SpeechRt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): I've come down to the House tonight and asked for a speaking slot on this particular legislation because of my lifetime interest in the high country of particularly the South Island and my interest and involvement in legislation that has passed through this House during my time.I say to that member who has just resumed his seat Mark Patterson of New Zealand First that if he wants to be involved in the select committee process the only way he will be involved is if he makes a submission as a member of the public. Because I give that member an assurance: I'm going to spend my campaigning time telling every farmer in New Zealand that New Zealand First voted for this legislation tonight and if they had not this legislation would not be proceeding. It is proceeding because of New Zealand First and it is nothing but a property-right grab by this Government. The high country as various speakers have said tonight is a particularly attractive part of New Zealand but a particularly difficult environment to farm in. I know the farmers that farm this country very well. They are tough. They show tenacity in an environment that is difficult both environmentally and climatically.We did the tenure review in 1998 and I was involved in that. That legislation properly recognised the property right that each and every one of these leaseholders have which is called a lease in perpetuity. What we see regularly from the Greens Christchurch's The Press with one particular reporter and from one particular university lecturer at Lincoln University is malicious reporting on the tenure review process and the fact that it involves too much money going to some farms who have gone into tenure review. What that actually recognises is that the farmers had this strong property right called lease in perpetuity. So tenure review was a good process that went about trying to recognise the farms that had strategic land that should be remaining in agriculture and strategic land that should go back into the conservation estate. The farmers entered that process willingly if they wanted to enter into tenure review.What that legislation in 1998 was doing was updating the Land Act 1948 which had simply grown past its use-by date meaning the commissioner had to get permission for all sorts of things beyond simple sheep and cattle grazing. By that time we had an industry around deer farming. If you owned one of these leases you had to go to the commission and say Please can I put some deer on my farm and put some deer fencing there?". It was ridiculous legislation that needed updating.But this Labour Government's dislike of high country farmers became very obvious again in 2005 and 2006 with the then Minister Hon David Parker leading the charge to up the rents on these farms to an unsustainable level on the basis that you pay for an amenity value. I well remember one farmer who came to me. He had a farm on the shores of Lake Benmore. His parents had owned the farm before him. They had land taken from them through this Think Big project to create Lake Benmore and then David Parker's scenario was that because their sheep had a view of Lake Benmore they should pay a higher rent because of it. That was the logic of the Labour Government trying to drive these farmers off this land.We changed that legislation. We got the rent back to being what it should be on a productive value. It doesn't surprise me at all that in the dying days of the New Zealand First - Labour - Greens Government here they have another crack at the high country farmers; forget that they've got a property right called lease in perpetuity.I won't be in this Parliament to fight it through the select committee but I guarantee it will get a thorough airing. If Mark Patterson wants to be involved—thank you for his valedictory speech tonight—he comes back and makes a submission. He should front up and acknowledge before that select committee that he made his mistake in encouraging New Zealand First to support this legislation tonight because if he had stayed true to his own thoughts he wouldn't be supporting this legislation and it'd be dead in the water tonight as it should be."