Mallard Trevor: Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I want to thank the speaker who has just preceded me the Hon David Parker because I think he has pointed out some of the constitutional issues that sit in behind the debate that we are about to have now. Probably of members in the House I think John Banks and I are the only two who were here in 1986 when the expectation changed so that all bills went to a select committee rather than it being an exception. That was I think part of a set of reforms at the time that recognised the fact that we are a unicameral Parliament and that some of the checks and balances did not exist. There was a view that unless something was really urgent it should go to a select committee. At that stage I do not think we had a time limit. Basically the bill went to the committee and the committee did its business. It generally on average took about 6 months but there was not a requirement to send the bill back within that time.  
Subsequent to that in another set of reforms we had an expectation or a requirement that the select committee reported back—I think it probably came in with MMP or a period subsequent to that—that the 6-month rule applied that if the committee had not dealt with the bill it would effectively stand referred back. Recently I have been rereading the review of the Standing Orders which the Speaker and you Mr Speaker Tisch were both actively involved in. We did make a change. We made some things easier for the Government to do—like the extended sittings. We also put some restrictions on the Government and one of the restrictions that we put on was that if a bill was going off to a select committee for a period under 4 months then it would be a debatable motion. What we hoped through doing the extended sittings and that sort of arrangement was to reduce the amount of urgency and to have Parliament debating the things in the select committees and in the House that were important and that were really debatable.  
I think it is fair to say that whatever one’s point of view there is not much doubt that there are parts of this legislation that are debatable and will need a full and proper select committee examination. In a funny way there is not a lot of politics in this. Without referring too much to the debate that has preceded this I indicated that my view was certainly closer to that of the Minister who introduced the bill than to my colleague Damien O’Connor.  
Hon Nathan Guy 
: Must have been a good caucus. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: Well no we have different points of view. I would say that the chairman of the Primary Production Committee has a view closer to Damien O’Connor’s than mine. So I think it is fair to say that there are a range of views within this Parliament and the select committee is an enormous opportunity to work through those views and to see whether we can get a compromise that has the wide support of the Parliament. I think it is agreed that by the end of this legislation if we do not get something that has—I will say with all due respect to my colleagues from the Greens—the agreement of at least the Labour Party and the National Party together then we will have a period of instability in the dairy industry. That is something that none of us wants. It does not help with investment going forward and it does not help with the things that I think are really important and that is the acquisition of capital for innovation for the dairy industry so some of the things that frankly we are half-cock developing at the moment can be properly funded and we can take advantage of our leadership in the intellectual property area related to the dairy industry.  
But to do it we have to move to a point of if not total consensus then broad agreement across the sides of the Parliament for that. My view is that the best way of doing that is within the select committee. I do not want to say that it is undue influence on the part of Fonterra. I mean Fonterra is an organisation that I know relatively well and have been involved with as a member of Parliament in its formation but to suggest that Fonterra dictates the timetable of this Parliament as the Minister who is currently in charge of the bill did in the beginning of this debate I think is wrong. My view is that it is important for this Parliament to take its time to work out the appropriate legislation and not to have its timetable or the details of the legislation dictated by any outside body.  
Now I am sure Fonterra would not want its request to the Government to be characterised as dictatorial but I think in the way that the member moved this motion he at least gave that impression. I think that does not behove him well and it does not behove other Government members well.  
I do not want to go into the principles of the bill but there are issues within the bill that require different constituencies to have their say within the select committee. There is no doubt that around the farm-gate price-setting arrangements there will be a lot of debate amongst farmers. I hope that the select committee will want to work its way around the country not from every village—and it might not even want to meet in Auckland—but sitting in dairy areas and getting the views of the local dairy farmers like the dairy sections of Federated Farmers and farmers more generally. I think there are some principles involved in this bill that are important as far as the farming industry generally going forward is concerned.  
But what I am saying is that for that to happen you need to have a proper period of notice to the select committee—normally 6 weeks—for things to appear in the paper. I think we are just about at the point now where the Office of the Clerk is prepared to support electronic advertising like getting on farmers’ Facebook pages and various arrangements like that. Then we can encourage them to make submissions and as farmers like to do to turn up and make those submissions in person possibly at carefully arranged times. In fact it would probably fit fairly well in a number of areas for the select committee to fly in. Farmers could come in after morning milking although if we are looking at the period now there might be a few cows that are dry. Are they drying off now? 
Hon Member 
: In some areas. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: In some areas they are beginning to dry off and they might be on once-a-day milking in some areas. But what I am saying Mr Assistant Speaker and you will be much more cognisant of this than I am being the member for a rural area is that the farmers will want to come in and they will want to have their say.  
One of the anxieties that some of us have about the bill is that many of the people who are going to benefit from this are not New Zealand residents. It is one of the debating points for the bill and one of the questions I have is whether there is any plan for the select committee for example to sit in Shanghai. Clearly there is international interest in the ownership of this area. I see the wry smile from Maurice Williamson at the moment and the importance of whether or not the Primary Production Committee should meet in Shanghai could well be influenced by decisions that are before him at the moment. Certainly by the time the committee advertises and has its hearings then those things will be announced—probably Thursday afternoon at 4.30 would I think be my best estimate. But the point I am making is that people who own New Zealand farms and live in Shanghai people who have an interest in the New York Stock Exchange where the units could well be listed and people in London and New York could well have an interest in making submissions to the select committee. It may be that these will be done by videoconference but then people will not be familiar with our way of doing things in New Zealand at select committees. In fact neither London nor New York has a unicameral system nor do the Europeans. People who might be interested in doing the investment will be interested in going to the select committee. That is why I think 6 months is a minimum. I in fact think that to get this right it would be better to take longer. We will be opposing this motion from Nathan Guy.