Whaitiri Meka: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWhaitiri Meka: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10705. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Kia ora. E ngā mema o Te Whare nei tēnā tātou katoa. In the time that I have got remaining—probably 30 seconds—I am happy to take a call on the Appropriation (2014/15 Confirmation and Validation) Bill focusing on the primary sector. We had the Minister talk about the wonderful strategy that he has under way—his vision for 2025—but my contribution is going to be about the cost of that progress. It is the cost of the progress that I want to highlight. So what has been the cost of progress in the primary sector? We only have to look at the dairy sector and the dairy sector is in crisis. Milk prices are down—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.MEKA WHAITIRI: Before we broke I was taking the honour to make a contribution on the 2014-15 annual review of the primary sector. I started off by acknowledging the Minister getting to his feet and explaining how pleased he is with the performance of his particular sector and I thought I would offer the cost of that progress. I started to talk around what is happening in the dairy industry in terms of the prices around low milk production—and obviously auction prices are hurting farmers—but I also want to talk about the whole sector’s performance around water management.It has been mentioned by previous speakers on this particular sector that we really do want a quality that means our water is swimmable as opposed to the current quality standard which is wadeable which this Government is promoting. I fully support the Minister’s ambition to double the value of our primary sector by 2025 which is merely 9 years away. I guess the offer to the Minister to be the progressive Minister I believe that he thinks he is is that we seriously have to clean our rivers because one of our added advantages of doubling the value in our primary sector is that we actually have clean rivers. That is our economic advantage on the international stage—that we are a primary producing country that actually values the clean green image and the added value it brings to our exports.We also want a country that offers and implements robust and world-class labour laws so that when our workers in the primary industry go to work—and there are many many workers who derive their livelihoods from the primary sector—they come home. So they go to work they come home and they are safe while they are at work. Obviously in that space we want to ensure that the jobs that the primary sector is creating actually go to Kiwis first. I did want to say from this side of the Chamber that the progress terms of the primary sector is fairly wanting in terms of water management but the area that I am particularly keen on is actually the land issue.We have had numerous applications to the Overseas Investment Office and only one application has been turned down. So there are some concerns around how robustly we are checking overseas investors when they are coming to obviously buy up our land—land that is part of our country which is really important. It is part of our psyche it is in our DNA and we want to ensure what land we have left in New Zealand remains in New Zealanders’ hands. So in this part of the annual review there are some issues seriously that need to be addressed around the role of the Overseas Investment Office.But one report that has come from the Minister’s own department the Ministry for Primary Industries is about growing the productive base of Māori freehold land. That to me is one of the reasons why I have come into Parliament as the member for Ikaroa-Rāwhiti one of the largest holders of Māori freehold land. It is important that we ensure that land that is in Māori hands remains in Māori hands. I draw that reference only because we do have a bill coming later to the House Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill and I will leave that for that time.I actually want to draw the Committee’s attention to the Auditor-General’s own audit of the Ministry for Primary Industries. If I can just mention his report to the select committee he talks about an area of performance for the ministry that I am sure the Minister is going to take care of and that is performance information and associated systems and controls. Although the audit has noted its general performance as good for the previous year it did make a comment that the primary industries including Māori have greater access to capital and have skills needed to grow and innovate. It noted that the indicators of progress that give a view as to whether industry has found access to capital more or less challenging over the review period were missing. So we need to do better in this space.