Guy NathanHon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Madam Assistant Speaker thank you very much for the opportunity to take the call on the second reading. I was hoping that the Minister of Agriculture and Minister for Biosecurity—would have responded to some of the questions and comments from this side of the House. It's obvious and very clear to us that we're going to have to wait until he's in the chair at the committee of the whole House stage to answer a lot of these questions.Let's just recap on some of those questions. One is that we haven't had a sense from any of the contributions from the Government benches this afternoon and into the evening now as to why urgency needs to be taken on this bill 10 months on since the Government has been formed. What was also glaring was when the Minister spoke a few hours ago he indicated to the House that indeed there is another National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) bill being cooked up. So we have got a NAIT bill in urgency this evening—it's a bit like the Ginsu knives isn't it—but wait there's more. There's more coming down the pipeline so why would the Minister come into the House in urgency when we have another bill that's being cooked up by his officials?Surely it would make logical sense to combine those two bills and send them off to a select committee so that everyone can have their say. When I talk about everyone" I mean Federated Farmers Dairy New Zealand possibly Beef and Lamb New Zealand Fonterra and farmers that have been on the end of this response and indeed may have had first-hand experience of these NAIT officers coming on to their property and using their warrantless powers. So we haven't got a sense from the Government benches this evening as to why urgency is needed. We can't fathom—not even from Mark Patterson—why this couldn't go to a select committee.Mark Patterson: I told you—listen.Hon NATHAN GUY: You would have thought—beg your pardon?Mark Patterson: You could've listened.Hon NATHAN GUY: I did listen. I think you got confused. You were talking about a select committee for the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 that New Zealand First the Greens and Labour all voted against. Now they want to effectively get these two Acts to align and Mr Patterson can't give us a clear reason why it couldn't go to a select committee.What we also haven't heard from the Minister or anyone from the Government benches is why this is not a recommendation of the NAIT review. There were 38 recommendations. We've heard from the Minister this evening that 15 of those are going to be dealt with by Government—that's obviously on the second NAIT bill—and 23 of them are going to be dealt with by NAIT and Operational Solutions for Primary Industries but when you look through the whole 38 recommendations two of these particular aspects of this NAIT bill that we are debating in urgency this evening aren't there. We haven't had any examples from the Minister as to why suddenly this has become an urgent issue when he's been in the chair for 10 months. These are the unanswered questions.He also stood up in the House and said that these provisions that he wants to insert into the warrantless powers go no further. Well that is completely wrong. It was interesting to hear from Eugenie Sage because the Greens were really opposed to the Search and Surveillance Bill when it went through the Parliament and became an Act in 2012 because of civil liberties and being seen to encroach on people's personal lives and personal property. I listened intently to Eugenie Sage this evening and the critical point in her contribution was "We are led to believe that this is a drafting error and it is a technical inconsequential tidy up that should have been done a long time ago." But the reality is that when we look at this bill and when we sit down with the Minister's officials this week we realise that it's more than just a technical bill and indeed it is consequential.So we have some concerns on this side of the House and we would really have liked to have ironed these out in the select committee process. It's not too late is it for the Minister to stand up and say "I've spoken to my officials. We've had a bit of the huddle on the Government benches and we realise that we should send this to a select committee." It's not too late. The Primary Production Committee—I'm going to ask David Bennett the chair. Is the chair prepared to call the Primary Production Committee to meet in the recess?ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order!Hon David Bennett: Yes. Yes.Hon NATHAN GUY: Yes Mr Bennett said that he is. So here we have an offer from this side of the House for the Primary Production Committee to indeed meet in the recess. We believe that we could turn this bill around in a truncated period over the recess and we'd be back into the House within two weeks to debate it. That offer so far has been turned down by the Minister.Why would the Minister want to effectively not give New Zealanders and farmers an opportunity to submit on this bill? You would think it's logical. They talk about being open and transparent. Why would the Minister not send it to a truncated select committee process?So in conclusion we are cautiously supporting this National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill. There are aspects of it that we entirely agree with. Those two aspects are that when a farmer sells animals or moves animals to another farm that farm must be NAIT-registered and then of course there is the compliance and infringement aspect of that if that transaction doesn't occur accurately in the way it should. But the search and surveillance extension of these warrantless powers has us on this side of the House really concerned.We would have preferred to have heard from the Minister at his second reading speech just a moment ago to stand up and answer these questions but it's clear we are going to have to wait until the Minister gets in the chair. I have a personal view that the Minister is only just coming to terms with what part of this bill actually does and it's going to mean that we are going to need to explore these very detailed and technical questions via the Minister to his officials either later this evening or more likely tomorrow morning.I conclude where I started off: M. bovis is a very important issue. The NAIT system needs to change. The Minister has had 10 months to bring this bill to the Parliament. He's decided to bring it through in urgency at the end of a four-week session when we go into a two-week recess. There's ample time for this bill to go to a select committee even if that was truncated. There's ample time for people who are interested in this bill—and that would generally be farmers but it could be stock agents and it could be truckies who are involved in the whole NAIT supply system—to have their voices heard.But the reason we have all of these unanswered questions is we have had just two sessions with the Minister's officials—as my colleague the Rt Hon David Carter mentioned one for about 35 minutes and one for about 20 minutes—and they couldn't answer some of the specific details of this bill. It's an important bill. We want to get it right. We fundamentally think that parts of it are really important and it should go through but there are some aspects around the Search and Surveillance Act of 2012 that we have some concerns about."