Patents Bill

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a very short call on what is a very, very good bill, the Patents Bill, to come through this Parliament. As has already been mentioned, the Patents Act of 1953 needed to move forward with the times. I would like to acknowledge the work throughout the House on creating a workable bill, particularly for the development of patents in the IT area. This is going to be a continually moving feast. This is probably the one area where New Zealand First would agree with all other parties that this is where global legislation—the borders of this industry—is almost non-existent. This is going to be a continual movement around how we protect our intellectual property, the intellectual property of New Zealanders in this country, and the intellectual property of those in other nations who also create the apps and the other computer programmes and technology that we will use in everyday life and have begun to use today.

I would like particularly to also support the Minister of Commerce’s acknowledgment of the gentleman who spent 10 years of his life looking at this particular piece of legislation and trying to modernise it so that it is workable and so that New Zealand can, as my colleagues have already said, lead the way in this particular area. I know that the situation has been of major concern to the IT industry here, and I know that it will be pleased to hear this debate. I do, however, want to acknowledge some of the concerns around genetic modification that my Green Party colleague Steffan Browning raised.

New Zealand First agrees in part that the branding of New Zealand, which is a niche-market country—we are small and we can never compete on the amount that we produce, but we can compete on the quality of what we produce—is an area that we should give severe consideration to. We should have a wide conversation in this country, with politics taken out of the game, about what is best for us as a nation and the future employment and agricultural outcomes for our country. Again, New Zealand First supports this bill, and applauds the across-House work that has been done to bring this legislation up to date.