Ardern Shane: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Shane: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7159. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 Rather than respond to those comments from Lianne Dalziel I think it is probably important at this time to remind us at this stage what this debate is about. It is a general debate of ideas. 
Denis O’Rourke 
: Respond if you can. Let’s hear the answers. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: Well there is another one of those Christchurch members banging on over there. Is that not interesting? Nearly $20 billion is going into the city and you have got someone over there from that city who is banging on and does not know what he is talking about like usual. 
Coming back to the point that I was going to make I think there is one thing that we all agree on in this House and it is that to improve the standard of living in New Zealand we need to improve the income of New Zealanders. I think we get pretty much universal acceptance of that—to improve the standard of living in New Zealand we need to improve the income of New Zealanders. The only debate in the House today is about how that might be done. Most of our opponents over here have put up an argument against every single thing that potentially could improve the standard of living for New Zealand. 
But I want to talk about the sector that I come from and represent which is the primary sector. Food production is now not keeping up with the growing world population. It is not keeping up with it. We are going to have a food shortage in the world within the next 15 years unless we become more efficient in our production of food from the agricultural sector. The agricultural sector or the primary sector in New Zealand represents 71 percent of our total merchandise export trade. Primary exports up to March for the 2012 year were $32 billion. 
 The question I have for the House in this debate is: what would our opponents if they were to be elected—that is a Green-Labour Government—do to this sector? Let us just have a look at what they have said they would do for a start. The first thing they are going to do is introduce an emissions trading tax on methane from animals. The second thing they have said they are going to do is introduce a capital gains tax on the agricultural sector or on the business sector. The third thing they have said they are going to do is introduce a nitrate limit on the amount of nitrogen fertiliser that can be applied. The fourth thing they have said they are going to do is put a restriction on water use and a ban on irrigation in some areas of the country or restrictions on irrigation. The fifth thing that they have said they are going to do is put a restriction on livestock numbers in New Zealand in some areas. None of these things are based in science all of them are ideologically driven and none of them stand up to scrutiny. 
We will listen to the Green Party no doubt go on about the current discussions going on in regard to the Kyoto Protocol. Well when I hear the Green Party members talking about that and about the various conferences and protests and so forth they are going to it reminds me a lot of a bunch of drunkards going to another booze-up to talk about the disadvantages of alcoholism. You sort of cannot understand how they could be so—I know the word is not able to be used but have such a double standard if you like that they would travel thousands of miles in aeroplanes around the world to stay in flash hotels by the thousands and attend conferences to talk about what they could do to save the planet. Have you ever seen or heard such an oxymoron as that? 
China is now our second-largest trading partner and as we speak there are members of Parliament being paid by the taxpayer protesting against free-trade agreements and negotiations going on in this country at the moment. How is it that you can have a growing economy in a country where 71 percent of its export merchandise comes from a particular sector yet we are going to protest against the export of those products to the world? How is that? Someone will need to explain that to me slowly and thoroughly in a few moments. 
The largest company in this country is Fonterra—there is no doubt about that. I can understand the concern from some that it does control such a high percentage of this country’s export earnings. I can also understand some commentary that suggests that it is the wrong structure but I do not agree with it and the evidence is that they are wrong. I can do no better than to quote Gareth Morgan who is often quoted as a commentator on various things when he commented in 2004: “So far the industry has simply morphed into a vehicle for generation of wealth for a class of land-owning milk-producing suppliers whose”—