Hon Christopher Finlayson

Part 2 Public lending right for New Zealand authors scheme

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) : Part 2 is the heart of the legislation; it establishes the scheme. It disestablishes the Authors’ Fund established by Norman Kirk in 1973, and it provides for the establishment of an advisory group. I do not think I need to detain the Committee for too long on this issue.

The heart of the matter is clause 10, “Matters that may be dealt with in regulations”. As I said in my second reading speech, there were some concerns about the extent of the regulation-making powers. Sir Geoffrey Palmer, that zealous constitutionalist, thought that the regulation-making power was too broad, and that is why, in Part 1, we included definitions of “author”, “New Zealand author”, and “book”. As a consequence of that, the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper says there will need to be a minor amendment to clause 10(2) to provide that the regulations may add conditions to the definitions of “author”, “book”, “New Zealand author”, and “New Zealand library”, and of course we support that because it is a necessary consequential amendment, given what we have done in Part 1.

The advisory group will be established, and these are persons who must have appropriate skills to administer the scheme. Importantly, the advisory group must include at least one representative from organisations of authors, and at least one representative from organisations of librarians. These people will be appointed for a term of not less than 5 years, although the terms may be renewed. I think that the way in which the advisory group is set up is sensible. It does not allow capture by a particular group, so a broader range of interests will need to be taken into account when determining the way in which the scheme is to operate. I am hopeful the advisory group will work well. I should not have thought it would need to meet all that regularly. Certainly in the initial period there will be quite a lot of work to do, but thereafter the only issues that will arise for consideration are the book rate and the frequency with which the book rate is to be altered.

That is all that one needs to say, really, about Part 2. It is all pretty straightforward and we can move on.