Hon Christopher Finlayson

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) : As the Minister in the House, Judith Tizard, knows, National will support the second reading of this bill. I look forward to the Committee stage, because some interesting definitional matters will need to be dealt with, and I will explain the rationale for those in a moment.

This legislation has been a long time coming. I was chair of the Arts Board of Creative New Zealand, and was responsible for organising the report that was written by Geoffrey McLay, then a senior lecturer in the law faculty at Victoria University. He came up with a number of recommendations for reform of the Authors’ Fund. It had been a cause for concern, and I must say a cause of dissension, on the part of the Society of Authors, whenever it met with the Arts Board or with the Arts Council of Creative New Zealand. Its members were always concerned about the way in which the Authors’ Fund was run and, frankly, I think they had some reason for that because I do not think that the administration of the fund by the Arts Council was always all that flash. That is why I was so pleased when this legislation was introduced and referred to the Government Administration Committee.

The Minister is quite right that because of pressures of time and the need to deal with the resale royalties legislation, we could not report this bill back to the House with a report as one would have hoped, and therefore it comes back to the House without any proposed amendments. As the Minister has said, she has a Supplementary Order Paper that will make a number of changes.

What is the rationale for those changes? Both Mr Dail Jones and I, in our first reading speeches, expressed concern about the breadth of the regulation-making powers set out in clause 10 because, as drafted, the fund was replaced, the public lending right was established in New Zealand, the scheme was established, the purpose was stated, and that was about it. Everything else was to be left to regulations, and essentially an advisory group was to be appointed that would do all the work and prepare some draft regulations. They would be passed by the chief executive of the department of State that the Prime Minister designated would have responsibility for the regulations and the administration of the fund—and that was it. Both Mr Jones and I, as students of Professor Geoffrey Palmer, as he once was, thought that that was entirely unsatisfactory, and that the statute ought at least to say something about an author or a book, even if it did not descend into a lot of minutiae. So we invited Sir Geoffrey to come along to the select committee, because we thought that his views on regulation would coincide with ours. Indeed they did; he thought there needed to be a little bit more in the statute than there was.

As a result of that, parliamentary counsel, the officials, and the members of the committee had a bit of a discussion, and we decided that we would insert the definition of an author and the definition of a book. However, it is very easy to say that it must be almost a primer 1 exercise to define a book, because everyone knows what a book is, but it can be imagined that in the digital age it is not quite as straightforward as that. Although we have a definition, none the less—and this will be dealt with in the Supplementary Order Paper so I will not detain the House now—regulations may need to add conditions to the definition of “book”, and also to the definition of “author”, as it was not an entirely straightforward exercise to define those two terms. As I say, when we come to the Committee stage I will have a good look at those terms, because a number of issues arise. I was very grateful to the Minister a few days ago: I referred a couple of queries to her and her officials came back with a number of answers, which I will respond to in detail during the Committee stage. So that is the reason why there will be a Supplementary Order Paper and why there is no report.

This is a reasonably straightforward piece of legislation; none the less it is very important to the authors of New Zealand. They should be very grateful to the late Rt Hon Norman Kirk, who established this fund in 1973. Following that, as the Minister has told us, when she was on the equivalent of the committee in 1993 at the time the Arts Council was being reformed, she and a number of others managed to insert reference to the Authors’ Fund into the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa Act. Perhaps on reflection I think it may have been better if it had been placed somewhere else, although I admire her desire to work for authors. Whether the administration of this kind of fund sits happily in an arts development agency is perhaps a difficult question. It probably does not, in my view. None the less, the intention was very good, and I have to say that it probably meant that the Authors’ Fund was kept alive for the time that it was. But consistently with other jurisdictions it is now time to put the Authors’ Fund on a more permanent basis, recognising a public lending right that has been recognised in many other jurisdictions. Once we tidy up this legislation we can get it passed as quickly as possible, and the authors will have what they have been yearning for for many years.

As I say, National supports the second reading of the bill. The great thing about a public lending right is that if one believes in property rights, one can support a public lending right. If one is a socialist and believes in welfare, one can support a public lending right. So there is really no one in this House who should be opposed to a public lending right, and it is one of those strange things that should result in unanimity. So there we have it—National supports the second reading, and I look forward to the Committee stage tomorrow.