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The Report on the Crown’s Review of the Plant Variety Rights Regime, released in May 2020, is the Tribunal’s stage 2 report for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement inquiry (Wai 2522).

The original claims for this inquiry were lodged in June 2015 by Dr Papaarangi Reid, Moana Jackson, Angeline Greensill, Hone Harawira, Rikirangi Gage, and Moana Maniapoto. Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) were underway when the claims were lodged.

The Tribunal decided to hear the claims in stages, and the stage 1 report, the Report on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, was released on 5 May 2016.

For stage 2, the Tribunal considered whether the Crown’s process for engagement over the plant variety rights regime and its policy on whether or not New Zealand should accede to the Act of 1991 International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants were consistent with its Tiriti/Treaty obligations to Maori. The panel comprised Judge Michael Doogan (presiding), David Cochrane, Tā Hirini Moko Mead, Kim Ngarimu, and Tania Simpson, and the hearings took place from 4 to 6 December 2019.

The claimants said that the Crown’s process for engagement over the plant variety rights regime, and its policy on how to address UPOV 1991, were not consistent with its Tiriti/Treaty obligations of partnership and protection. The Crown argued that its engagement process, consistent with its CPTPPA obligations, was Tiriti/Treaty compliant. The Crown further argued that the outcomes of the review met, and exceeded, the relief originally sought by the claimants in this inquiry and that it has implemented the relevant Tribunal guidance as to what is necessary to meet its Tiriti/Treaty obligations.

The Tribunal found that the claims of Tiriti/Treaty breach in relation to these issues were not made out, and it supported certain aspects of the Crown’s policy. The Tribunal welcomed Cabinet’s decision to not only implement the relevant findings and recommendations of the Tribunal’s 2011 Ko Aotearoa Tēnei report but go further and provide additional measures to recognise and protect the interests of kaitiaki in taonga species and in non-indigenous species of significance.