O'Connor Damien: New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 29 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9966. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I rise as the first speaker in Labour to indicate to the Government that we will support the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill to select committee but we will as always scrutinise it very very carefully. We in Labour can be very proud of this piece of legislation which has served a number of sectors in the horticultural area so well since 1987—going back a wee way. That was when Labour was in Government and it saw the wisdom of showing some leadership and coordination in a sector where a lot of small growers have struggled at times to actually make a profit let alone get out and reach into the real world.I pick up a horticultural magazine—the latest NZ Grower—and here is a quote: “The nightmare situation for any grower or exporter is for a perishable shipment to be held up at the border of a foreign country.” That is just one of the risks that exporters of horticultural products from New Zealand face when they go out into the big wide world. Getting payment for their product making sure that no low-grade exporter is going to come in and undercut them—these are the kinds of challenges that exporters of primary production from this country face as they try to generate export dollars for this country.What Labour did in its wisdom in 1987 was develop a piece of legislation that said that if a group of growers were to come together and agree on a strategy as to how they would act how they would operate and how they would coordinate their efforts into a particular market then Government would endorse that plan bring some disciplines to that plan and enable the product group to effectively tax its own growers. Parliament does not offer to anyone the right of taxation lightly. I know colleagues—and I go a way back—and I refer to my former colleague the Hon Jim Sutton who was in Government at the time who I think was probably part of the formation of this legislation. He would always remind Parliament that the right of taxation—it is actually given to Fish and Game New Zealand and probably should be looked at very closely but anyway—is not offered lightly to anyone in this country but it is through this New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Act.It has been a while since 1987. There are probably a few people in this House who might have still been at primary school or actually might not have been born—I look over at the other side of the House—so it is indeed time for a review of the Act. This has been going on for some time so we welcome it back into this House—actually the Government does not have much else going on so it is good that we have got at least a worthwhile piece of legislation. As the Minister said it does a lot of tidy-up operational issues but the reason that we need an Act like this—and indeed in my view need more Acts of Parliament—is that it allows coordination across the primary sector. In fact one for the meat industry would be an excellent idea if the Government had the courage to show some leadership in that area but again it fails to do that.We go back to the wisdom of a Labour Government in putting this legislation in place. The fact that the current National Government is reviewing it I welcome that if not applaud it. It is a very smart piece of legislation. We effectively have an organisation—the Horticulture Export Authority—costing $227000 a year which in export terms is not a lot in order to protect assist and discipline a sector that creates $300 million of revenue for this country. That is a pretty smart investment by anyone’s measure.At the moment the authority covers nine product groups. These are nine different product groups—actually I cannot list them all off and I have got to be very careful because I might miss some out—exporting from New Zealand in a coordinated disciplined way that enables each and every one of them to get more benefit than they would if they were doing it themselves. I think that is clearly proven time and time again. In fact the next step up from the Horticulture Export Authority kind of discipline would be a Zespri model. If anyone was to have a look at that—having been though Psa and its challenges—this year Zespri announced almost record exports and record profits for its growers proving once again that coordination discipline and cooperation deliver more for primary producers in this country than an all-out battle through open competition as we see in the meat industry and as we see in wool where the sectors are failing.There are 54 exporters covered by this piece of legislation and maybe over time more might come in. This bill will tidy up some of the provisions around them working under the Act. As the Minister said there will be—and I think they are needed—higher fines so that anyone who breaks the rules will have a far higher penalty imposed upon them. This is because in fact the reputation of anyone exporting from this country is often based on the lowest common denominator. Because it is “New Zealand Inc.” and we are so small in the international arena of food production in fact any food safety scare or any impact on our reputation affects every exporter. The people who use this Act understand that full well and so they have come to Government and asked whether they can have this tidied up to make sure that what they are doing is fit for purpose in today’s modern world.The amendment bill does not make any major changes to the legislation. It enables exporters to develop different market strategies for different areas and different groups. I welcome that. It also sets out in the explanatory note “how the product group must demonstrate the required level of support among producers and exporters of the product.” There has from time to time been firstly a basic requirement that the groups must come to the Minister with a clear mandate from the groups that says that “the vast majority of our exporters agree with this and therefore can you assist us with a strategy endorsed through legislation and we will take a levy for that.”There has been debate from time to time. Unfortunately in any democracy although people are offered the opportunity to vote many do not take up that opportunity. Indeed a number of exporters have different scales and different sizes and one or two exporters may in fact cover 40 or 50 percent of the export of the crop but the votes are usually based on individuals not necessarily on the volume of the export here. What the bill does is it clarifies for the Minister the knowledge that actually there is a clear mandate from these exporters. Neither Government—Labour or National—would want to impose an unnecessary or Draconian penalty or imposition on anyone who has an innovative idea to export a product from New Zealand. But if in doing so as an individual they were to potentially undermine a strategy of a group of growers then I think—and Parliament probably thinks and we will have a look at it through the select committee—that on balance we support the greater number of exporters.So it will from time to time mean that individual exporters with a bright idea might just have to look again and might perhaps have to work with a group when they might not otherwise have done so. That is smart discipline. It is not imposing as I say Draconian regulation. I hope that the bill as we deal with it at select committee and bring it back to the House will have—I guess we will tinker with it and improve it in a way that does promote innovation in exporting but does not allow the undermining that we see in the meat industry and that we see in the wool industry where people just go out and bid one another down in an attempt to win over a customer in a foreign country. We want coordination. We have to understand and be reminded that across the world most primary producers are either peasants—