O'Connor DamienMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm in anticipation of my answer on my wool question to the Minister earlier but I would like to just switch it up a little bit. I know your part of the Vote here is lands and I know you're not the Minister for Lands but you have been integrally involved in the Crown pastoral lease situation—the bill that passed its first reading the other night. The controversy around that of course is in terms of the potential for significant bureaucratic overreach into the day-to-day farming activities of the lessees with—from my perspective anyway—not a great deal of evidence that they are in any way farming to standards that aren't protecting the land. Often they are now heavily tourism orientated and there's a huge incentive actually to protect those natural landscapes. So it is a little bit of a point of contention with us at New Zealand First whilst supporting strongly the end of tenure review and the privatisation of those leases but the balance being struck by having Land Information New Zealand essentially having too great a role in the day-to-day running of the pastoral leases.Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm sorry I missed the wool question. Actually it's timely now I guess to connect both the high country and Crown pastoral leases and wool because I guess if we want a model of excellence many of those farmers are connected through icebreaker and other high-value products to fine wool. The story and I guess the system of production and the location—it's wonderful. It puts New Zealand at the forefront of pastoral farming and images of high-quality products.So the wool report. Look we will work through that. I'm meeting with people involved in the industry. I have to say I will be pointing out to them that actually if they think they have a solution now they had 20 years to work on it and they didn't. So I'm not saying I have the solution but I know that this coalition Government is committed to try and progress their situation which is pretty dire. Farmers will not continue to focus on wool if it costs them more to shear than they get for the wool. So it is a fairly acute situation that we have to move on.Can I just draw out the Crown pastoral lands. I think the point the member makes is that absolutely most of those farmers are managing their land in a sustainable way but actually tenure review has led to intensification. Some of it's been retired. The rest of it's been farmed more intensively to run a viable operation. The end of tenure review I think is a sensible thing. Most high country lessees I speak to now think that they just want to be able to continue on but things are never the same and so there are some adjustments. The legislation as proposed—and I know it was scrutinised by all parties of Government—has the right balance between protecting the rights of those pastoral lessees and protecting I guess the inherent intrinsic values of the high country which are the responsibility of every one of us. It's Crown land ultimately and it's held for the purposes for which it was originally negotiated—that is that it's a spectacular part of the high country of New Zealand and the image of our country. But the lessees have rights. They need to be able to continue to farm. There has been a bit of discussion in the media about what this might do.My oversight at this point—and the select committee will take a closer look at this—is that most of the day-to-day activities of high country farming will be able to continue without necessarily the request to go to the commissioner. It will be easier for them but there will be other areas of farming where it may be part of intensification that there will be discretionary consent required. So ensuring that the commissioner understands the needs of those high country farmers the needs of their farming operation but understanding too the objectives of protection of the intrinsic values I think is the balance that a wise person—and we certainly had one in Sam Brown going way back to when this process started. He was someone who was highly respected who understood that balance and I think we had a good system. But tenure review led to intensification which has led to concern which means that we've got to take a fresh look at the balance between the impacts of those operational issues.