O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you. It's an honour to follow the Prime Minister. Two weeks ago the Government launched a document called Action for healthy waterways and we're proud of that document. It is a discussion document that lays out a number of proposals that we hope will restore the reputation of New Zealand for having pristine—not pristine; that's unfair: having good healthy waterways throughout our country and healthy beaches. It puts pressure on rural and urban people in this country to do their bit to try and clean up the waterways. I'm not a farmer at the moment—I wouldn't call 20 acres a farm—but I have been a farmer a sharemilker and the one thing that really irks me is that on that side of the House the party that claimed to be the champion of farmers has spent the last two weeks discrediting farmers up and down this country. They have said that this will be the ruination of farmers they'll have to walk off the land this is going to cost them a fortune—implying that every single farmer in New Zealand is going to have to spend a fortune to do this. Well they are wrong because there's a huge number of farmers in this country doing the right thing. They won't have to spend money. There are some that will and some that are doing the right thing because we do have some environmental challenges ahead of us. Can I just make one quote by an aspiring young leader: One of the big long-term challenges we face is protecting the environment … We can have a world-class economy and the prosperity to pay for education hospitals infrastructure social services and care for our vulnerable. But none of that is worthwhile if we haven't protected the natural environment as well." That aspiring young leader in 2018 was Simon Bridges—Simon Bridges. Well I wish you'd carry out and follow through on that in Opposition because your bleating along with Federated Farmers and others to oppose what we are putting up here as a discussion document is a reflection—and an inaccurate reflection—on every farmer in this country. Can I quote from those farmers—a couple of them—that are doing the right thing and I thank each and every one of them. We do appreciate it and a couple have come out in the media recently. One Christopher Falconer—he's from I think the Waikato somewhere and he says "I don't make climate-change based decisions on what we do on-farm. I don't. But as it happens there's a great deal of overlap between what is good for the climate and what is good for all sorts of other things." This is the kind of healthy new-generation thinking that we are seeing right through the farming community in our country. They're getting on and doing the right thing because they know it's good. "Breeding [better] cows that produce milk more efficiently is another tick. That's great for your farm system … it's also great for climate … because it's less cows producing the same amount of product." Can I quote from him again? "This is almost like collateral good that goes with so many of the things that are good with your farm." He comes from the north Waikato. Thank you for fronting up and telling the people of New Zealand who don't live on a farm the good things that are happening. I doubt whether Mr Falconer is going to have to spend a hell of a lot of money at all. He spent $250000 on an effluent system. "We're still producing the same amount of milk so we've got more efficient." That is the kind of approach that we want to see across the farming system. There's another one and I'd like to acknowledge the important work and as I say of standing up—Becks and Richard Tosswill. Farming with their children right? Great people. Yep. "They have retired areas unsuited to stock and have planted over 28000 trees" on their property. "They use GPS co-ordinates to pinpoint where they need fertiliser and other areas like waterways where they need to avoid using fertiliser. 'We use technology day-to-day to give us the best advice and help us make the best decisions which ultimately have a positive impact on our environment and climate change.' " These are the kinds of new-generation farmers that we need to learn more from. We need to share their wisdom advice—not go around the country saying as the National Party and Federated Farmers are saying that this proposal to clean up our waterways is going to destroy agriculture. That is far from the truth because the vast majority of farmers are on that path—they're moving down that path. They want clarity which they did not get from the last Government. The two things that Federated Farmers and the National Party campaigned against were a fart tax—and they got an emissions trading scheme—and against National Animal Identification and Tracing and we've had hundreds of millions of dollars of expenditure because we haven't had traceability. That's the kind of vision of this National Party and Federated Farmers organisation that we have."