Eckhoff Gerrard: Wool Industry Restructuring Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Eckhoff Gerrard: Wool Industry Restructuring Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:7127] 
GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I am delighted to have this final opportunity to speak on this bill in the third reading debate. I cannot stand here with my hand on my heart and say that I know exactly where the future of the wool industry is. I cannot say with absolute certainty that Mr Woolerton is absolutely wrong and that I am absolutely right. I am not sure about that; I am not totally sure. But on the balance of probability I believe it is appropriate that this bill go forward with the support of this House and that we allow the industry to develop as it should. 
I would like to make a few points to the House. The reality is surely that if there had been no Wool Board created whenever it was—50 years ago—we would not be standing here today to debate its demise and what should take its place. I think of the opportunity cost that we perhaps face today because we have had a structure that supposedly threw a security blanket over woolgrowers and told them they did not need to worry because the Wool Board was there to look after them—and of course the wool industry went down down and down. That security blanket has now been totally removed—or in very large part removed—from the growers. 
I can only reflect too on the traumatic events—as they were back in the 1980s—when subsidies were removed from the farming industry. I lamented deeply the loss of my subsidies because I was the backbone of the country along with my farming colleagues and I asked how this Parliament dared to remove my subsidies. I was receiving about $8 or $9 for a lamb and I was going broke. The meat industry recognised that if farmers went broke it would go broke. We saw the need for a commercial focus and the requirement the absolute requirement of the industry—the farmers the meat processors and the whole lot of us—to recognise that if we wanted to have a future in this country we had to get out there and do it out in the marketplace and that is what happened. In recent years in the meat industry farmers have been receiving a cheque for a single lamb of anywhere between $70 and $120. Within that 20-year time frame we have gone from receiving $8 per lamb to receiving $70 $80 or $100 and in some cases $120. How many other industries with a primary production focus can actually state that they have gone in from that very low level back in the mid-1980s to the high peak of around $120 by trading in what are essentially commodities? Certainly the meat industry has much to be proud of. 
I wonder in these quiet moments whether the same thing will not apply to the wool industry—whether in 30 years’ time the industry will go back to this very day and ponder what happened. Will farmers say: “Thank goodness that bill was passed. Those guys—and women too of course—were not sure whether they were 100 percent right but my goodness me they gave us the opportunity.”? Today we are trying to give the wool industry—not just the growers but the whole wider industry—the opportunity to move forward. Yes as Mr Woolerton has pointed out it is a huge article of faith for us to stand here today and pass this bill but surely that is part of our job. We have to make a judgment call from time to time and we stand or fall on the results of our decision making. Woolgrowers may be so angry with me that I am never heard of again and that of course is their choice. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: We’re trying. 
GERRARD ECKHOFF 
: Some of my colleagues may help me along the way too but that is fine. 
Without question this restructuring is a huge article of faith. As a farmer of some 30 years’ standing I realise that I live in hope. That is what I do as a farmer. On this very day when huge storm warnings have been issued for my neck of the woods I live in hope that nature will pass me by on this occasion and the storm will move out to sea. We live in hope of better days. That is what this bill does for the farming industry. It provides an opportunity. Could the restructuring have been done better? Undoubtedly it could have been but there are times when we just have to say that we have done the best that we could do with the knowledge currently available to us. 
We have had many many submissions from very capable people indeed including even the Inland Revenue Department. My colleague Rodney Hide would be apoplectic if he knew we were taking advice from that department. We invoked the department’s help to assist us with our deliberations because there are tax losses of $270 million and that huge sum of money has to be utilised to the benefit of the wool industry. That is what the farming community is attempting to do with the passage of this bill. 
We have also introduced a much greater commercial focus. Some hard-nosed business people are set to represent us and to assist the wool industry to move forward. My faith is not so much in the system or the structure that we have placed in the bill but in the people who will I hope overcome the problems that we face with regard to low commodity prices. Who knows? Maybe instead of receiving $3 or $4 for a kilogram of cross-bred wool we may be looking at receiving $10. In 10 or 15 years’ time we could well see pharmaceutical companies clamouring to buy our wool product because it contains a special enzyme that enables burn specialists to solve skin-grafting problems. 
I do not know where the future of the wool industry lies. I do not know what the biotech companies will come up with but I do know that the future is exciting if we allow it to be so and allow—without getting into any political ideologies—the market investment and most important research and development to take place in that industry. The focus of research and development has been lost for so many years under the auspices of the Wool Board. 
When something is taken away as the Wool Board has been a vacuum is created. But while I certainly do not profess to be a physicist I know that a vacuum is always filled. Nature does not allow a vacuum to remain; it is always filled. As I said earlier I cannot say with absolute certainty whether that vacuum should have been filled with the Wool Corporation or whether it should be filled with the existing structures that we are promoting in this bill by means of Wool Equities. But I think the committee has worked very well together to achieve the very best possible outcome for the industry. Yes there are areas of disagreement but I do not think they are so huge that the industry will not overcome them. My time on the Primary Production Committee has been a rewarding one and I thank my colleagues on the committee for what I think is a good job and a job that has been well done.