Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. It is a pleasure to take a call today in this Estimates debate the Primary Sector—a sector that provides real value to our country. The target is to double the value of the primary sector to $64 billion by 2025 and the Government has taken a number of really important steps enabling it to do that. One of the big steps was actually signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement because that is going to take a range of tariffs off and particularly around kiwifruit and beef there are some big wins. But we never want to underestimate what dairy got. Dairy did not get quite what it wanted but actually there is still a value of $96 million in there for dairy. It is still a sizable chunk and still the largest chunk that we got. I want to mention the Primary Growth Partnership (PGP) programme today because there is some fantastic work going on there. The previous speaker Richard Prosser talked about aquaculture but there is also some great—I commend the aquaculture projects because they are starting to go really well but there is some excellent stuff going on with the Precision Seafood Harvesting. So this is the project that went on with PGP that actually allows the equipment to let the small fish out and only harvest the size of fish that we need. Not only is it more sustainable for the fishing but actually it is more cost-effective for the fishing industry to not be taking in a whole lot of fish that it does not need. One thing we do not need is waste in any of our food industries. We also touched on bees before. You know bees are actually having their time and it is really good to see that industry coming together. The mānuka honey has got huge value in it. You know it is important that not only for that industry but what I am also seeing in our own industries particularly with dairy when we look at sustainable agriculture people are taking out of production the most difficult areas of their farm that are either close to water or not that great for putting dairy cows on and planting areas of that into mānuka. So they are creating diverse agricultural systems. I am really pleased to see that PGP money going into mānuka honey. TB—again my colleague Stuart Smith mentioned TB. It is good to actually see $69.8 million of new operating funding going into that. It is really important now because we are actually going from containment of TB right through to planning for active eradication. Our global markets particularly around beef dairy and deer really hinge on our ability to be TB-free so it is extremely important that we have really ramped up and stopped talking about containment and started to talk about total eradication instead. The other things that are going to be extremely important to our primary sector are the new small-business packages. If you can imagine right now with the dairy payout going up and down the provisional tax—you know the whole thing is it can go up and it can go down. It is actually really difficult to get that in a sort of smooth cycle. So it is really important for people starting in those small businesses to actually be able to pay as they earn. It takes some of the sting out of having to get bridging finance and funding that provisional tax when actually it is quite difficult to estimate out into the future how much actual terminal tax people are going to be paying. I also want to commend the $212 million accelerating the 14 important State highway projects. A substantial amount of that money is being spent in my own Taranaki - King Country electorate. There has always been a difficulty in terms of that road in getting our products out of the Taranaki region. It is quite a road blockage with some winding hilly parts of the road. It was never built for 600 trucks a day. Improvements on that road are going to help get out the products that we make—the quality products in Taranaki. Not only will it help the primary sector it is actually going to help tourists get in and out as well. I would also like to note the $100 million that is going to improve water quality. I really want to commend our farmers for the years of work that they have already done in terms of fencing off waterways in terms of planting around waterways and in terms of keeping those stock out of waterways. It is really commendable. There has been a huge amount of work done there. I know in terms of the Taranaki Regional Council I think there is some statistic like the amount of trees planted and fencing done would actually go from Taranaki to Auckland and back about 20 times so the area is absolutely substantial. Thank you.