O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm happy to follow that bit of fiction with a few facts. I acknowledge the Hon Nathan Guy as the former Minister and I acknowledge the challenges that I've had coming into this role taking over from him and his Government. It's not been easy and he points to a few things that we have done. We certainly have made some changes at the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and set up four business units. The previous Government's approach to this area was that we put everything together and big is better and it's more efficient but the multiple responsibilities that are within MPI as an organisation were so vast and so important that we thought actually no it's better for biosecurity food safety fisheries and forestry—really important areas for the future of New Zealand; farmers foresters fishers and the New Zealand economy—to have officials with a passion with knowledge in a business unit not distracted by other responsibilities in MPI. We made those changes and I'm proud of them and happy that we've made the kind of progress in terms of focus that we were expecting.Yes some of the money from the Primary Growth Partnership (PGP) was used for this restructure but in fact when I went back and looked at the books the previous National Government had been promising an amount of money for PGP but taking an amount of money for other uses across the primary sector. So the amount of money spoken of and promised was never ever delivered across the PGP and the former Minister criticises me for daring to challenge the PGP and what it attempted to do. I said that for the most part it was business-as-usual operations but in spending $700 million you can't help but have some positive outcomes—you can't. I mean no matter how inappropriately or irresponsibly the previous Government spent that $700 million you have to have some. So I did admit last night that having met effectively a discussion group of farmers in Napier and talking through some of the issues of M. bovis it was good to see them come together and discuss these issues and they were funded through a Primary Growth Partnership fund. They should have been coming together like this for years if they'd seen the wisdom in it.But I acknowledged and I did swallow a small mouse to say that the Red Meat Profit Partnership if it brings together farmers across the drystock sector is indeed creating some benefit. Whether it's value for money is not up to me; I think the review will be testing that. And of course there will be some benefit from the PGP but the question for any responsible Government is is that the best spend of $700 million?Hon Nathan Guy: What does the report say?Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: So the member will wait for the report. I hope he holds his breath. It won't be immediate in coming.I'd just like to say in moving through a couple of the other issues we do believe that we need water for the future of New Zealand agriculture—indeed for all communities. But again in the largesse and promise of support for their constituents the National Government didn't sit down and look at the outcomes from its funding of large-scale irrigation schemes. In some areas there have been environmental impacts that haven't always been positive but the one thing that was being undermined was the social licence to continue with that programme and the expansion of dairy. So we have wound that back taken that money and yes put it into other better uses across the primary sector but what we've also done is said that we will work through smaller projects that are focused on catchments that will deliver clearly identifiable benefits but within a social licence to operate and environmental limits that are sound. That's our approach to immigration not just simply throwing money at big schemes some of which haven't actually got the uptake and utilisation of the water that they'd been promised. We're saying we'll be really careful and we will intervene when necessary not sit back and rely on the market to deliver the outcomes.Can I say on M. bovis—and it has been raised in fact by all speakers—that it is one of our biggest challenges. I acknowledge that. It was first identified in July this time 12 months ago. We weren't in Government at the time. I made some comments at the time and I still stand by those comments. But none the less when we came into Government we had to firstly assess the situation and then apply our best focus and the money necessary utilising the best advice that we could. We had an international technical advisory group of experts who came back and said—after two reports in fact—that we could eradicate this. It wasn't unanimous. But as we have been with industry we sat down in an open way and laid on the table all the evidence—the reports from the experts—and said Well we believe we'd like to give this a shot. Do you agree?" They went away they considered it and they came back and we unanimously agreed that we should attempt to eradicate M. bovis because I think it would be fair to say that a number of the sectors across the primary areas underestimated the potential impact of this and indeed we're just seeing this flow through now. I would like to acknowledge the support of my colleagues through Cabinet and caucus. The $886 million that we have committed to this programme—32 percent of which will come from the industry; I acknowledge that—is a huge commitment to I guess underpin the farming sector but ultimately reduce over time the potential costs of managing a farming system with M. bovis. So thank you to colleagues thanks to the taxpayers—they are contributing to this. As long as the farmers and the people in the sector appreciate that and do what is necessary from their side of the equation such as better traceability better tracking of animal movements and notification of those movements adhering to the regulations around tagging—these are all things that haven't been implemented properly. Indeed I could say that the previous Government's softly softly approach in this area has contributed to the spread of the disease. But that's spilt milk—pardon the pun—and we're now trying to move ahead and make the changes necessary to ensure that farmers do adhere to their part of the equation because the taxpayers are doing their bit and they're funding this. So it's really important to remind them. Can I say that the brown marmorated stink bug is almost as devastating to New Zealand as M. bovis. Can I say that the systems that we had in place were those put there by the previous National Government and the transitional facilities approach—which Nathan Guy the previous speaker referred to—that allowed a machine to be brought off a boat and on to a truck in Auckland and taken back down to Christchurch to be parked up and then finally checked is being changed by us. That was a totally inappropriate system that allowed those brown marmorated stink bugs—they were hidden away—to get to Christchurch. We can't have that any more. We turned around ships. We will turn them around again. We've gone offshore and told the people who are bringing or are planning to bring imported equipment into this country "Do the spraying and do the checking properly or they'll be turned around and they'll be sent away." because we're not going to muck around and consider the possible impacts on equipment importers or on used-car importers. In our view biosecurity is so important that their interests are secondary to protecting our country from these bugs. So the softly softly approach implemented by the previous Government is no longer in place under this Government and I'm very happy to say that. If I could just very briefly mention the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act review. The previous speaker said that I don't like Fonterra. I was the chair of the select committee that passed through the legislation that set Fonterra up. I have a passion for it. I know it wasn't perfect. But it's the biggest and best company we have in this country not the best performing and it needs to be the best performing because otherwise farmers are going to leave it and undermine the cooperative with the possible failure of what has been our biggest company. I want them to succeed but criticising them and encouraging them to do better is something that we will do as a Government. That's not the softly softly patsy approach that the National Government took to them—it refused to encourage them to do better and to move along. What we've seen now is that actually foreign companies and other participants in the dairy industry are outperforming Fonterra when it should be Fonterra outperforming them. That's the risk to the dairy industry. That's the risk to our country. This Government will not stand by and I will not stand by and allow that to happen."