Simpson Scott; Parker DavidHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to continue on this theme of freshwater farm plans. I'm pleased to hear from the Minister that there's going to be a degree of pragmatism applied for unprecedented weather events and things of that nature. That's good to know. I particularly want to refer to clause 405 the requirement for the certification of a freshwater farm plan and that the farm plan needs to be certified under clause 408 by a regional council. Councils must keep records of individual farms and their plans and then in clause 409 they must appoint certifiers and auditors. Now that's fine as well but in clause 409A there appears to be what is effectively an opportunity for regional councils to contract out that audit service. Clause 409A(1) says A regional council may give approval to an industry organisation that applies to the council to provide certification and audit services under this subpart if the council is satisfied that the organisation meets the standards issued under subsection (2)." I guess my concern is that some critics might see this as actually the fox in the hen house. The potential for sector groups to effectively do the auditing in some eyes would potentially be seen as a conflict of interest and that they may have a range of motivations that might go to undermine the potential for the quality and scrutiny that they are taking up in their role as certifiers and auditors. So Minister maybe you could give us some assurance about the kind of organisation that might be eligible. The clause says that it should be an approved industry organisation. I'm interested to know how "industry organisation" is defined and could an industry organisation be a non-farming industry organisation? Could it potentially be for instance an environmental NGO or another entity or organisation that has interests in environmental matters and particular interests in the quality of freshwater and the impacts of farming and agriculture on freshwater that potentially could also be seen as a potential conflict situation? So if the Minister could tease that out for me I would appreciate it.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I'm happy to Madam Chair. As clause 409A sets out the council may approve an industry organisation to carry out that role; "(2) The Minister [can] by notice in the Gazette issue standards by which industry organisations must be assessed"; "(3) [The] Standards (can) … (a) set out the kind of organisation eligible"; and they can "(b) include content and processes". There's an example given at clause 409A(3)(b): "by requiring the industry to run training programmes and ensuring that conflicts are appropriately managed." I agree with the member's point that conflicts do need to be appropriately managed. I've never heard the term "industry organisation" to be applied to environmental NGOs. I don't think that's the intention. But there have been some industry organisations like the horticulture sector that have run their own industry assurance programmes. The viticulture sector has some as well. So we don't want to—oh actually I should go back a step. Farmers don't want to have a parade of lots of people doing similar things. They want it to be done once and be done well so that they can rely on it. Councils want the same thing because they want to be able to rely on it and that's why the system has been designed the way in which it has been."