Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Mr Speaker thank you. Today I'm thinking of our primary sector who are out working on our behalf in extreme weather conditions in many places. The primary sector is the core foundation of our nation and it carries us through. It's always carried us through history but never more has it carried us through than the pandemic of the last 2½ years. And today again we heard Minister Robertson mentioning the primary sector as he does every week when he gets asked the questions about the finances of our country and we heard it again today. So today I want to bring attention to those who are not aware and should be because most of New Zealand should be aware by now that we are on alert around foot-and-mouth disease. Now New Zealand's foot-and-mouth response according to Stuart Anderson biosecurity director at the Ministry for Primary Industries would be swift and drastic. I know that both the Minister and the Ministry for Primary Industries are totally focused on this issue at the moment as they should be. They've said today a foot-and-mouth outbreak would be a national biosecurity emergency and the response would be swift and drastic. The word crisis" gets used in and out of this House a lot but what we can all reassure the public of New Zealand is that if the foot-and-mouth outbreak came to this country it would be a crisis. So Deputy Director-General for Biosecurity Stuart Anderson said they would test herds and they would destroy diseased animals immediately. It would all happen very quickly. Now it may seem to some people that it would be a repeat performance of the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak that we had just a small number of years ago but actually it needs to be brought to the attention of the public that it would be far worse. So while Mycoplasma bovis was a devastating event for the farmers—it was a huge devastation to many farmers' wellbeing watching herds get culled and I must say commending the Ministry for Primary Industries in that they have got this under control because in the early days there were huge doubts. But Mycoplasma bovis has only one other country where it wasn't present so it never became a trade issue. Foot-and-mouth disease would become a trade issue and even if the disease was confined to a small part of New Zealand the entire country would be essentially locked down within the first three days and we know what that's like.So let's join forces to ensure that it doesn't get here. We know that a benign sample was found in Australia recently and while it was benign it is still far too close to home. And the difference between the spread of Mycoplasma bovis and foot-and-mouth disease is that Mycoplasma bovis spread when cows' noses touched each other. Foot-and-mouth can spread by wind it can spread by water and the wind can carry this virus up to several hundred kilometres and it can also survive for some time without a host. So all it would take would be a few particles of the disease to walk in to New Zealand on a pair of jandals for billions of dollars to be lost. And the current estimate if it gets into this country and affects pigs goats alpacas llamas cattle sheep and deer—who are all susceptible—is $16 billion over four to five years. But that was based on 2014 data when our export revenue was $38 billion and we know that it's over $52 billion now.So there is a vaccine. People are asking about a vaccine but our trade is based on foot-and-mouth disease - free so if we start using the vaccine we lose that status. So I'm putting out a call today for every person in New Zealand to join the team to be vigilant to keep foot-and-mouth out of New Zealand. It would be a crisis. It would devastate this country—all of us. Thank you Mr Speaker."