Hon Christopher Finlayson

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) : The National Party enthusiastically endorses the Public Lending Right for New Zealand Authors Bill, and we will support its third reading. As I said last night during the second reading debate, it is one of those strange pieces of legislation. If one is a property rights person, one can be very much in favour of the public lending right from a property rights point of view. If one is a socialist or a social democrat and believes that everyone should be on welfare, then likewise it is utterly acceptable. So there is no reason why anyone in this House should oppose this legislation. It serves our excellent New Zealand authors very well indeed, and my personal hope is that we will be able to do more for authors in the years to come.

As the Minister said, it has been a very long journey. A funding scheme was introduced by Norman Kirk in 1973, and it simply existed for some years. The Minister quite rightly accepts responsibility for saving that fund, by means of a particular reference to it in the Act that re-established the Arts Council in the mid-1990s. But by the end of the 1990s it was becoming apparent that the Arts Council was not doing all that flash a job in administering the Authors’ Fund, and that the time had come for reform. So the Arts Board had a report commissioned on the fund, and that worked very well indeed; Associate Professor Geoffrey McLay wrote a very good paper. The Labour Party promised that it would introduce a public lending right and reform the Authors’ Fund. That was promised in its 1999 manifesto but nothing has happened for 9 years, so it is good that in the dying stages of this Parliament this legislation will shortly be passed into law.

As many members have said, we have a thriving literary community in New Zealand. Most of the people in this community are members of the Society of Authors. They really do contribute to the richness of our culture, and this is one very, very small way of recognising that contribution.

I am very happy to support the bill. It was rushed, admittedly, and we did not get time on the Government Administration Committee to write a report, which was, perhaps, a little disappointing, but we were concentrating on the resale royalties legislation. I think we have tidied up the bill as best we can. I know that Mr Jones is not all that happy with the existing scope of the regulation-making power, but we will have to see how it goes. Let us see what the advisory group does when it is established, and let us see what sorts of regulations emerge. I have a feeling they will be acceptable.

The real debate will come when a Minister of Finance is spoken to about increasing the book rate, and I hope all Ministers of Finance will be generous in that regard, because authors deserve it. The frequency with which the book rate is going to be negotiated will be a major question. I do not think to do so annually will make a lot of sense. I think in Norway and some other Scandinavian countries it is done on a quinquennial basis, so maybe we could do something like that.

So there we have it. I am pleased that this is the last bill to go through the House before Parliament dies, and I am hopeful that what we have here will serve the interests of authors for the next little period.