O'Connor Damien: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: General Debate[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9806. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I cannot help but smile. The stress test from the Reserve Bank has come out with the statement that “the banks could be left managing large amounts of land for years and have most of their profitability wiped out.” The image of bankers in a herringbone pit trying to get their money from the cow’s tits instead of the farmers’ bank accounts is just too good to be true.How have we how have the farmers and how have the bankers got into this situation? Indeed the stress test said that the banks could lose $3 billion. That seems like a lot of money when you say it slowly but that is actually 9 months of the banks’ profits. When you look at it that way the question is “Why not?” because the farmers are losing years of profits in a situation that is dire for many of them. How did they get there is the question. Well some might have been called greedy but mostly they were ambitious and naive hard-working Kiwis who wanted to get on and grow their business and grow the benefits for New Zealand.They were told by Dairy New Zealand that they could increase productivity that things are all good—Dairy New Zealand subsidised by taxpayer funding was pushing money down their throats to push more productivity. They were told by Fonterra that they had a triple “V” strategy: volume value and velocity. No one knows what it means but it has got a great future they were told. Then we had people saying things like “and in my view that is going to bottom out pretty soon and start going back the other way.” and “This is not based on hope. It was fundamentally based on a massive consumer demand.” That was in November 2014 from the Prime Minister. His constituents those hard-working but naive farmers believed him—they believed him. And the banks were happy to throw money down their throats and the Prime Minister went around the world getting photos of Fonterra and its growth.Now the farmers are asking: “How have we got here?”. The Prime Minister’s instincts are pretty simple having been a trader: when things get bad sell sell sell.Hon David Parker: Who to?Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Well the question is: whom to? Indeed what I picked up today in the Farmers Weekly—indeed it is in the property pull-out. Fancy that! This is the real-estate part of the farming magazines that is growing in size every single week as more and more properties come on to the market for a smaller pool of people who want to pay the money. There is however hope—from the Prime Minister I am sure—that overseas investors will walk in step in prop up property prices and buy a huge portfolio of our farmland.That is not something that Labour will stand by and let happen. We have said that we will put a line in the sand so that in the dire situations that the farmers face now they must not be forced to sell out to foreign investors who are taking opportunities that should not be there. How have they got here? Where to now for our dairy industry? These stories have been out there around the wider arena. That was 2015—in August last year. Yet we had the Prime Minister and the Government completely in denial and continuing to fund irrigation and growth in dairy and the Primary Growth Partnership for Dairy New Zealand. They were continually in denial of the reality that the world is awash with milk. You do not have to be a genius to work out that that was going to happen.So what is National doing? The Prime Minister says: “Oh support the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement—that is going to be the solution.” I quote John Wilson: “I am very disappointed that the deal falls far short of TPP’s original ambition”. It does very little for the dairy industry. The Prime Minister says: “Support the Resource Management Act reforms.” These are the reforms that will effectively turn good productive land into house sites around Auckland. That is not good news for our dairy farming sector.This Government aided and abetted by the banks has thrown money at naive well-meaning well-intended and ambitious dairy farmers and the debt levels are up to—I would guess—about $40 billion as of this day. The last calculation was $38 billion. I put it to the banks that it is time for them to take their losses. If it is $3 billion then that is only 9 months’ profit. It is incumbent upon every one of us to support the good hard-working people who have gone into dairy farming who continue to create wealth for this country. We need to look after them and give them a fair go.