Roy Eric: Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Roy Eric: Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
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ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 I too will take a brief call in the third reading debate of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2). It is not so much that there are concerns that some things are not being covered but that all that is said in the debating process is recorded in  
Hansard 
 and at future times people will look at that record and interpret the bill against that. I am largely stimulated by the remarks of the New Zealand First member Doug Woolerton who seemed to have some comments to make about the ills of the meat industry in relation to the dairy industry. 
I ask members to let me just place it on the record that I along with the rest of the National Party am essentially very proud of the achievements of the dairy industry. We think it is great that the dairy industry is the leading industry in New Zealand. We are pleased with the way that it has gone forward particularly after the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act of 2001 was passed when Fonterra came forward. If the measure is the viability of the dairy industry and the price increases we are seeing in dairy products right now we can see that rather than the restructuring being an impediment to development the industry has done exceedingly well. I note coming from my part of New Zealand Southland the great desire of people from the North Island to invest in dairying in the south. If that is an indication of the state of the dairy industry it is certainly doing very well. 
Mr Woolerton alluded to the comparative situation between milk and meat and said that if we transferred a xenophobic cooperative structure into the meat industry we would immediately solve all the problems or that had we gone there initially we would not have the problems in the meat industry that we have today. There are some significant issues which I think change the whole landscape. 
For example those who represent dairy farmers in terms of their processing and marketing are under a greater degree of scrutiny than anybody else because the farmers are themselves under scrutiny. Every single day sometimes twice a day when dairy farmers milk they have an opportunity to measure their own performance. They might note that they have more milk and the milk vat is up one day and ask what they did or did not do. So dairy farmers have a very very rigorous way of measuring themselves and they tend to apply that to those who represent them. 
The second thing is that milk is a homogenous product. Milk is pretty much the same all over New Zealand. There are variations in butterfat levels and slight variations in milkfat percentages but essentially the product is the same. That is not so in the meat industry. 
Thirdly milk stores relatively easily after it has been processed in comparison with meat products. Particularly as the future of the meat industry is moving into chilled products meat is becoming even more fragile and requires a greater movement of product through so it cannot be stored for any length of time till the market is just absolutely right. 
Fourthly there is just an acceptance of milk generally as a product. If people in the world who have never consumed Western products before are given a variety of foods to consume of the three products that they will consume again and again two of them are milk products: ice cream and chocolate. There just is a universal acceptance of milk as a product in the world and there is a great desire of Third World countries to consume more calcium in order to be healthier and grow better and that association is with milk products. So there is a universal acceptance of milk. Which product do dairy farmers have as a competitor? Well they have soy milk. That is virtually the only competitor that is out there to milk so they have captured an opportunity that is just there because there is such a great demand for the product. But in the case of meat it competes with a whole range of animal and fish proteins that are out there so it is in a much more competitive environment. So just to say we should apply this to that and that will solve all the problems is an issue. I think we needed to simply place that on the record. 
As has been said the milk industry—the dairy industry—is the foremost part of the New Zealand economy. It is important that we pass this legislation today so that the industry can take the next steps and so the people who are now involved in company structures outside of Fonterra have an opportunity to provide some stimulus to the industry not on a competitive basis—well not specifically for that reason—but with product development and with opportunities in packaging marketing and branding. They are in the marketplace enhancing and increasing the appreciation of the products that are produced out of New Zealand. Yes those people are a very small section of the industry but we also need them as a measure against Fonterra. How does one measure a monopoly if there are no other players in the market to say how well they are doing? When they do that we actually have some measures. I see all those things as healthy and I see it as a sign of a company that is viable healthy growing maturing and serving a very very useful part of New Zealand’s economy. 
National supports the third reading of this bill.