Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I take the opportunity to speak on behalf of New Zealand First on this primary industries review and in the nick of time I might say because if I was just listening to the National Party and particularly that previous contribution what a dire state rural New Zealand must be in. But what are the facts? We've got record record exports—$46 billion this year. The Minister has just overseen a 7 percent rise. In fact I was just looking at the news feed come up from the Rural News; the main headline: horticulture booming $9.2 billion sector now. We've got the red meat sector at over $10 billion and of course we've just had Fonterra come out with its forward projections for next year which at the top end have got a seven in front and we've had three years of $6-plus payments. So we've got a rural sector in rude health. Of course our exports as a percentage of GDP which were in decline under the last Government are now in the ascension.So when we look at the estimates and when we look at the Ministry for Primary Industries' contribution in particular I'm pleased the previous speaker Nathan Guy touched on the billion tree policy because there is a lot of misinformation out there about this particular part of the policy. The billion trees policy being overseen by Minister Jones does not allow for mass afforestation. In fact for the grants only 300 hectares is the maximum you can apply for. Actually if you look at the grants at the moment there have been 36 grants to date of which 30 of them have included native plantings and 26 out of those 36 applications have been for less than 50 hectares. So to totally misrepresent the billion trees policy for afforestation of whole farms is not indeed correct and it's misrepresenting the policy as it stands. It actually is right tree right place right purpose.Around two thirds of the grants are for native plantings to increase our biodiversity to address some of our environmental water-quality issues and of course helping with Māori land—and some of those whose ownership structures are in trusts etc.—not always easy to get funding. This policy helps them get full value for their land. Of course it's not all pine trees—things like mānuka where we're also getting the honey as well as maybe pine plantation or exotic forestry. So where the speculation is coming in some of these afforestation situations is actually from land speculators based on the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill and maybe anticipating a carbon price going through the roof. There are absolutely no grounds for suspecting that. In fact there has been no such level beyond the $25 a tonne that is currently in the pipeline announced. So it is pure speculation that people might be buying farmland in that regard.Why are we doing that? Of course because we're actually having to address the very serious issue of climate change. But it was actually something that the National Party signed us up for. Paula Bennett swanned off over to Paris in 2016. They did not have a single idea of how they were going to meet the commitments that were made. In fact the only answer they had was to send $1.4 billion of New Zealand taxpayers' money overseas every year for 10 years and much of that money was seen to be fraudulent—they were fraudulent carbon credits.So we are actually putting some policies in place to address these very real issues and concerns and they are commitments that were made by the previous Government and it is us that will be delivering. With the time left there is $1.7 billion worth of hectares of forestry. There is 8.6 million hectares of sheep and beef land. So the billion tree policy is set to make between 230 and 430 extra hectares of farmland into forestry which actually presents about 5 percent of the available land. So there is a lot of scaremongering going on about this.