van de Molen Tim; Parker DavidTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Absolutely—absolutely. There's plenty of beautiful farmland around the country so reiterating some of that is bound to happen but I do just want to come to the point the Minister was touching on around—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Was the member just reflecting on my ruling? TIM VAN DE MOLEN: Not at all Madam Chair. I would never do such a thing.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member will withdraw and apologise.TIM VAN DE MOLEN: I withdraw and apologise.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Tim van de Molen.TIM VAN DE MOLEN: Thank you Madam Chair. The land classification that Mr Bayly was touching on hadn't been addressed by the Minister in terms of what happens now that we have the separate requirement for farmland to forestry versus farmland to farmland or rather the continuation of that requirement and the 2018 legislation did make it significantly different for someone wanting to come into New Zealand and invest in forestry. That pathway was much easier and it was for someone wanting to come into New Zealand and invest in agricultural land. At a time now where we have significant global concerns around food security food supply issues driven in large part off the war in Ukraine—you know we're looking at our productive capacity here which we can still ramp up significantly if we are investing in the right manner enabling that investment to then generate greater productivity. That comes to the comment that the forestry Minister made as well around looking at the Aitken farm I think it was where they had been able to increase productivity from the land even though they had taken out some pockets of it—the less productive areas I think you said under 3½ stock units per hectare—and planted those pockets and the overall productivity remained the same or potentially increased. Look we have a fantastic track record of doing that in New Zealand in general. If you think now we have about 26 million sheep in the New Zealand flock. That dropped from a peak of 70 million and yet we are producing more value from that 26 million sheep flock than we were from 70 million. So we have a fantastic track record of innovation in the food and fibre sector in New Zealand and I'm interested in the concern I raised before that he hasn't touched on yet around the impact of the split. They're still favouring the forestry investor because if you have two investors coming in two foreign investors one's wanting to acquire a farm for agricultural purposes to generate food production someone else wants to buy the same farm for putting into forestry. Yet they're coming in both as overseas investors—investors with a different playing field—and that to me seems patently unfair. We are screwing the scrum and it is to the detriment of food production in New Zealand and I'd like to hear what consideration he's given to that point.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Madam Chair just before I do that officials have just told me that in answer to Mr Bayly's question when I said we don't have the counterfactual test and then I said that the test is compared with the current state of the land the test is compared with the current state of the land but that's what the counterfactual test is. Andrew Bayly: Thank you for correcting it.Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you. In respect of the last point the member's made we disagree with that. We don't think we should be applying the stringent test that applies to farmland to forestry land. If the member wants to do that he'll be backing the Greens' amendment which the Labour Party is opposing but which I understand his party is too.