O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour—West Coast—Tasman): It is a pleasure to follow on from the previous speaker Richard Prosser there because I too am going to speak on what is the most important issue facing the primary sector at the moment and it is one word: biosecurity. The Mycoplasma bovis outbreak that has been identified is a classic case of the Government's inadequate management of biosecurity—in fact inadequate management across the whole of the primary sector. In its classic wisdom or lack of it thought that it would throw all areas of responsibility into one organisation called the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and that that would be efficient and that would create cooperation but what that has in fact has done is dumbed down the area of expertise and knowledge and passion that we need particularly in the area of biosecurity and food safety.When the restructure occurred I had people contacting me saying: I've left. I've gone from my chosen career in biosecurity because I feel we aren't doing our job properly." And indeed we have had a recent example of that massive failure. It is a failure in a number of areas. In fact this afternoon I was contacted by someone who said a neighbouring farm of where we have the identified infection has not been contacted by the Ministry for Primary Industries. They had been contacted by National Animal Identification and Tracing the organisation responsible for animal tracing but they have not been contacted by the Ministry for Primary Industries to give them advice on a whole range of issues. This farmer is bringing stock back from a grazing property back on to their home property right past the Van Leeuwen Dairy Group's place and the farmer does not know whether that is appropriate whether it gives further risk for his or her operation and whether it creates I guess a complication for the Van Leeuwen Dairy Group because MPI has not knocked on the door of the neighbouring farmer and given that advice. Such is the level of failure at MPI and in my view of their ability to deal with these issues.A number of years ago the Auditor-General said that actually it was not up to management of foot-and-mouth if it came into New Zealand. So there was a review and an upgrade we were told of MPI processes. Now when we have Mycoplasma bovis in the country there are a number of questions. Firstly how did it come in? MPI very quickly said that we may never know which is an absolute acceptance of failure and I do not accept that for a moment. What we hear now is that there were symptoms of this in March. Persistent mastitis resistance to antibiotics and some of the classic symptoms of Mycoplasma bovis were present but not identified and pursued. Now I am not going to make a judgment on whether that was with the farmer or with MPI or the vets or whatever but to now be in the end of July before we finally have an admission that we do have this bacteria in the country—it has serious animal welfare implications from a farmer's perspective. In fact they are more serious than any foot-and-mouth. The issue with foot-and-mouth is I guess its infectious nature and that it can be blown in the wind. Mycoplasma bovis can spread beyond direct contact through feed or within a metre—so we are told from international experience. So MPI have been playing this down.I do not wish to play it up but I do wish MPI to be in a position to manage this adequately. In my view there has not been sufficient funding going into biosecurity to meet the increasing trade across the border in and out of New Zealand and the increasing risks from the number of diseases that we know are present around the world. Just at a time that we were—and even the meat industry; God that has taken them a while—starting to realise the importance of our biosecurity status our relatively low level of diseases in this country and the potential that that offers for us to sell very high-value products free of any contaminants into the world's most discerning markets with customers who really want the finest protein in the world. When the meat industry gets it but the Government does not then we are in trouble.The Government has to step up here. It has got to put more money into biosecurity. It has got give more independence to the agency—[Bell rung]—and that is why Labour has said indeed that it will put biosecurity and food safety out of MPI to give them more authority—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Chester Borrows): You are supposed to ask for another call or stop there.Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: Oh sorry. I just have not had enough speaking opportunities lately but that is all right. Can I just say that on biosecurity the Government has not funded enough into this area is not committed to it and now we are starting to pay the price. I could take another call in this area but I have to say that the issue of food safety is one area. We have a classic example of skewed priorities I guess within MPI. When we had inspectors rushing to The Duke of Marlborough Hotel in the Bay of Islands to stop the chef serving a medium-rare burger—an absolute outrageous food-safety risk so we were told or they were told. Those people would have been better off dealing with real food safety issues and dealing with real biosecurity issues. I think you would agree that we have just got to make sure—because I guess there will be an argument that there is never sufficient funding—with the funding we have that we get our priorities right. Within MPI under this Government I think they have got them all skewed.I applaud some of the good work that people do on the ground but when we have got one big policy department forced together to make general policy directives or develop papers without the level of expertise that we have seen in the past people get despondent. I think we have lost some of the passion and commitment within the MPI because of the Government's oversight and blind belief that bigger is better and that by throwing all these people into one big organisation the Ministry for Primary Industries that we are going to get a better deal for the farmers for New Zealand and indeed for our customers.We have seen numerous examples in food safety where the ball has been dropped in the past. We hope that we do not have repeats of that for Fonterra or for any other organisation. We have got pressure now from within the meat industry to have self-regulations of meat inspection. I have had discussions with the industry. They want to engage. But I put it to them that ultimately the trust that our international customers put in Government oversight should be absolute and that if we compromise the systems and leave the door open for I guess commercial opportunities or human failure then we are all going to pay the price.This one outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis may yet cost us hundreds of millions of dollars and it is only small mistakes that can do the same to our reputation in the area of food safety. In fact our inability to accurately identify whether we had a major food problem meant that our reputation has been tarnished in the international area particularly in China and we are indeed trying to play catch-up from a food safety mistake.I will not go on other than to say that Labour believes there has been insufficient funding going into MPI particularly in the area of biosecurity. We believe we need to up our game in food safety and we have passed a couple of pieces of legislation to help in that process. But the funding has to follow. The Government's determination to balance the books to have its first or indeed maybe its second surplus Budget has come at a huge cost not only in the areas of social responsibility across New Zealand but in the areas of biosecurity oversight. Practically every day now I am getting emails from people who are concerned about the process at the border where there is a casual attitude or indeed through the systems in industry where I think we have a very high standard of outward export oversight. But we have an insufficient level of oversight for products coming into the country.Officials are too quick to be trusting. If a foreign country exporting into New Zealand says that our systems are all OK then they accept that. I think that is totally naive and puts us at risk. That was in the area of palm kernel expeller or PKE as it is known. The Government or its officials denied that there was any possible contamination and it was not until farmers actually showed them with photos that they took action to improve the import health standards.We need to ensure there is sufficient funding into MPI to do the proper review of the import health standards. They have indicated that they are starting and we need to make sure that when they do that they do it properly."