Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you Mr Speaker. This week the Minister of Agriculture has made a huge mistake with one of our bigger export industries and that is the mānuka honey industry. I want just to go through a bit of a time frame of what has happened in that industry so that members in this House are well aware of the incompetence of that Minister.Last year the Government went through the process of review of the mānuka honey definition and in July last year a definition was put out to the industry. That definition was given to the industry so they could test their products against that definition to determine whether they met the test for mānuka honey. It was also an opportunity for the industries involved to actually be in consultation with the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and to work through any differences they may have in that definition because there are some differences that the industry had been using against what MPI had proposed in its definition.So when you come to mānuka honey there are two types. There are the multifloral and the monofloral and as the speaker identified yesterday they are two different parts of the mānuka honey industry. But the test that has been applied is not so much around whether it is multifloral or monofloral even though there is a divergence in some of the tests in that area. The main thing to look at is the ingredients that have been applied in the test that applies to both multi- and monofloral.If you look at the industry they have a test of leptospermum. That is the main test that the industry uses. If you look at the MPI test it has two levels. The first is four chemical markers and the second is a DNA test for both multifloral and monofloral. For the first chemical marker there is a difference between mono- and multifloral and that difference has been in all three definitions that have been put to the industry: the first definition in July last year that the Government put the definition that went out by the new Minister in December and the definition that was released this week. So with those characteristics there is one of the chemical markers that the Minister changed in the definition in December and when he released that definition in December he didn't let the industry know. He just went out and released the definition of mānuka honey with a variation in it which actually meant that a lot of multifloral mānuka honey failed the test.The industry was not happy as you could imagine and legal action was brought against that Minister in the last couple of weeks. That was going ahead and then suddenly on Monday the Minister changed the definition back to the original definition that this Government had put out in July. So when this Minister stands in this House and tries to argue multifloral against monofloral he is just trying to confuse the situation. The reality is that the chemical markers that are actually part of the first part of the test are the crucial thing and he stuffed it up. The Minister stuffed it up. He went and put a high chemical marker requirement that higher requirement led to a lot of mānuka honey failing and he had to back down this week. That Minister has put one of New Zealand's export industries at risk. That Minister should not be holding his warrant anymore and he has deliberately in this House yesterday not expressed an honest approach to what happened.SPEAKER: The member will withdraw and apologise. He knows what he's done.Hon DAVID BENNETT: I withdraw and apologise. The Minister needs to come to this House and explain what actually happened and we're giving him that opportunity. He has that opportunity in the next few days at question time to come and explain what has happened but the Minister will not do that because he believes he is right and his ego is so big. You can see that with his comments around the wine industry today—how he is putting New Zealand primary industry at risk. That Minister will not admit his failures and one of our key industries has suffered because of his incompetence his failure to actually go to the market and consult and his ability then to hide behind definitions when it comes to answering questions in this House. Thank you.