O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Mr Speaker look thank you very much and I welcome the opportunity to speak after Todd Muller the last speaker. There's a saying Be careful what you ask for" and that member's asking to be Leader of the Opposition. Indeed I predict that he will get there and he will stay there for a hell of a long time because if that's an example of how he and the National Party as the primary industries spokesperson for the Opposition and the National Party completely discredits the third-largest export earner for this country and an industry that he is supposed to be advocating for I'm ashamed—I'm ashamed.If ever there's a difference between what this side of the House this coalition Government advocates for and it's for forestry—I congratulate my colleague the New Zealand First member the Hon Shane Jones because what he did was finally set up Te Uru Rākau a ministry for forestry. I was in this House when Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith proclaimed huge savings—if I can remember it was $4 million a year—to merge agriculture and forestry. He thought of all the efficiencies and what that did was that forestry got lost from that time onwards. It got absolutely ignored and so this coalition Government came in and set up Te Uru Rākau to advocate.The other difference between a party that claims to advocate for the primary sector and the forestry sector and a Government that works for them is that we are advocating for foresters for producers for manufacturers and for the good people who work in those industries and that party advocates for traders. They advocate for traders—that's what John Key did—and this party the National Party in Opposition continues to advocate for traders over the people who produce the wealth because they believe that actually the path to prosperity is clipping the ticket. What this piece of legislation does—just as last time in Government we regulated real estate agents other friends of the National Party people who were not always committed to ethical practice and who needed proper regulation to ensure that their customers got a fair deal. Well that's what we're doing now for the third-largest export sector in this country.Good well-meaning honest Kiwis who seek advice and invest often their life-savings for some kind of superannuation scheme invest it in the forestry sector hoping that in 30 years' time or thereabouts they will have proper respectable reasonable returns on their life's work and their investment. Well they go to people—because they don't know a lot about forestry—and they get advice on how they should invest and sometimes that advice is not always good.Indeed I'll quote a tradesperson in my electorate who came to me saying that they'd had advice. He has a successful business with his wife and employs a number of people. They had invested in forestry and they'd sought advice on the emissions trading scheme and how that might affect the price of carbon and what they should do. They'd been advised that they could seek annual income from their forest plantings at a carbon rate—I'm not quite sure what it was—and that that was the best way forward and the most secure way for them over a 30-year period. Then what they had not been told was that at harvest time of course they were liable for the carbon credits and so this person was asking me what could be done. Well I was tempted to say that Mr Jones and this Government are doing something about it because the traders who are the mates of the National Party will just say what they like do what they like and clip the ticket and good honest Kiwi investors lose out because of that bad advice.So we're going to have some ethical practices. We're going to have some standards put in place. We're going to ensure that people are fit and proper to offer advice just as we have done for financial advisers and just as we had to regulate for real estate agents because if we don't then in fact we will have too many hard-working Kiwis—the people that the National Party say they advocate for. They don't; they advocate for the traders over all else. We want to advocate for good honest Kiwis—the people who have the forests.The emerging reality—and I guess the House has heard before of the high level of foreign ownership here now across the forest sector but the profile of forest owners and the supply of wood moving forward is changing. It is changing quite rapidly and I have to acknowledge Hamish Levack. He's been a local person advocating for forestry for a long long time and he came to this House and was talking to a number of MPs myself included about what was the challenge with the wall of wood the changing profile of forest owners and how were we going to offer security to all those people who have invested hundreds of millions—or in fact billions—of dollars in processing across this country. How are we going to protect their supply of wood and indeed protect the small - wood lot owners when it comes to selling their trees? His proposal was in fact a cooperative. I support cooperatives and I think eventually enough of those small-forest owners might work out the wisdom of coming together in some kind of supply cooperative that gives guaranteed volume to the manufacturers and the processors and gives them a fair return for their 30 years of investment.In the meantime—Todd Muller: Well they can do it now—they can do it now.Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: They can do it now—of course they can do it now. But the problem is that many of those small-forest owners go and seek advice. So why would a forest adviser tell them to go into a cooperative when there's another old saying that says "Divide and rule"? If you can just feed enough information to people and make it look credible sometimes you can carry them along. What this does is ensure that the people providing the advice—as I say as we do across other parts of the economy—are fit and proper. This piece of legislation in a laissez-faire world where there was fair open trade and people had all the information might not be necessary. The realities of this world are that it's not always like that.Today we passed a Budget or the Minister of Finance did with the Government that was about jobs and the previous speaker the so-called champion for the primary industries in the National Party—the so-called champion for the primary industries in the National Party—got up and said "What connection has a piece of forestry legislation to do with the Budget?" Well let me explain it really carefully to you: this industry is the third-biggest earner of export revenue in this country and that is important when it comes to creating wealth and building our economy again. Don't you get that? Don't you understand that over there? No I don't think they do. You can't just create wealth out of trading. You can't just create wealth out of trading; you've got to have people who commit real money to real production and create real things and export it.Can I say that the 15000 or thereabouts of small-forest owners need a fair go. They need people who are going to give them fair and honest advice and this registration process will do that. We also need to know that the people who have invested billions in manufacturing the logs that we cut down into more valuable products—we have to know that they get a fair chance of getting at wood supply. This is why we want traders who are honest who commit to contracts and who will supply the logs because I get sick and tired of looking from the 19th floor of Bowen House down on to a wharf full of logs that constantly flow out of this country when we need jobs in this country now. We need jobs and in the third-biggest sector for export earnings—I have to say why not start at forestry? Why not start with the job opportunities in forestry? So this Government is moving on it.So to the previous speaker who could not understand why we would have a piece of forestry legislation in the House on the same day as the Budget: just go and look at the export revenue figures—go and understand what responsibility you have in your role as spokesperson for the primary industries because if you can't do that job properly you certainly won't do the Leader of the Opposition's job very well either.I'm proud to stand in this House and support this piece of legislation to support good honest Kiwis in one of the most important industries in this country."