Michael Sukkar MP

Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill 2014

I rise today to talk about important reforms that this government is making in the area of intellectual property regulation through the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill 2014. As members of this House are aware, one of the key aims and objectives of the Abbott coalition government is to reduce, improve and modernise existing business regulation and red tape and to remove duplication where it exists. It is very timely that we have in the chamber today the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, the member for Kooyong, who has done an outstanding job in leading that agenda.

As many decades of economic reality have taught us, the best and most reliable way to improve our standard of living is to ensure that economic conditions encourage ingenuity and enterprise. The key part of this is to ensure that governments place the least amount of regulatory burden on business as possible so that businesspeople can continue to get on with the job of growing their bottom line and creating more jobs. Since the coalition came to government, we have sought to remove or reduce thousands of outdated and duplicate regulations. This includes more than 10,000 pieces of legislation which were removed as part of our repeal day earlier this year.

A key factor in determining our long-term economic success is our ability to ensure that businesses have new markets in which to develop and to expand into as well. This often involves breaking down economic barriers between our neighbours and trading partners. As we have already seen take place through the signing of the landmark trade deals with China, Japan and the Republic of Korea, Australia is well and truly on the path to breaking down those barriers, but the ability of our businesses and the economy at large to make the most of these new markets and opportunities depends on our ability to innovate and adopt new technologies. This is why reforms and modernisation of our intellectual property law is so crucial at this stage of our nation’s economic life.

The intellectual property system and its regulation of rights is crucial to our ability to engage with the realities of the 21st century and the global economy, as it provides certainty for business and encourages invention and investment by business, which in turn provides consumers with access to valuable new technologies and services. The coalition also believes that good regulation can encourage and promote fair competition in the private sector, and this, of course, can only be a good thing. Intellectual property protections are a key part of this. As I say again, they encourage innovation and investment by ensuring that businesses can protect valuable intellectual property that often costs a great deal of money to create.

One aspect of the reforms before us today is the enhancement of a single market between Australia and New Zealand which will assist with the strengthening of the already strong economic relations we share with our trans-Tasman neighbours. Under current arrangements, most businesses that file for a patent in New Zealand also to do so in Australia. In a situation where a business wishes to obtain an identical patent in both these countries—which is often really the case—the business must make to separate applications and incur the associated extra time and cost that such duplication entails. As part of the reforms before us today, we will therefore ensure that this process is streamlined by allowing for applicants to go through a single application and examination process for both Australia and New Zealand. This will reduce duplication, making it cheaper and easier for those many businesses who wish to obtain a patent in both jurisdictions to do so in a single manner.

Further, the bill will also create a single trans-Tasman register of patent attorneys. Under current rules, patent attorneys who assist with making IP patent applications must again be registered separately on both the Australian and New Zealand registers, should they wish to operate in both countries. The creation of a single registration process under this legislation will, of course, make it easier for patent attorneys to practise in both countries, thereby enhancing the services they can provide to businesses in Australia and New Zealand wishing to make IP applications.

Another important component of this legislation is the important humanitarian aspects that it contains. It is not often that we get to deal with reforms that simultaneously tackle micro-economic issues in the way of enhancing our trans-Tasman single market and also making changes that have the potential to make a real humanitarian difference to the lives of those living in the developing world. The bill allows this through the long-overdue implementation of the Protocol amending the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property—the TRIPS Protocol—as proposed by the Howard Government back in the 2007. This protocol is designed to help developing countries that are suffering from a health crisis such as malaria, HIV/AIDS or tuberculosis to obtain much needed medication at affordable prices. Many underdeveloped nations currently struggle to either manufacture the pharmaceutical themselves or gain access to patented pharmaceuticals required to treat or control these diseases—sadly this often means that many deaths that are avoidable.

The reforms contained in this bill therefore amend the Patents Act to allow Australian generic pharmaceutical manufacturers to supply underdeveloped countries with patented but lifesaving medication. Under the proposals recommended by the World Health Organisation, generic manufacturers of pharmaceuticals will be able to apply to the Federal Court for a licence to manufacture patented medicines for the express purposes of exporting to developing countries. Patent holders will be provided with adequate compensation for the use of their products under the scheme, but these lifesaving pharmaceuticals will be provided to those in need. Unlike some proposals aimed at tackling severe poverty and disease in the developing world, this proposal has the potential to have a strong and direct impact on the health and wellbeing of those suffering extreme poverty overseas, all with reduced costs to the taxpayer.

We all know that in developed countries such as our own, we are fortunate enough to have eradicated or greatly reduced the impact of many diseases. This has obviously been achieved through the development and patent of successful pharmaceuticals, many of which have been made widely available to our population through successful programs such as the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and special immunisation schemes. Indeed, a strong and robust patent system continues to be important in the development of lifesaving medications. Without a properly regulated patent system providing the regulatory certainty to those involved in the painstaking and expensive task of conducting medical research, these sorts of developments would not happen at the rate that they have historically and which I am sure will continue. But it is sad to say that a large number of the world’s population suffers and dies from treatable diseases. The last statistics that I was able to track down were for 2011, which saw approximately 262 million deaths through treatable diseases. The United Nations estimates that approximately two billion across the globe lack access to essential medicines. The vast majority of these people come from countries with a limited capability for medical research or limited capability to fund the acquisition of the medications required to treat those diseases. That is why the TRIPS Protocol is so important. As I have said, with this bill we have an opportunity to play our part in a very meaningful and direct way to assist the lives of those living in third world countries by adopting the TRIPS Protocol.

On another note, the bill makes some sensible and minor regulatory changes to current legislation governing intellectual property rights more broadly. The bill will amend parts of the Patents, Trade Marks and the Designs Acts which will include the repeal of certain document-retention provisions currently contained in it. Perversely, under the current provisions, IP Australia are required to retain physical copies of trade mark, patent and design documents for extended periods of time, often costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in storage and related handling costs. The amendments contained in this bill will remove those burdensome and archaic rules. In the same way that the government has sought to remove these outdated paper-retention provisions, we are also ensuring that a range of costs borne by private businesses with respect to the archiving of documents are also removed.

In closing, while I understand that legislation relating to intellectual property laws, regulations and processes may not be headline grabbing or of particular interest to many people compared to much more high-profile matters, I believe that this legislation and the changes contained within it represent a significant example of where government can quite sensibly and in a straightforward way provide a stable base for competitive and innovative business practices but also achieve some outstanding humanitarian results. I therefore have great pleasure in commending this bill to the House.