O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): The National Government—the farmers' friends! Well I bet that member Ian McKelvie over there who is a farmer is pleased he has got some off-farm income—if he was a normal farmer that is. Never have confidence levels been as low as they are at the moment across the whole of the agricultural sector. The National Government has completely failed to offer any vision or any direction across agriculture. The horticultural sector might have been one exception but the events of the last week have even put a cloud over that. The issue is: what has National done with its funding? It has sprayed funding around the primary sector like some feral cat trying to identify its territory and get support from every single sector by giving them a bit of money but providing them with no leadership and no direction. I will go to a recent article here from one of the Government's cheerleaders John Brackenridge. He has said—and I like what he says—that he would like New Zealand to be known as the best country in the world by being the best country for the world. Well while we have child poverty while we have homelessness while we have students indebted to high levels we cannot claim to be the best country for the world and Mr John Brackenridge's hopes and aspirations will fail under the current National Government. I go to another recent document identifying some of the issues within the agricultural sector: the KPMG agribusiness report. It is a very good document—170 agribusiness leaders have come together and given their advice. The first bit of advice that they offer is that biosecurity is the No. 1 concern for all people across the primary sector. And what have we had recently? Well the Government claims that it has put more money into biosecurity. In fact $100 million is coming from visitors to this country in a levy being taken at a rate of $23 per visitor to offset taxpayer funding. So the National Government is paying less money for biosecurity and visitors to the country are supplementing that and indeed the system is still failing. We have had blackgrass velvetleaf and now we have got weevils in pea seeds in Wairarapa and a eucalyptus leaf beetle—which the Government has tried to keep under wraps—offering real threat across the whole of the primary sector. That is just part of the failure of the biosecurity system under this National Government. People across agriculture see it as the No. 1 concern and they have every right to because this Government has dropped the ball on biosecurity. The second issue that farmers and foresters want to see under control is food safety. I am picking up this document—and later in this House today we will have a food safety bill that is the direct outcome of a massive failure in the WPC80 inquiry. Fonterra initially through a mistake and then Government agencies through incompetence and a lack of funding failed to identify the fact that there was not botulism in any WPC80 but our reputation across the world at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars has effectively been tarnished. This Government has failed to put proper resources in where people deem them to be essential. I will go on to the third issue and that is about delivering market signals to producers. This is what KPMG has said. It has said that what this Government has refused to do is to provide any leadership across agriculture particularly in the meat sector. My colleague here the Rt Hon Winston Peters has brought to the attention of the House today the fact that some of the Government's own mates are overseeing a process that is effectively going to hand to Shanghai Maling over 50 percent in effective control of the biggest meat company in this country. Do you know what? That crowd over there want it to happen. They want it to happen. They will get their mates in the process to facilitate it because they want to sell any agribusiness they can into the hands of foreign investors because they believe that that is success. The failure to deliver any guidance any leadership across the meat industry is going to mean that New Zealanders lose control of the destiny of their meat. It is a massive failure of the current Government in the primary sector.