ll just quote verbatim a couple of parts. In Part 5, I believe it is, clause 56: “The functions of the Māori Plant Varieties Committee are to—(a) issue engagement guidelines and provide advice to applicants for a PVR and kaitiaki:”. Well, that’s fine and we take no umbrage with that, until you’re an investor, and we are deeply concerned that the kind of language that this committee is emboldened to engage in will stifle and mitigate those that have a desire to invest in IP here in New Zealand.

I mean, how do you determine that? The fact is that there are five people on that committee, the same number of people as was aforementioned in the industry, and it references that taonga species must be clearly defined. Well, that’s interesting when we have 70 percent of the technology coming from offshore.

A couple of the things that submitters raised with me after the fact—and I reiterate I wasn’t on the select committee. Adherence to the UPOV-91 wording is critical. The wording used in the international UPOV-91 convention is replicated in the new Act. The draft of the new bill departs from this and has a number of important clauses which will not only create confusion in the international breeding community but may isolate New Zealand due to its bespoke wording.

Again, I reiterate the point that ACT does support this bill, but it seems that it needs to go through further consideration—go back to select committee, have the kinks ironed out. There is every reason to support those that invest in this kind of technology in the world of climate change, and others—in the horticultural industry especially. It’s deeply important we get the framework right that not only adheres to our Treaty obligations but, equally, does not disincentivise those that would seek to come to New Zealand and invest potentially hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in their IP here for development.

ACT will support the bill with reservations and, alongside our National Party colleagues, we’ll be tabling Supplementary Order Papers to square away our concerns. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise today not only as a member of the Labour Party but also a proud member of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. Just for the benefit of the member Mark Cameron, who has just resumed his seat, I’d like to relay back to the House of all the process—the painstaking process—that we have gone through during the select committee process to actually consider all of the details that the member has just mentioned and has just questioned. I just wanted to start off by thanking not only my colleagues on the select committee and our chair, Jamie Strange, but also every single submitter.

My relationship with this bill started at Fieldays last year. For the very first time, I had people come up to me—I might say it’s in the member Angie Warren-Clark’s electorate, right? Yeah, your people in your electorate came up to us during Fieldays and really passionately expressed their opinions on this bill. So I still remember that that started way before it had even gotten to the select committee process.

But I thank every single submitter to the select committee. We had lawyers and people who are very, very experienced in dealing with the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) and the Plant Variety Rights Bill—sorry, the Act, the one that we had previously. We had, obviously, growers, we had investors, we had exporters, and we had different types of farmers as well. All these people came to our select committee to give us their opinions from the ground, grassroot-based and reality-based, and their suggestions on how we could improve this bill, and improve this bill we did.

I think the legislative process for this bill was one of the ones that I remember most vividly, because for the very first time there were submitters who actually brought packets of seeds into the select committee room to make sure that we knew what we were talking about. We were actually legislating for plant varieties and we actually got to see the things that we were impacting—they were bags of seeds. But, actually, bags of seeds were probably the least of our—I think we all kind of knew.

But I just want to turn the House’s attention to the topic of potatoes. Now, do members in this House know that potatoes don’t grow from seeds? That was probably something that I didn’t think about before I had started on this legislative process for this bill. Potatoes grow from potatoes, so when we had mentioned the word “seed” in the Plant Variety Rights Bill, there were submitters—potato growers—who had come into the select committee room to remind us, or to make sure that we had not only legislated for seeds but also potatoes, because, obviously, seeds don’t actually cover potatoes, and, gosh, potatoes are so important to the New Zealand diet, aren’t they? We have all these different types of varieties of potatoes—

Tangi Utikere: Hot chips, potato chips.

NAISI CHEN: Hot chips, that’s right—for roast, for mash, and all the different consistencies, the taste, the colour. So we have to make sure that we have a robust enough bill to make sure that we protect all of that intellectual property to make sure that in our economy, whatever we’re exporting or importing into New Zealand, we uphold the vigorous protection of our intellectual property of all these different types of plants.

Also, one submitter that I remember very fondly told us the process, the love, and the labour that they have to go through in terms of actually getting a plant variety right registered. We heard from them that understanding a development of any new variety could take up to decades, and that new technology actually would accelerate the development.

Also, the level of investment now in modern-day New Zealand is actually really high. So the reason why we’re supporting this bill is because this bill will actually protect the hard-earned money of all of the investors in terms of what they’ve put into our industry to support not only the domestic market in terms of our food supply but also our exporting market, which we’ve seen has stayed so strong in these COVID days. We have really seen that being a real pillar of strength in our economy.

The reason why we’re able to recover so much better from COVID is because of that strong export number. So this bill will make sure that we have a good enough system for us to protect the money of our investors in the industries to ensure that our exporters stay strong, and also for us to meet our international obligations under the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants to make sure that we have aligned ourselves with our international partners so that if they have registered their plant variety right here in New Zealand, they will be afforded the similar levels of protections across the world.

During the select committee process, we had also thought very, very deeply about whether we should be following the Australian model or the European model, knowing that there is a bit of difference currently. But we had a tip-off from one of our experts, actually, that the Australians would be changing their approach as well, so that’s something that I do look forward to a bit more progress in this space as we go through our legislative process as well.

We also, as a select committee, looked at the appeals process for the Māori side—for our commitment to the Treaty as well. So I’m very happy, as a member of the select committee, that we were able to implement the new Māori Appellate Court to be able to have their rights of appeal through this process.

So, through and through, I thank my colleagues on that select committee for the thorough work that we’ve done in terms of our part of this process, and I do look forward to seeing this bill go through the House. So I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise as the member for Southland in the second reading of the Plant Variety Rights Bill. National supports this bill. This bill replaces the Plant Variety Rights Act 1987, which is now over 30 years old—older than some members in this House—and has not kept up with changes in the plant breeding industry. The bill implements an updated regime for plant variety rights. It expands the protection provided to plant breeders in a number of key areas to better safeguard intellectual property rights for new plant varieties. This includes providing protection to, essentially, diverse and dependent varieties.

The more than three-decade-old Plant Variety Rights Act is no longer fit for purpose. Reform was attempted in 2005, but didn’t materialise. The current system means that New Zealand is an outlier relative to our key trading partners, being Australia, Canada, the EU, Japan, and the US, who are all parties to the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. Aligning our legislation with the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants will give plant breeders a predictable and strengthened intellectual property rights system in order to continue to invest in and provide improved crop varieties for the benefit of New Zealand farmers and our country.

There are many significant benefits of gaining improved access to new and innovative products across the pastoral, arable, and horticulture sectors, where New Zealand has important domestic and, particularly, export markets. It’s hard to imagine a situation where plant breeders aren’t able to secure strong legal protections for their plant intellectual property rights and to obtain a sufficient return on the investment. This would potentially result in some breeders questioning whether to bring their plant varieties to New Zealand or to continue their local research and development, which wouldn’t be beneficial for New Zealand.

According to the New Zealand Plant Breeding and Research Association’s submission, New Zealand companies collectively spend over $35 million annually on plant breeding activities. Plant breeding involves a considerable investment of time and resources. It typically takes around 10 years and millions of dollars to develop a new variety for market. Moreover, when breeders start to develop a new variety, they rely on long-term assumptions about what farmers need and what end users such as food and beverage processors, feed manufacturers, etc., will want in 15 to 20 years’ time from now. They factor in a range of assumptions about future needs.

This all means that this bill’s updated and strengthened plant variety laws are necessary for New Zealand to remain competitive with our overseas markets. Aligning our plant variety laws with the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants will help planning for plant breeding in New Zealand for the long term and incentivise the development and release of new cultivars for farmers.

On this point, I refer to KPMG’s 2021 Agribusiness Agenda report, which was issued at Fieldays last year. That report noted, “without the right [plant] varieties it does not matter how much land is planted, [New Zealand] will never create the premiums we are looking for.” That report also noted that we need the right legislative protections surrounding plant variety rights to secure the most modern cultivars.

As National’s spokesperson on Treaty of Waitangi negotiations, I spent a little bit of time on this bill’s approach to implementing the Crown’s obligations to the Treaty of Waitangi in relation to the plant variety rights regime. The legislation will bring into existence a Māori Plant Varieties Committee. That plant varieties committee will consider all applications for a new variety where the variety is wholly or partly derived from a taonga species, and where the material from which that variety was sourced in New Zealand. They will assess the effect of the grant on the kaitiaki relationships, and, in contrast to the Māori advisory committee under the Trade Marks Act 2002 and the Patents Act 2013, the Māori Plant Varieties Committee will have the power to make decisions on whether the plant variety right application should proceed, which are binding on the Commissioner of Plant Variety Rights.

The committee will also have advisory roles, providing non-binding advice to the commissioner on whether use or approval of a proposed denomination for a plant variety is likely to be offensive to Māori. Information relevant to the applications are: novel, distinct, uniform, stable, and denomination criteria. National believes, however, that the scope and function of the Māori Plant Varieties Committee needs to be clarified. We believe the scope of the Māori Plant Varieties Committee should be limited to an advisory body, as recommended by the Waitangi Tribunal in their Wai 262 report: Ko Aotearoa Tēnei.

There are precedents for advisory bodies. Māori advisory committees operate under both the Trade Marks Act 2002 and the Patents Act 2013 to advise commissioners whether proposed trademarks are likely to be offensive or whether commercial exploitation of an invention proposed for patent registration would be likely to be contrary to Māori values. In Wai 262, the Waitangi Tribunal recommended that the commissioner be supported by a Māori advisory committee in his or her consideration of the kaitiaki interest. National believes the Waitangi Tribunal’s recommendation is a more balanced arrangement—

Order! The member’s time has expired. I call Marja Lubeck—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to be able to take a call in the second reading of the Plant Variety Rights Bill. Now, I was not a member of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, which we normally refer to as the EDSI Committee for obvious reasons—superbly chaired by my colleague Jamie Strange—but I have learnt a lot from listening to the previous speakers, and quite interesting facts, such as are pertaining to, for example, potatoes, like I heard from my colleague Naisi Chen.

I just wanted to sort of go back to what this bill is actually about, because we’ve heard a lot of facts and there are a lot of abbreviations mentioned in this bill that I will probably use myself, but it’s important that we remember that what this bill actually does. It repeals an old bill. I think my colleague Joseph Mooney, the previous speaker, said it was 30 years old. I can’t quite recall, but I think that’s what he said—1987. Yeah, it must be a bit older than 30 years. What it would implement, then, is a type of intellectual property right granted to breeders of new plant varieties. So it modernises that plant variety right or PVR regime to account for developments in the plant breeding industry.

Also, as we have heard quite extensively from my colleague Rachel Brooking on kaitiaki about the Crown’s obligations on Te Tiriti o Waitangi as well as under the CPTPP, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—it’s those acronyms that get me, trying to read through all the material. Of course, meeting our obligations under the CPTPP opens the door wide open to progressive free trade for New Zealand’s plant breeders and gives them certainty that their intellectual property rights will remain protected.

Now, the committee did a lot of work in their proposed amendments and made changes, for example, to clarify the bill’s intention in clause 3, “Purposes”. Also, where some submitters had argued that the definitions were too narrow, the select committee agreed with that particular submission and made some amendments to clarify that the provision was not intended to limit the Crown’s general obligations.

Now, it’s really important to support this bill, and, obviously, from the previous speeches it’s clear that there’s widespread agreement on this bill. New Zealand has a thriving plant breeding industry underpinned by a very strong and innovative research community. So what the changes will do is they will strengthen our local industry but at the same time they will make New Zealand a very attractive destination for foreign breeders that are looking to bring their investment abroad.

But having the uniqueness that we have here in New Zealand brings with it also certain obligations and responsibilities. So in addition to supporting the plant breeding industry for the benefit of all New Zealanders, we must also ensure that we do adhere to our obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi. So the changes in this bill will give Māori a direct say in how kaitiaki relationships with our taonga plant species should be protected within the plant variety rights regime.

The Government’s goal is to create a productive, sustainable, and inclusive economy where the interests of both businesses as well as consumers are protected. I believe that is what this bill does, and therefore I commend it to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to stand and speak on this bill. I got to speak in the first reading of this bill, and as a result of that I was very fortunate in that BLOOMZ New Zealand came to see me and speak to me about the bill itself, because, obviously, when we sit in the House sometimes we get bills that we don’t know very much about. So I’d just like to do a wee shout-out to Louisa and Andy from BLOOMZ New Zealand, who are a local Tauranga business, who came and spent a good hour, two hours, talking to me about why this bill is so very important to a very particular niche community. So a wee shout-out to them. I’m sure they will be watching because, in fact, they watched the first reading, which is often missed by a lot of people. So, first and foremost, thank you.

So it was not tongue in cheek to Minister David Clark that I actually did get up and say that I was really happy to speak on this bill, because I found it fascinating. I literally found this bill to be fascinating. It has so many facets and applications across so many areas in our community that, actually, while it is quite a big piece of legislation, there are so many things to talk about around this bill.

First and foremost, I do want to just acknowledge the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, the Hon Dr David Clark, for getting this bill to the place that it is in, and Jamie Strange and the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. So there are only five members on that select committee, and we’ve heard from Naisi Chen and Jamie Strange from our side, who are on that committee. Their contributions, I think, were so much easier and enjoyable because they were actually sitting there in the process. So there were, I understand, 38 submissions and 20 of those were oral submissions, and I imagine they were quite in-depth because this is a group of really passionate, fascinating people.

So we’re here talking about the Plant Variety Rights Bill, which replaces the Plant Variety Rights Act of 1987, and what we know is this is about the intellectual property rights granted to breeders for plant varieties. Now, I live in the beautiful Bay of Plenty, the home of the kiwifruit and the home of the avocado, so this is an incredibly important aspect for our community because we are, in fact, the beneficiaries in our community of an amazing amount of industry export that actually really keeps our community going. So what we do know is that there was $3.96 billion in fiscal 2021 in regards to kiwifruit. It was a record year last year, and it looks like SunGold and green and red are, in fact, again going to smash that last year. So it’s really important for our community.

We have this reputation in the world for high-quality, safe food, we have excellent growing systems—I’d like to talk a little bit about eliminating food waste, but I will do that another time—and we have lots of novel products. So this is one of those pieces of legislation that really improves things.

The previous Act was aligned with the UPOV-78 convention. So everyone has said it, but I will say it again: it is the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants—UPOV. This bill basically moves everything forward into the 1991 convention, which is the most common convention.

We’ve heard from a lot of people, and I’d just like to acknowledge my colleague Rachel Brooking, who talked with some real authority about the Tiriti of Waitangi areas of this bill and how Wai 262 has been applied. So I don’t actually want to talk on that particular aspect—I think that’s a really fascinating aspect, and I think we’ve got the balance right there.

Nevertheless, I would like to talk about a couple of other things that haven’t been raised today, and this is from my background of geese farming when I grew up, and also from my mother, who is a gardener. One of the things we know about gardeners is that they do cuttings and they do seeds and they do swapping and they do those kinds of things. Now, this bill doesn’t apply to those particular private gardeners, but there is a very interesting test that does apply. It’s the farm-saved seed exception, and I want to talk about that because this is one of those things we know that our farmers are doing out there.

So a farmer grows a crop, she harvests that crop, she collects the seeds, the seeds get kept over that winter period or over a period, and then it’s used to be sown again the next year. Now, there is a limited life in how long that can last or how long that can happen, but, nevertheless, there is a carve-out here: an exception that actually allows people to grow crops and gather the seed and keep the seed. What the exception makes very clear—and I think this is very sensible—is that you can’t then onsell that seed. You cannot take away the right of the licence owner to do that, but you can, in fact, do your normal planting, growing, and yield processes, and I think that that’s a really useful practical application.

So I’d also like to, in the last three minutes—gosh, I could talk on this for a bit more than that. I remember when BLOOMZ New Zealand came to talk to me and they were a little bit concerned about the loss of the Plant Variety Rights Office. So the reason they were concerned about that is that, essentially, that was the place that everyone knew where to go. So the rights office was going to be closed down and it was of concern to them—and a concern, obviously, in the submissions that we saw—that this was going to happen. It’s a very small, little area within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. It’s a unit within, not information technology—I’ve lost the word—but it’s a very small, little unit, and this bill is actually saying that we don’t need to get rid of it. We don’t need to get rid of this expert little area where we can actually go and we know we can lodge everything and we know what we can do. So that is being kept as well.

Look, like I said, I found this bill quite fascinating and I’ve really enjoyed speaking on it. I appreciate the work and the submissions, and thanks to the Minister for bringing it to the House as well. I think my time is probably up, but I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I don’t usually like to start a contribution by agreeing with Labour members, but I’m actually going to do that in relation to a couple of them. So, firstly, Naisi Chen talked about the importance of the potato in New Zealand’s culture, I don’t think it’s too far to say. As a starchy, white matter, best consumed in moderation, myself, I feel I’m uniquely qualified—well, not uniquely qualified, but well qualified to speak on the virtues of the potato, so I thought I would chip in there, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Oh no—order! We can—

CHRIS PENK: There’s the one—come on!

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): No, that’s too—no.

CHRIS PENK: The other member with whom I’m going to have to agree is Angie Warren-Clark. She said that it’s a fascinating bill, and, actually, I would reluctantly agree with her. But I found other aspects more fascinating than others, perhaps. So I’ll trouble you to go through at least some of those in as close to 10 minutes as I can manage. My colleague and friend Joseph Mooney gave, basically, a 10-minute speech that he did his best to compress into five minutes. I don’t want to lift the curtain too much on the internal workings of the National Party, but suffice to say I am going to give, basically, a five-minute speech that I’m going to try and compress into 10 minutes, Madam Speaker, so wish me and everyone luck.

The reason that I do actually find the bill quite interesting at this, its second reading, is that it is at the intersection of a number of different other bits of law and other kinds of law such as the Treaty of Waitangi, as others have mentioned, and Rachel Brooking, among others, has given somewhat of a dissertation on that, very helpfully. But also I found really interesting the international obligations and the way that this bill interacts with those and actually reflects the way that they interact with each other.

So, first of all, I guess it’s worth pointing out the overall purpose of the bill—lower case “p”. I mean, it’s got a purpose provision, of course, and that’s significant in itself. But the whole—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Get to the point.

CHRIS PENK: —basic idea—Mr Goldsmith urges me to get to the point. I’m trying very hard not to, Mr Goldsmith, in the way that a bad lawyer can delay a trial by weeks, and a good one by months. I’m two minutes in and just sort of getting to the purpose of the thing, which is, of course, to update an existing bit of legislation, the 1987 version thereof: the Plant Variety Rights Act 1987. So it’s in the manner of an update, and part of the reason for the update, apart from the fact that it’s worth having a looking at something that’s been on the statute book that long, is to reflect on the fact that that, in turn, was ensuring that we met international obligations. Those have changed, so it’s appropriate that this legislation, in turn, also changes.

Of course, there have been discussions and, indeed, findings of the Waitangi Tribunal that are relevant. The decision known as Wai 262 has already been referenced, so I won’t go any further down that path, but suffice to say that there is a body known as the Māori advisory committee—abbreviated to MPVC within, for example, the legislative statement and, no doubt, the bill itself—which is established, effectively, by a recommendation of the Waitangi Tribunal in relation to that particular case. The other key recommendation which flows through to this legislation is the grant of a PVR, which is to say—he said, looking for the acronym—a plant variety right, essentially, and to refuse that grant if that would affect a kaitiaki relationship with a taonga species—that is to say, something that has value or is treasured, I suppose, in that sense, in the nature of a plant variety.

Others have talked about what it means to have a plant variety, and, of course, not merely identifying or defining that as a “seed” but as other sort of forms of plant as well. I’m not a botanist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do recognise, of course, that that’s important that we fairly recognise the importance of good coverage in that sense.

So the bill does a number of things that I think are quite interesting. One is that it encourages breeders to seek to identify kaitiaki and engage with them. My understanding, as best I can know without having participated in the select committee process, is that that should form part of the basis of an application and would be a relevant consideration in the way that that’s viewed in terms of whether an application is approved or not, and that information is confidential within that process. So it’s encouraging that relationship and encouraging that consultation, but it might be that, I suppose, a specific kaitiaki is not identified at that point, in which case, the committee would have the job of considering the impact if a PVR—the plant variety right—were to be granted, and the effect on kaitiaki relationships with Māori in general. So that seems the basic sort of mechanism of how that operates, and I think that seems pretty sensible to recognise existing rights, as I say, under the Treaty of Waitangi, but I think it’s also worth talking about the international obligations—so I’ll do that now, with your indulgence, Madam Speaker.

So the obligations in the first instance come from the CPTPP, which is one of those abbreviations that sort of seems harder, if anything, than the whole thing. It’s like World Wide Web, which, of course, is only three syllables, and you get www, which is nine of the buggers—nine syllables, I mean, Madam Speaker, and for the Hansard. So under the CPTPP, we hear that New Zealand is required to “either ‘accede’ to,” UPOV-91—to which I’ll return—“or ‘give effect’ to” UPOV-91 through a sui generis system. So lots to unpack there, even leaving aside the split infinitive “to either ‘accede’ ”, but I think, other than that, it’s probably not terribly objectionable.

So the UPOV-91 is, of course, the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, and that obligation that we have to various other nations within the international rules-based order is given effect to within CPTPP—which we all know so well that I won’t bother to spell it out. What we’re hearing there is that New Zealand either needs to give effect to that under the most recent version of that international convention, or to say that there should be a system where there is a recognition in a sui generis way. So for those who have enough Latin to have fudged their way through law school, they’ll recognise that that means something that’s unique or, literally, in itself—a class of its own, I suppose we might say. It’s somewhat oxymoronic because, of course, if something’s by itself, it’s not really in a class. But anyway, there we go.

One way or tother, we do need to recognise this international obligation, so the bill does help us to do that because it’s got a number of key provisions that reflect the strengthening of plant breeders’ rights within UPOV-91. One of these is extending the exclusive rights to those who are given the right to include production or reproduction, conditioning, selling or offering for sale, importing or exporting, and stocking for any of those purposes. But it does actually, at the same time, provide exceptions for the rights of private and non - commercial use experimental purposes, which I presume is important in an R & D kind of a way, and it extends the terms of a PVR—the right itself—and that’s consistent with the minimum requirements in UPOV, which I understand are 25 years for woody plants and their root stock and potatoes—they’re our potatoes; we’ve been looking forward to those—and 20 years for all others.

So, again, it’s a matter of consistency and alignment, and I think that there are some pretty good lawmaking practices that have been reflected in the bill as it comes before us. To some extent, these probably reflect the work of the select committee. I think I’m looking at the select committee chair across the way—I am. I’m getting a nod from Jamie Strange. He’s claiming it, in any case. So congratulations to you, sir, and your team for working hard on this bill. It seems to me just from where I stand as an outsider to that select committee process that it appears as though there’s been a really good, robust discussion and a constructive one at that, so we probably have in front of us a bill that is all the better for it.

So the public interest test for compulsory licence is probably quite self-explanatory. I wouldn’t even mention it, except that I have, so there we go—moving on—but we also have got the repealing of the offence provisions in the previous version of the Act, and we’re here because they’re adequately covered by the pieces of legislation. I think that’s good lawmaking to say that where in the statute book we’ve got coverage and overlap, we don’t want either duplication or contradiction between different pieces of legislation, and, on a similar note, to provide remedies consistent with other intellectual property regimes. So we are concerned about intellectual property, of course, and I do acknowledge, of course, that cultural considerations, research and development, technology, and lots of different public policy areas do come together. But at its heart, it’s recognising the right of a person or of a people, again, with that tangata whenua element emphasised—but it is their right to have a particular relationship, so to speak, with different plant varieties that we’re concerned with.

So there’s a lot going on in the bill. At this, its second reading, National, as we’ve said, does continue to support its passage through the House. I do commend the bill to the House.

Kia orana, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take what I think is the final call on the Plant Variety Rights Bill. Can I just acknowledge our colleague Mr Penk, who has filled his 10 minutes covering Latin acronyms and then some. So can I congratulate the member on doing that.

Can I also just acknowledge the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, the Hon Dr David Clark, for his leadership in this space in bringing this bill to the House. It is a piece of legislation that is seeking to reform a number of issues and matters of a plant nature that is 30 years in the making. Can I also just acknowledge the chair and hard-working members of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. I think colleagues this afternoon have indicated that that is a small select committee, but no doubt it is a hard-working one, Mr Strange. While I don’t sit on that select committee, I have had the joy and benefit of being in a joint hearing with the committee, so it’s keen to see how collegially that committee works.

I see from the committee’s report that it received 38 submissions and heard 20 oral submissions, whether they be from individuals, organisations, or other entities. So it had in front of it, as a select committee, quite a bit of information to digest and has returned a report to the House that has identified a number of changes.

As Mr Penk recently touched on, one of the matters for alignment in this legislation is that of an obligation and responsibility under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and he certainly did a good job at explaining that, so I won’t canvass that information or that area again. But in a sense, I guess, it’s about ensuring that there is a sense of consistency, that internationally there are standards and there are protections, and that New Zealand as a country is able to have a regulatory regime when it comes to plant varieties and the rights thereof that captures and encapsulates that. That’s the first thing. The second, in relation to the purpose, is that this bill seeks to deliver on the Crown’s responsibility under Te Tiriti, specifically around the relationship when it comes to kaitiaki and that relationship with a species and, in particular, with species that could be identified or defined as a taonga species.

This bill seems to me to deliver in that area of flora and fauna—of course, flora, because that is, effectively, plant species. But I reflect on my involvement with the Environment Committee, and certainly there is much flora and fauna in that space and much biodiversity. I know and I share the excitement that our colleague Angie Warren-Clark expressed to the House this afternoon in that this is something that, effectively, got the blood going, and the juices flowing, as well, and I reflect on the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s report on weeds, because that, in essence, was also something that was quite similar, actually—and I look to my colleague Rachel Brooking, who plays a leadership role in that select committee. While we didn’t have potatoes as a form of tubers being smacked on the select committee table by the parliamentary commissioner, the fact that the committee had in front of it seeds was, I guess, going to the heart of what was in front of the committee, both on paper and literally as well.

I have to say, I’ve learnt quite a bit from the select committee and from the contribution of parliamentary colleagues today on the potato. I don’t intend to go through or touch on any of those puns, but, as a tuber, extending the coverage from 20 years to 25 years identifies the complexities and some of the issues that that particular item has as part of this regulatory regime.

I heard earlier this afternoon the Hon Judith Collins talk about the significance of research and development, and, in particular, the importance of innovation and research and development in that space. When I look at this bill, it goes some way to delivering on that, and that’s really important that we do have strong, skilled researchers in Aotearoa New Zealand. I have to share with the House that most of them actually come from Palmerston North, because we have a very strong sense of research, innovation, and development with our Crown research institutes, Crop and Food Research, FoodHQ, and many others on the doorstep of Massey University. So this is really important to my electorate and the people in the electorate because it goes quite some way, actually, to underpinning that strong sense of research, development, and innovation, and that’s an important part of this bill.

The bill itself does strengthen recommendations that flow from Wai 262 and that inquiry by establishing a Māori Plant Varieties Committee. The important thing, I think, there is that it’s not just a committee that has an advisory power but it’s one that has a full suite of decision-making powers as part of its responsibility and that its approach to making decisions is by way of consensus.

The individuals within that particular entity, that particular decision-making organ, would go about their business by consensus, and when we actually look at what drives the appointment process for those individuals—it is contained in clause 55 of the bill—the select committee has recommended some slight change in terms of inserting a new subclause (2A). That is where the commissioner—and in this sense, it is the Commissioner of Plant Variety Rights—is seeking to appoint individuals to that Māori Plant Varieties Committee, firstly, the commissioner must consult with the chief executive of Te Puni Kōkiri but also, in appointing individuals to that committee, the commissioner him- or herself must be satisfied that the individuals are qualified.

There are four riders that are identified in the bill that lead to the qualifications that must be present with the appointee. The first is that the person’s knowledge of mātauranga Māori—which is Māori traditional knowledge—is there, or that there is an aspect of knowledge in relation to protocol and culture or tikanga Māori; that knowledge of Te Ao Māori, or the Māori world view, is in existence; or, specifically, around knowledge of taonga species. But also, in making the appointment, the commissioner would also consider whether the individual has standing in the community and has the mana, skills, knowledge, or experience, to be able to deliver on that appointment.

What’s really, I think, quite important is that the bill itself, in terms of clause 55(7), identifies that the commissioner may not delegate the appointment or the establishment of responsibilities to any other person. So in that sense, that responsibility for how that particular organ would be constituted—not in terms of legislation, but the appointments under legislation—is something that the commissioner must make and take themselves.

I want to just also identify that the select committee obviously turned its mind to a matter of process, and that is that where there is a decision that has been made by the Māori Plant Varieties Committee, there currently, as the bill was introduced, was no right of appeal. So what the committee has recommended is that there should be the insertion of new clauses 68A through 68D, which will allow for appeals to be lodged, and that the appropriate appellate court is the Māori Appellate Court. I understand that that might be something that perhaps some heads of benches may have indicated is an appropriate way forward.

Mr Penk and others have briefly touched on the issue of compulsory licences, and that’s contained under Part 7 of the bill, which would allow the commissioner to grant compulsory licences in relation to plant varieties. They are quite a distinct and separate licence in their own right, but they do have some overriding and overarching considerations that the select committee obviously turned its mind to. What the report from the committee identifies is the suggestion of some changes: that when it comes to the propagating materials and also the material that would be harvested, it actually shouldn’t be the either/or; they should be both included in there. Also, there would be a number of issues such as the quantity and quality of the materials that would be up for consideration, as well. So that, I think, is a good example of the select committee responding to the submissions that had been placed before it and, as a result, presenting a report that identifies some good change for the House’s attention.

Just in conclusion—because I see that my 10 minutes is almost up—there are a number of other recommendations that the select committee did identify, and I just want to circle back on one that I think is important. It’s around ensuring that a specific purpose listed within the bill is that of protection for relationships but, in particular, the special relationship that kaitiaki have with the taonga species, and also that mātauranga Māori falls within that, as well. So I thank the select committee for the work that they’ve done and I commend this bill to the House.

I declare this House in committee.