O'Connor DamienGENERAL DEBATEHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. In 1997 the National Government committed to the Kyoto Protocol. It was an international commitment to reduce emissions because the issue of climate change was emerging as perhaps the single biggest challenge the world faced into the future. Twenty-five years on this year this Government—sorry. If I can go back: because agriculture was almost 50 percent of our total emissions the Minister of the day committed agriculture to those initiatives. Twenty-five years on this Government launched last week a report that had been delivered to us from an industry group called He Waka Eke Noa. We launched it out for further consultation with some questions over some of the technical challenges and therein lies the challenge before us. Can I just go back to the question of why we're doing this. In 2021 Tesco one of the biggest supermarket chains in the world launched to its suppliers a letter saying I'm therefore requesting you do four vital things. Firstly disclose your current greenhouse gas emissions to us." The second was "establish a net zero ambition for your business by the end of 2022; set science-based targets to support delivery of your ambition." And the fourth thing was "switch to renewable electricity." Now that was from one of the biggest supermarket chains in the world.Nestlé one of the biggest food companies in the world has a commitment to sustainability. In fact it's put out some guidelines as well. They realised that their commitment that 20 percent of key ingredients will come through regenerative agricultural methods and that most of their emissions are created from dairy and livestock—their advice was that we should care for grasslands store more carbon and cut methane produced by animals during digestion through nutrition changes. They've partnered with Fonterra and Dairy NZ to take on board these challenges. Indeed Fonterra is facing more and more questions around the environmental sustainability of their systems to get the right to supply. On top of that we've had McDonald's one of the biggest international chains saying that they will be zero carbon by 2050 and will require the whole supply chain to be decarbonised by the same time. This is a company that takes 60 million kilograms of beef from our country. And last week at a forum that a couple of the National Party members were at and I visited too there was a presenter there from PricewaterhouseCoopers who said literally the drumbeat for net carbon zero agriculture is getting louder by the month driven by the enormous task confronting the world to reduce its carbon intensity by over half in only eight years. And can I say she went on to say that Morrisons another food chain in the EU is an early mover aiming to meet net carbon zero for its beef by 2030 five years ahead of the industry. These are the market signals that are coming to us a food producing nation. We have to get on with this.And can I say that the report—and I'd like to acknowledge the huge work and commitment that the industry put into this report here—identified some of the scientific challenges of measuring with credibility the sequestration within the farm system. They've acknowledged as we do there's a lot of sequestration occurring but if it's to be properly accounted for we need to undertake quite an amount of scientific research. That's why when we put out the discussion document based on He Waka Eke Noa we asked the questions here: "Do you support the proposed approach for recognising carbon sequestration from riparian planting and management of indigenous vegetation both in the short and long term? Why? And what improvements could be considered?" This is out for consultation. We are wanting feedback from farmers on the ground. The document that is being considered is the proposal put to us by the industry. We commit to those industry leaders that we'll follow through with this. But if there's a question as there is from some farmers up and down the country of why we are doing this then go and speak to Tesco go and speak to Nestlé and go and speak to McDonald's and ask them why we have to move to reduce the emissions from the food production systems that we—Nicola Grigg: The Americans aren't; the Canadians aren't.Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: We are. And we are some of the best farmers in the world. We must be the best farmers for the world and we'll do that by leading the charge on lowering our emissions from agricultural production."