Allan KiritapuKIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): We've just had to endure five minutes of a member of the Opposition. Not once did he actually turn to the substance of this bill. In this Chamber the purpose of the role of each of us that holds a position in this House is to give every piece of legislation that comes into this House the due consideration that it deserves. Now that last speech was an absolute disgrace to those farmers that we are actually trying to work and stand alongside. Now I know that the Opposition are getting a bit terse. They are getting a bit grumpy because they know that on this side of the House we're actually working hand in hand with the primary sector. I know that that's a bit disconcerting for that member Hamish Walker. It's a little bit disconcerting so he just like the chair of the Primary Production Committee David Bennett for the majority of his speech just spieled off negativity after negativity after negativity.One of the most frustrating things about sitting on this side of the House particularly when you sit on the Primary Production Committee—and we have pretty good amicable relationships in that committee—is we have to listen to the absolute garbage that comes out of people that purport to be leaders of our rural communities on that side of the House. It is misinformation it's disingenuous and I strongly appeal to our rural communities to do some fact-checking on those members that get up from that side of the House and speak to things that are actually really fundamentally important.Now I want to turn to the Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2). Why has this bill come about? This bill has come about because the previous Government let banks go rampant. They let corporate banks owned by Australians by and large go rampant and milk our rural communities for all they've got. So when the sun was shining those banks absolutely targeted our rural communities—they targeted our farmers. When the milk was flowing and the white gold was there there were no barriers to letting these Australian by and large multinational corporate bankers come in to the homes the beds the lives of our rural communities. Where were the backstops then from the self-purported Opposition to be the champions of the regions? They were nowhere to be seen. So what happened in 2016—DEPUTY SPEAKER: All right. So I now ask the member—I've given the member the—KIRITAPU ALLAN: Absolutely I'm going to turn to this bill because this is the context for this bill—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Would you let me finish and not speak over me? I've tried to give everyone a fair go at the start but if you come to the bill please.KIRITAPU ALLAN: Five minutes I had to endure listening to that previous speaker Hamish Walker not once turn his mind or his words—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Are you arguing with me? Is that member arguing with me?KIRITAPU ALLAN: I'm not arguing with you.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sit down. Are you arguing with me? I'm saying that you are now to come to the bill. I've given everyone a bit of a go about the context. I'm now asking you to come to the bill.KIRITAPU ALLAN: So turning to this bill this bill has been called upon by members of our rural communities and has been championed for many years by our friends our coalition friends New Zealand First. I want to applaud the member Mark Patterson as a first-term member of Parliament a sheep and beef farmer from Lawrence. I want to applaud the work that he has done alongside those members and our rural constituents alongside those members that have really felt the heat of I guess inaction by the previous Government in this area to ensure that some of our most vulnerable farmers—and it's not the big farmers that this bill goes to protect; it's our sharemilkers. It's our little guys. It's our family farmers. After the milk price crashed in 2016 it was it was estimated that about 25 percent of farms were going to fail. Nothing was done. But I want to commend Mark Patterson. I also want to commend the Hon Ron Mark Darroch Ball all who in some way shape or form put their hand to the tiller to try and ensure that this bill got before the House.But the real credit—alongside those members—must go to our Minister of Agriculture the Hon Damien O'Connor who has been a constant bastion for the little-guy farmers and has ensured that this bill has come before this House in a way that really does get to the core purpose of what we're trying to achieve.So what does this bill do? This bill requires or provides a mechanism to ensure that the farmers that are under some stress have a mechanism to require banks to go to mediation. Articulating the words of the submission from Rural Women New Zealand they say Calling up farm debt has had a devastating effect on the rural families involved because it can result in the farmers and their families leaving their home families friends land livestock place of work and community all at the same time. This can be a traumatic event for all concerned. Although it is probable that banks will call up loans on farms where the borrowers default due to not being able to meet their commitments—it is the process timing and manner in which this happens that often determines the amount of stress and trauma an individual or family will suffer."Now what our farmers were saying to us—and you know it was probably well-articulated. I know that the member Mark Patterson has already applauded him but it was Richard McIntyre and his submission on behalf of the sharemilkers sector of Federated Farmers which said that when those families are struggling and the pump is on—I'm paraphrasing him now but he's spoken a number of times on this issue. But he said when that foot is on the jugular and it feels like they've got nowhere else to go there was no mechanism to be able to ensure that there was some parity to get those people around the table. The banks had the power and those farmers were under an enormous amount of strain. They couldn't get them around the table and so what he said is that in those situations a struggling farm business did not end in a bank taking action; it ended because the farmer just sold up after the bank put pressure on them about an overdraft. Now with this bill in cases like this mediation is extremely beneficial. He said previously it would only happen if the banks agreed to it but this creates a mechanism to compel those banks to get around the table.So look in the Primary Production Committee despite all the sometimes rubbish that gets said in this House post factum—in the actual committee it has been a really good thorough process. We've heard I don't know probably around 70-odd submissions on this bill from bankers through to farmers through to the rural women's network who really spoke a lot to the mental health implications of financial burdens and strains in the family home when the pressure gets a little bit too much.Now there is a whole range of substantive amendments that our select committee put forward and my colleague spoke prior to this but one of them was around that wider definition of "farmer." We had a really in-depth discussion around our select committee to ensure that it's not just the person with their name who does the work day in and day out on the farm; there may be a spouse and a partnership; there might be a spouse whose primary work is doing something else—it might be I don't know something in town. But that couple they bear the burden of that financial stress. The purpose of broadening out that definition of "farmer" was to ensure that spouses were included so that they could also have a right to trigger this mechanism to compulsory mediation if that could be said.What's been spoken a lot about too—is that there was a lot of debate about how much mediation actually costs. I think one of the figures that we heard was up to around $20000. I think that there was some consensus that it was around about $6000 to get both parties around the table depending on whether parties took advice and so on and so forth. Now I mean this has been traversed but it was important for us that we could I guess get rid of the barriers to participation to mediation for all of those concerned. So we've kept the farmer's contribution to mediation costs to about $2000. Now as a former commercial lawyer myself I know that that's an extremely low cost but it was very important for us to ensure that equitable access to justice if you will. We rejected a de minimis requirement; my colleague Mark Patterson covered this off just prior. We also set down criteria as to what could be evidence of bad faith when it came to mediation and rejecting a mediation request was one of those mechanisms that our committee determined would be evidence of bad faith. There are a range of positive aspects to this bill particularly for our smaller farmers who have been struggling financially and it's with absolute pleasure that I commend this bill to the House."