Bond Ria: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBond Ria: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10704. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RIA BOND (NZ First): I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First and take this call in the Committee of the whole House on the annual review debate examining the performance of the Ministry for Primary Industries. I want to say that in the last 12 months it has been quite a woeful performance from the Ministry for Primary Industries. It has been painful to watch and New Zealand First knows that this is not the fault of the ministry at all or the fine people who work within it. The blame solely lies on this Government. This National-led Government has become so distant so divorced and so detached from the grassroots of its farming foundation where the genesis of the party itself sat that it now no longer actually understands what makes the primary sector tick. This is to the point where it has lost touch with its origins and those origins are beginning to realise that fact and that this will be a damning fact at the 2017 election.Every day in New Zealand First we are receiving phone calls from one end of the country to the other and right across the farming and agriculture spectrum—good people who have become completely disenfranchised with the attitude of this Government due to lack of proper understanding of the most important sector of our economy. The consequence is inadequate funding for the Ministry for Primary Industries which is tasked with looking after the safety and security of our agriculture sector. Where is the support to our farmers right now? Where is the support that this National-led Government has promised to this fundamental sector right now? It is no secret that the dairy industry is experiencing the deflation of a bubble that was always going to burst because ironically trends tend to repeat themselves over a period of time.You have an out-of-touch Government that is also unfocused; a Government that has forgotten about the farmers at the gate who are having to wear the biosecurity risks that are contaminating their very livelihoods such as the velvetleaf incursion not only in Southland but also in Canterbury and also in the Waikato region. This biosecurity breach will see farmers at their gates having to detect velvetleaf weeds themselves from their own resources that they should be putting back into their farms in order to ride out this tough time. I am not just talking about now; I am talking about the generations to come from the farmers’ families. I am talking about potential buyers of the contaminated farms that we will see in the future and that is a real problem.It has been said that this National-led Government did not see it coming. There is a well-known saying woven within the fabric of our society that no man no woman no child should get left behind. In the case of the farming and agriculture sectors the Government has bolted and pigeon-holed itself amongst the wine and tourism industries. It has been dropping the ball on traditional New Zealand - based bread-and-butter sectors. In other words the marriage is over and the men the women and the children in the farming sector have been left out in the dark. Come this time next year the Government will be back on its high horse out rallying for the votes of farmers when it has shut its door on them now. It has failed to listen to the farmers’ needs or even protect them from basic biosecurity threats.Now let us talk about Fonterra—the great old elephant in the room. Although we think we can blame Fonterra’s senior management it has to be remembered that Fonterra exists as a creature of statute. Fonterra came to the Government and said: “We want to be a virtual monopoly because that will give us the size and the strength that will benefit the entire country.” The Government said yes and Parliament realised that having the great bulk of our dairy industry condensed into one single entity of global proportions would be a good thing. But the Government also has a responsibility to ensure that Fonterra stays true to its original aims and that the ministry tasked to oversee and look after this is adequately resourced.It is clear that the Ministry for Primary Industries does not get resourced adequately to allow it to do the job that it is entrusted to do. The Government’s meddling hands in the financial structure of Fonterra with the 2013 Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Act and the cynical Trading Among Farmers scheme have only made things worse. New Zealand First said so at the time and we have been proven right by what is happening here today and what is happening now. But the greatest failing that this Government has heaped upon New Zealand and the primary sector is of course an utter lack of anything remotely realistic in terms of resourcing for our biosecurity. Minister Guy said that it is his highest priority but John Key’s Auckland-focused finance and banking - prioritising Cabinet simply does not seem to realise how essentially important the line of defence is in New Zealand.