Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. And again congratulations to Mark Cameron—so early in your political career to get a member's bill drawn out well done. This is an easy bill for us to support to select committee stage and what a wonderful opportunity it would be for the other side of the House to hear from some farmers and to try and work in partnership with those farmers. And on a cold wet miserable day in Wellington I'd like to acknowledge our farmers and people right across the land that are working on the land. We've had a cold wet spring in Southland. I want to acknowledge all our farmers and farm workers that have been out calving and lambing and worrying about how much feed they have and I acknowledge how stressful that is for them—pity we couldn't take some of the hot air from this Chamber down there sometimes!New Zealand farmers are among the most efficient and capable farmers in the world. There are 350000 people in this country employed in the primary sector. We feed 40 million people across the world and 80 percent of New Zealand's total export revenue comes from our primary sector. This is a big deal and when the Government starts messing with it they better think of the consequences.If you took a world view you would say the more food that New Zealand grows the better for the world. Our farmers are more efficient and create less carbon emissions than anywhere else in the world. But this Government has developed an astonishingly negative narrative around farming. We heard it from one of the members from across the House before; about a wholesale degradation of the environment in New Zealand. Do you honestly think when people fly into New Zealand—and granted they haven't been able to for a long time—they look out the plane window and say Oh my goodness what a wholesale degradation of that environment in New Zealand."? What a load of rubbish. Do you honestly think that having campaigned all through an election campaign on dirty dairying farmers are going to want to rush out in partnership with you when you try and bring in regulations? Do you think that when you put up the most ridiculous slope maps or winter crop sowing dates that just don't make sense farmers are going to want to work in collaboration? The fundamentals of the change process is you take people with you.Now we heard that somehow everything had been going wrong until this Government and the previous Government came in and started to save the world or save New Zealand anyway. Well I hate to break it to you but people like Bryce McKenzie and Laurie Paterson in Groundswell were looking after the Pomahaka catchment group before you even knew there was such a river.DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'm going to interrupt the member and just—less use of the word "you" in the wrong—PENNY SIMMONDS: Quite right Mr Speaker I take that absolutely on board.Farmers were fencing waterways long before this Government thought that it was a great idea to do and that's because first and foremost farmers are conservationists. They know they want the land to be kept in a good condition. They know they want their stock looked after well. The reason why a group like Groundswell has come about is because this Government has been putting in place an avalanche of regulations that the farming community cannot deal with all at once and that doesn't even make sense for them to deal with. So it would make much more sense to allow this bill to go to the select committee and work collaboratively with the rural sector to come up with solutions that will genuinely make a difference because farmers know those solutions much much better than people in Wellington do. Thank you Mr Speaker."