Plant Variety Rights Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate that. Yes, we were interrupted last night. This was the last item on the agenda, and I’m happy to be picking it up today. This is an important bill that we are talking about, the Plant Variety Rights Bill. I’m incredibly supportive of this, and so is the Waitangi Tribunal, who, back in 2011, put together a report called Ko Aotearoa Tēnei. In that report, they noted that Māori have a special right and privilege to be able to access taonga, and we consider taonga to be things like plant varieties as well. Now, as we traverse into this space, know that this conversation has been around for a long time, so for people out there that may be listening to this debate tonight, they will be seeing it as incredibly welcoming.

The stakeholders in particular that are interested in this particular plant varieties bill and the whole regime: aside from iwi and hapū, you’ve also got plant breeders, both local and foreign; distributors of new plant varieties, both locally and foreign bred, and products harvested from them in New Zealand; and also users of new plant varieties protected by plant variety rights (PVRs), including farmers, orchardists, and growers.

Now, once upon a time, new plant varieties and the research and development into them was absolutely the domain of Crown research institutes. They used to do the lion’s share of this kind of work, but, more and more, as time has gone on, they’ve been doing less of it, and there’s been the introduction of commercial companies that have been coming in looking to stamp their mark.

Actually, Māori are part of that equation too. I want to take a moment to tell the House—and yourself, Madam Speaker—about a real good-news story back home in the Bay of Plenty, where I live—

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Our mighty bay.

TĀMATI COFFEY: —where we live! There is a collective of Māori food producers, and the one that I’m referring to is an organisation, a collective, called Miro—M-I-R-O. What they do is they make berries.

Now, the miro berry is a traditional berry here in New Zealand, very favoured by the kererū. Although don’t eat it—not those ones anyway—because you will get very sick. However, the new innovative people at Miro, the collective, have actually embarked on their own little blueberry. Now, what makes this very special is that they have managed to develop the IP and they own the IP. When I say “they”, I mean the 20 Māori trusts iwi entities that are scattered all across, from the top of the North Island to the top of the South Island, from the East Coast to Taranaki on the West. There is a collective of Māori land trusts and incorporations that are currently growing Miro berries.

I was fortunate enough to go for a visit to one of their sites in Te Teko, of all places. It’s a hearty place, old “Texas”, and if you blink, you miss it, but you definitely know when you’re driving through it. But, actually, if you just take a couple of roads off to the side, you’ll end up in what’s been transformed from what was an empty paddock with very meagre returns to, suddenly, a Miro berry orchard. And, obviously, the returns are set to be exponentially larger than what they had in those paddocks before.

I want to acknowledge the Miro collective and talk about them and the journey that they’re on, but they will be very pleased to hear about this—to know that, actually, when it comes to Māori rights and interests over our taonga species, this bill is actually looking after that. And, of course, it was off the back of the Waitangi Tribunal report—Ko Aotearoa Tēnei—in which they talked about the PVR, plant variety rights, regime. In the Wai 262 report, they recommended that the regime be amended to include the ability to refuse the grant of a PVR if this would affect kaitiaki relationships with taonga species—number one. It’s incredibly important, because one of the fears was that, actually, through any kind of revision of the plant variety rights regime, Māori interests would not be looked after. They will be very pleased to hear that that has been accepted and incorporated into this bill. So if kaitiaki do feel as though they are having their rights impinged upon, then they are actually able to raise concern, and they can do that through the second recommendation from the report, which was the establishment of a Māori advisory committee, in which they could advise the commissioner of PVRs on that matter.

Over the course of this bill and its different iterations and the various consultations, we’ve actually made sure that that committee—that Māori advisory committee, which will deal with any kinds of infringements or any kinds of concerns that kaitiaki raise as a concern—will be dealing with that. We’ve given them, through the bill, decision-making powers rather than just advisory powers as well, which is also a strengthening of that relationship and, again, another example where the Crown is being a good partner with Māori.

This is part of it, actually. Consideration around this has been around the Treaty of Waitangi, Te Tiriti, and our obligations in relation to the plant variety rights regime but also, as some speakers have already mentioned on this particular topic, our obligations under the CPTPP—there are a lot of Ps in there. Obviously, we have certain obligations in that as well. Now, the current regime—the plant variety rights regime—is currently over 30 years old. So when you look at our obligations under Te Tiriti, our obligations under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and also our need to address a 30-year-old bill that needed to be hauled into the new century, that’s the bill that we’re discussing now.

I’m very glad that Māori rights have been considered in that. As I said, the organisation that I talked about earlier, Miro, you can better believe, with a strengthening of rights for that relationship between Māori and our taonga, will be preserved well into the future so that other organisations just like Miro will continue to be able to help realise the aspirations of their lands. Yes, it’s OK if you want to have maize on your section; sure, it’s nice if you want to put some corn on there; but, actually, there are some high-value horticulture products that are just as accessible and just as feasible to have on Māori land blocks all across the North Island, with the right conditions.

Under the last Government, we also invested in this through the Provincial Growth Fund. Our Minister for—at the time—employment, skills, and development, the Hon Willie Jackson, went to Morrinsville, and he helped to launch this programme and helped to also announce the funding that we were going to put into it to help them get on their feet. I hope, well into the future, that organisations like Miro and the other “Miro” companies yet to come will absolutely take advantage and appreciate the work that’s gone into this, the Plant Variety Rights Bill, that we’re discussing at the moment. I have no problems recommending this to the House. Kia ora.

Five-minute call—the Hon Michael Woodhouse.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I don’t think I’m going to need that time, all of it, to make a few short points in support of the Plant Variety Rights Bill. I find it slightly ironic that the previous speaker talked so glowingly about the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), because he was part of a party in Opposition that fought tooth and nail against that.

💬 Hon Damien O'Connor: No, we didn’t—we signed it.

Oh, he signed it, he says. Oh, no, that’s right. They didn’t fight the CPTPP; they fought the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA)—as if that made a blind bit of difference to the substance of the agreement. Damien O’Connor is one of the experts in rewriting history. Lions in Opposition, something else in Government. One of the things that they opposed, ironically, was the undermining of our obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi, notwithstanding that there was a lock solid built-in protection for Treaty rights under that trade agreement. That should be remembered.

But this is a good bill. It’s important that we maintain those obligations under both the Treaty and our free-trade agreements, but I think the Government and Tāmati Coffey, who has just resumed his seat, could reflect, actually, on one of the iconic indigenous crops, which is kūmara. Kūmara was nearly wiped out in this country due to a blight, a black rot in the 1950s, and was rescued and propagated and improved by a Chinese immigrant refugee and his wife, Joe and Fay Gock​. It’s a great story. I think the moral of that story is that in our efforts to provide protectionism and the property rights of certain plant varieties, we don’t overlook the fact that there is contribution that can be made, from any number of people, to improving that stock.

This is a really important bill, and I look forward to it going to the committee. I’m not sure—is it the Māori Affairs Committee who are going to consider it?

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Economic development.

Economic development? Well, they will have, I think, an excellent dialogue with submitters, and I look forward to hearing the results of their efforts.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Look, very pleased to rise on this bill in light of the fact that Te Paati Māori has chosen not to speak on this bill or, indeed, any other bill tonight. And I’m particularly surprised that they’re not speaking on this bill given that it’s implementing the Wai 262 report and, in fact, making sure that New Zealand adheres to its Treaty obligations in respect of plant variety rights.

I mean, plant variety rights are, in fact, a property right. They’re an ownership right to exclude others from the use of plant variety rights. This is a significant step forward to recognise intellectual property rights, plant variety rights, and the fact that they may be held by Māori in respect of their traditional plants and that they can exclude others from registering plant variety rights.

So look, I’m very pleased to stand on this bill. I know the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee will do a very good job on it. I certainly hope that the Māori Party take the opportunity to sit on that committee, because they haven’t spoken on this bill, and I know the committee will do a lot of work on it. I’m absolutely sure that our caucus members who sit on that committee will look at it very carefully, and I’m sure members from the other side will do the same. So I’d invite all parties in this House to participate in the legislative process, particularly on things that relate to the constituency they claim to represent. Kia ora.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker, thank you. I take the opportunity to rise and talk about the Plant Variety Rights Bill. I wasn’t in the House last night when this bill started to be discussed, and so I did, when I realised I was speaking tonight, think, “Gosh, what am I going to talk about?” and took an opportunity to have a look at the previous speeches, which I can only comment to—some of them are somewhat distressing to listen to. Nevertheless, I’m actually going to focus tonight on what this bill actually does.

I went through some of the definitions in the legislation, because I was kind of looking at it and it said “UPOV convention” and I wasn’t sure what that meant. So, the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants was signed in 1961, revised in ’72, ’78, and ’91. Our piece of legislation that we’re bringing through tonight is adding a modern focus, which also includes the Treaty of Waitangi in that aspect. So it is simply, clearly something that has been left alone for a long time and needs to be modernised.

I thought to myself: “Well, why is this important?” And then I realised the connection that we, as people from this country, have with our plants, particularly our indigenous plants. I would hate to think that someone out there was able to take a taonga species—say, the silver fern, which we have here in Aotearoa—and take it overseas and use it. So I was kind of thinking, “OK, what’s our connection?” And, certainly for me—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Talk us through the kiwifruit story!

I’m going to bring my kiwifruit story to the fore in a second, but, first of all, I wanted to talk about a personal connection to a plant that I have, and a story about that.

I’m a Zontian. I belong to a group called Zonta, and we have what is called the Zonta rose. Now, that was bred in 1983 by the—and I’ll just read this out—Harkness Roses of England. They cultivated and gifted a rose to Zonta International. Now, Zonta International, this beautiful yellow rose, was an idea that New Zealand came up with. Val Webster, who’s, sadly, passed away, created this concept, and it became a worldwide symbol, and it was gifted to us. It’s important to me to talk about this because this rose is—the Zontian day is 8 March, which is International Women’s Day. So I think, when we talk about the sort of esoteric intellectual property rights of plants, we also talk about the connection that we, as people from Aotearoa, people from this country, have with different plants. So I just wanted to raise that, and then here is my kiwifruit story.

Of course, you may know that I am from the Bay of Plenty, based in the Bay of Plenty, and we have this fabulous kiwifruit industry, where 80 percent of all kiwifruit that is grown in this country comes from the Bay of Plenty. We have 2,792 grower/producers. We have 150 million trays, and our trade is worth $2.967 billion per annum gross. So this is something that both has emotional connection, from my own community, but it also has that hugely important financial benefit. So, thinking about plant variety rights, this is about the protection of the exploitation of our rights with plants.

It is important to remember that people can still experiment, home growers can do the things that they want to do, but this is about the intellectual property that protects and maintains some of our trade industries, but it is also particularly important to remember that we also look at taonga species. We also look at the rights under the Treaty of Waitangi around the kaitiaki rights. So where we have particularly some of our plants that are what we call our taonga species—an example of that may be the kauri tree—where we have that, someone might take some seeds, create a kauri tree and then take that genetic detail, that genetic breed, overseas and claim it as their own. That is something that we in this country do not want to have happen.

So the bill itself is quite detailed. It’s quite thorough in its exploration of these terms—what a breeder means; all sorts of things like that. I think it is going to be a particularly interesting time in the select committee, one of which I won’t be sitting on, unfortunately. But I do think that we are particularly going to have a good and useful conversation, and I think, when we talk about taonga species, the rights of kaitiaki, when we talk about the way that we as a group of New Zealanders come to understand our ownership of plants or our protection of and our connection with plants, I think it’s a conversation well worth having.

Like I say, 1991, when this was last looked at—I’m really pleased to see that, in fact, we will be having a good conversation, a conversation that, hopefully, people can take the politics out of and talk about how we as a nation need to protect our rights for business, our rights for breeding, and our indigenous rights to our own genomes, in terms of our plant species. I commend this bill to the House.

Plant variety rights doesn’t sound like the most invigorating subject to be debating on a Wednesday night, but, actually, I want to make a point, whether it is for our economy, whether it’s for our science sector, and I also want to give a very strong example for the environment as to why this bill is important. It’s really easy for members of Parliament to give speeches about the importance of innovation and all of that, but, actually, it’s about getting good laws that provide the right incentives for people to invest in research and help New Zealand secure high future living standards.

The two focuses we should have in this bill are, firstly, making sure that property rights for those that innovate are secure, and, secondly, that we keep the costs and the bureaucracy down, because over and over again we see members opposite talk the talk of wanting to innovate but then create barriers and red tape that will harm innovation and our economy.

I come from a region of New Zealand that generates billions of dollars of wealth in horticultural products. The part we need to understand about New Zealand horticulture is that we’re not able to compete on price. We have to compete on innovation and quality. The cost of getting our apples, our kiwifruit, our hops, our berry fruit to other parts of the world is so much more than for those that are close to the major markets of North America, Europe, and Asia. Our labour, rightly, is more expensive than what it is in many countries, and so the whole future of our $6 billion a year horticulture industry relies on innovation and how we protect plant variety rights.

I don’t think New Zealanders appreciate the degree to which those plants variety rights are so important. Take an industry like apples and the development of the Braeburn apple, then the Envy, and then the Ambrosia: every one of those new varieties gives New Zealand apples an edge for a period of between five and 10 years before other markets catch up. Exactly the same is true of kiwifruit and the work that is being done around gold kiwifruit that is the key to it being competitive.

Now, the good part of this bill is in terms of the implementation of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and members on this side of the House strongly support it. And I have to say members on this side of the House are not fair-weather friends to trade rules; we are consistent friends. I just look at members opposite who ran up and down the main streets of Christchurch and Nelson raging against the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), changed its title, and then said it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Well, I’m sorry; that is so flaky and really does show the differences. The interesting part is that this Parliament was only able to ratify that significant global trade agreement because the National Party was not prepared to play politics over New Zealand’s trade interests and actually gave members opposite—

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: Oh, what!

Well, I say to Mr Nash: how did the last Government get the numbers to ratify the TPP—because the Greens wouldn’t vote for it. The only reason it made it through this Parliament was because the National Party put the interests of the country ahead of those of the politics. I can recall Jacinda Ardern and Grant Robertson marching up main street Auckland—Queen Street—and raging against that agreement, and here we have a law that is implementing it and doing so, and I am pleased that we are part of that agreement. I am pleased that we’re in this agreement. Why is it so important? Because plant variety rights in domestic law have no value unless they are internationally recognised. International agreements are required to protect that sort of intellectual property. It is a significant change that in this bill we are increasing the plant variety rights out to the period of 25 years.

I’ve spoken on what is good in this bill. I now want to express some concern about what is wrong with this bill, and that is with the new Māori Plant Varieties Committee effectively having a veto, a decision-making, not advisory, role in relation to anybody who wishes to register a plant variety right. The reason that is of concern and goes beyond the recommendations of the Waitangi Tribunal in the Wai 262 claim is that it creates significant uncertainty.

Let me just give a practical example. Members opposite talk about indigenous species being kaitiaki for Māori. Will members opposite tell me which of New Zealand’s 10,000 algae have kaitiaki rights? There are 10,000 different varieties of algae. Section 6 of this bill says that all those algae are covered by “plant varieties”, interestingly, the way that “plant” is defined. Members might say, “Well, why does that matter?” Well, let me tell you why it matters. Every member of this House would know that one of the most significant challenges we face is climate change. Equally, this Parliament knows that one of the biggest challenges of that is that about half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, and one of the most interesting scientific projects that offers us hope of a solution for our agricultural industries is the work that is going on on Asparagospis armata, which is an algae that has the capacity to reduce agricultural emissions by 95 percent.

Now, there are private investors that are putting millions of dollars into understanding how you might grow, how you might attract the proteins, how you might be able to safely feed that to animals and solve one of the biggest scientific problems our country has: how do we grow agricultural products without greenhouse gases? But here’s my question. How would the investors in that project know whether the Māori Plant Varieties Committee, that’s being established under this bill, will determine that it’s a taonga and so they can’t get plant variety rights over all of their investment? There is just no understanding from members opposite of the level of uncertainty that is created when you provide that sort of veto. Why would people invest when the extra uncertainty is added? I don’t think there’s a member of this House that would be able to tell me which of our 10,000 algae species might meet the test that is required in this bill.

The problem with this Government is that they give lip service to the issues of innovation. They block the development—

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: Oh!

Well, I ask Mr Nash, why is it that this Government will not review the biotechnology laws as has been recommended by officials?

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: We’ve invested more into science, research, and technology than that Government did in nine years.

He doesn’t want to answer the question. It is legislative uncertainty of the sort that is proposed in this bill that is actually going to undermine investment in the sort of innovation that’s so critical in an area like plant variety rights. The truth is that National has no difficulty with a Māori advisory committee that is able to provide advice. But the decisions about which plant varieties are registered, and the property rights that are respected, should treat all New Zealanders equally, and those decisions should be made by the Government. Of course, Māori should have an opportunity to have a say, but there is an enormous difference between having a say and having a veto, and when I give an example like the use of native algae for the purposes of an issue like greenhouse gas emissions, actually, it’s in the interests of not just our economy but of our environment and of science that we’re able to create greater certainty.

This bill is a classic example of this Government not understanding the impacts on business, on investment, on both the economic and environmental issues that this country challenges. They are so carried away with their rhetoric that we get bills of this sort that need to be repaired, and my hope is that at select committee we may be able to reconsider some of the provisions in this bill that are flawed.

Madam Speaker, you can say that I’ve been on quite the journey in the last 48 hours. When I found out that I was going to speak on this bill, to be honest, this is quite a subject matter that was foreign to me. So I started to read all of the notes and I realised what we were doing as a party, as a Government, was something that was so fundamental in the structure that we see plant variety rights in this country. But then it wasn’t until this afternoon, when I was ready to come into this House for this debate, that one of my friends, Jaxon, stopped me in my tracks to tell me his story to this bill. I was quite shocked that we had someone in this building who actually had a personal connection to this bill, and let me tell you his story.

His family are all plant breeders and so actually their siblings—I think, if I remember correctly there are three—each has a plant variety named after them. So his name is Jaxon, so he has the Jaxon Blue plant named after him—and I think that is so neat.

What happened was that under the current plant variety rights system at the moment, their family applied to have their variety and their intellectual property (IP) protected, but it was so complicated that they had actually to engage an agent to do it for them. But what happened was that that agent actually tricked them and then put his own name under the ownership of IP of that plant variety. So when I hear colleagues on the other side of the House say that we are hindering innovation, that’s just absolutely untrue. We’re hoping we’re helping plant breeders in this country to truly protect their IP in this industry by modernising the regime so that it is up to a 21st century standard so that the digital system and the digital registry that we will hold will actually make it easier for every single plant breeder in this nation to protect their IP, to keep innovating, and to have the confidence in the system we have in this country to stand by it and to do well in this industry.

It gives me great pride to be part of a party that protects our plant breeders’ rights and it gives me great pleasure to stand in support of a bill which actually makes everyone’s lives a little bit easier. Right now, I just wanted to talk a little bit about, as a migrant, how proud I am that this bill will support our Te Tiriti obligations. I often get asked by my community why, as a migrant, we should be so passionate or why am I so passionate about tikanga Māori. My reply has always been that Te Ao Māori, the world views that Māori people have built up on this land, are so rooted on the land that we stand on. They have wisdom built up from generations to teach us how to interact properly with this land that we stand on. And so through that wisdom, we’re able to make the best of this land, but also we are able to best protect this land as well. That’s something as a migrant community we need to do, but I believe all of New Zealand needs to be able to do as well. And so through the inbuilt mechanism of this bill and the authority of the commissioner that we will set up and we will continue to support, they will be able to have the legislative—and also the authority to make rulings on which plants we do need to protect in line with tikanga Māori and I think that is something so incredibly precious to our country.

Finally, I just wanted to end on the fact that I think it’s really, really important that we have the support of industry. As a member of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, I really look forward to hearing all the submissions because I believe there will be lots and lots of submitters who are absolutely passionate about what they do in the sector or in the line of plant breeding. I really look forward to seeing a lot of the products that they have come out with—absolute ingenuity. Some of them will be quite humorous. I look forward to all of the different names. I look forward to a lot of different types of plant breeding and all the beautiful plants that they will be able to show to us. But what I will end on is a quote from the New Zealand Plant Breeding and Research Association in regards to this bill. They say that “Plant breeders are pleased to see the Plant Variety Rights Bill introduced into Parliament this week. The current legislation is some 34 years old and dates back to 1987.” So I really look forward to working on modernising this regime and look forward to working with the select committee and all of our submitters.

The question is, That the Plant Variety Rights Bill be considered by the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.