O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you Mr Chairman and indeed things will change around the recording of animal movements. I think one thing that Mycoplasma bovis has done is alert individual farmers to the need to actually record movements from one property to another given that the spread of the disease is between animals and some of them have got different blocks and have been able to differentiate the necessary culling of one block because they do run them separately. And yes the movement is defined in the Act and location is defined in the Act.The core objective here is that—while movements have to be recorded there are some people who don't and if they don't and they're moving from one National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) property to another NAIT property then we can prosecute them. But if they're moving from one NAIT property to a property that doesn't have a NAIT number we can't prosecute them—clearly a bizarre situation and one that we need to rectify which is why we're making the technical amendment.In answer to the questions that have been raised if the property is contiguous there's no necessary recording of the movement—no change. However can I say to farmers who have a property that bounds one on the other that if they want to run them differently and they do if it comes to biosecurity management there's a huge advantage in that particularly when it comes to culling. And if you've recorded the movements from one to the other and managed them as two properties and if you do happen to say under a Mycoplasma bovis outbreak have an infected herd then if you run them as one complete property you have to cull the whole lot. If you run them as two and record the movements then you don't have to cull the whole lot—clearly an advantage from the biosecurity perspective moving forward. Farmers may be able to make those calls and in my guess they'll probably start recording all movements as they should because it protects them as well.The assumption that this is all cost and all burden and all difficult is one well—it's around the obligations to conduct a business really. And biosecurity will be higher in terms of priorities in a farming operation. I make no apologies for that at all and I think there's a whole lot of learning to take place.Can I just say that if a property is contiguous and stock is moved through a public road there is no recording of the movement—no change from the status quo. If the property is not contiguous and is separated by 1 kilometre no—if the farmer has chosen to register both properties as one NAIT number. Somewhat of an anomaly that we're working through is that a farmer can have a number of different properties within a 20-kilometre radius and have one NAIT number. In my view that's not sustainable. We should have a NAIT number for each property and while there may be some allowances—and talking with Federated Farmers the point was made around bovine tuberculosis as a current management regime around biosecurity. Should you have to record the movement of those animals? Look I think there will be particular circumstances where exemptions are allowed but in summary any movement of an animal from one property to another should be recorded with the exceptions that I've just run out here.In terms of lifestyle blocks yes you should record them. Don't underestimate the risk associated with lifestyle blocks where people maybe don't fully understand the biosecurity risk. They might be bringing in animals from a number of different properties and be thinking Because they're lifestyle it's not important."—no that's wrong. It's very important and so what we're doing here is just making the amendment—the change—to ensure that actually if people move animals from one property to another and the property they're moving to is not registered with a NAIT number—and it should be—we firstly change the system as was investigated by the select committee this morning. We've had assurances from NAIT that they can make the changes very quickly so that instead of recording a number you record an address. That's really important so that the property if they don't have a current NAIT number is identified by an address.Hon Nathan Guy: Rapid number.Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: That's right. A rapid number or whatever. It's really important. The core of this is actually about ensuring that everyone does the same thing right through the system and that where there are gaps in the system because there's not a NAIT number that actually doesn't exempt a person moving stock from the obligation to record that movement because it is the movement that has the potential for the transfer of disease particularly when it comes to Mycoplasma bovis. That's the thing we want to know about. That's the threat we're trying to reduce."