Cameron MarkMARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you Madam Chair for the opportunity to question the Minister through the annual review process. We were assured that this Government would be transformational the problems that it addressed would be fixed and altered—a change for a better New Zealand. Why hasn't this happened in rural New Zealand? Child poverty is worse better educational standards are falling and remedying housing issues in rural New Zealand couldn't be any worse under this Government. The rural sector has seen a plethora of shoddy lawmaking. Freshwater reforms? Well far out! What a fiasco. Part of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater has asserted sweeping changes for rural activities. What does that mean to a farmer? I am one and I don't understand it. Notwithstanding that the intentions are honourable the asserted methodologies are asinine and vacuous. Let's take the sowing dates if I can discuss that with the Minister. The Minister and I have discussed this at length. Still no answers are forthcoming. If you don't have your crops sown by a certain date a farmer would have to go through a Resource Management Act review process. This is under the suggested frameworks that may be adopted. Forcing farmers to plant crops by either 1 October or November in some areas of New Zealand is idiotic or fantastical to say the least. This is unfortunately the kind of Government and its understanding of rural New Zealand going forward. To force the issue that this is not acknowledging regional activity regional rainfall soil and soil aggregate farming methodologies just shows that this Government is totally out of touch. And I challenge the Minister to make good with some of his previous assertions. Sadly it's a one-size-fits-all way of looking at regulations. It totally fails the common-sense sniff test. If you're a farmer—and I challenge anyone in this building who isn't farming to make good with any of these assertions and I guarantee there's probably few or no one in the building that is actively farming. It doesn't allow for regional acknowledgment of erosion regional farming activity soil aggregate and rainfall notwithstanding the areas around New Zealand that are zone indicative. Did anyone actually tell the ministry and the Minister that you can't get heavy machines on farm paddocks in most places in New Zealand in the latter part of winter and/or spring? Doesn't seem to listen. Under the Minister's advice these crops would absolutely fail if these methodologies were enforced. I challenged the Minister and the ministry to make good with the common-sense claim that as we farmers know no crop in the winter scenario would ever germinate in under 11 degrees. Now I'm not even sure if the Minister is aware of that but at that time of the year most of Southland is under snow. So I'd like to see how that would work. I think this Government's completely out of touch with the regional activity at a regional level. Government's just got bloated and it simply needs to be handed back to council to rectify these problems. Coupled with the extra costs—who's going to pay for this? The simple reality is if this generic comes in at a central government level those costs are going to be deferred to council and those will ultimately be shared by ratepayers. Is the Minister going to make good on asserting what sort of costs and revenue earnings the local councils will have to uptake and the farmers will lose by revenue earnings at the farm gate? Does this Government know? Does the Minister know? I'd like to challenge him on those figures. And if he doesn't have them why doesn't he have them because rural New Zealand is at complete odds with what this Minister and the ministry is trying to assert. The ratepayers and the farmers want to know how to operate. The council wants to know how to operate. We're sick and tired of generic policy-making out of central Wellington that does not understand on-farm regional activity. Thank you.