Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you Mr Speaker. It is a big moment actually for New Zealand First to rise in support of this bill; a bill that first came into being in 1999 when Doug Woolerton put in a private member's bill which was subsequently taken up by Ron Mark and in later times—as Hamish Walker alluded to—it was under my name for a brief period. I would just like to acknowledge the Minister of Agriculture Damien O'Connor who saw that the bill had a complexity beyond the scope of a private member's bill and allowed it to come forward as a Government bill—so we do thank him for that.There are a multitude of reasons for this bill but essentially if you look at the big picture we do have $63.7 billion worth of farm debt at the end of September. It is actually identified as a systematic risk to the New Zealand economy by the Reserve Bank. Just to put some context around that in 1999 when Doug Woolerton brought his bill forward it was $11.9 billion. So we've seen a massive lift in farm debt in the last 20 years.I guess some people would question why we would need it now given record pricing—we had Fonterra come out the other day lifting their payment and some even saying that there could be an eight in front of the payment next year—and of course the red meat sector and the horticulture sector are going extremely well at the moment. But the time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining.Why farmers?" is the question that often gets asked outside of mainly farming circles probably. The reason for that is quite simple: many of the things that affect farmers are actually beyond their control. It's actually incredibly complex business being a farmer. It's totally underrated in terms of the complexity. I think the popular vision is of shearing or milking cows or putting up a fence or driving a tractor but the modern farmer's got to be a vet an agronomist a soil scientist an ecologist a market analyst a builder a mechanic has to be able to negotiate regional council and processing company compliance has got to have a deep knowledge of accountancy and increasingly environmental issues as well. So farmers at the top of their game I would say would be up there with any business people in New Zealand. To be at that very top echelon is quite a remarkable feat given the range of skills that you do need to have.But as I said many of the factors that actually dictate your financial performances are beyond your control. We've seen a lot of it lately: of course climate's always been an issue but the biosecurity the Psa the bovis and fruit flies—to name a few. We've got trade wars and of course we've always got markets and currency and of course the banks. We've seen a contraction of the banks' lending criteria as they seek to claw back some of that $63 billion and are looking for higher-principle repayments.The thing that probably cuts to the core of this is that many of these farms are multigenerational. They're not just a business; they are a family home they are essentially where memories are made and there's a real sense of being at one with the land. We went to the Nuffield Scholarship—those us that went the other day to see the announcement of the Nuffield Scholars and heard some of the presentations from last year's scholars. One of last year's scholars cited a report from Oregon in the United States where losing a family farm was considered to be the equivalent of the loss of a child—that's how traumatic those events can be.Of course we know with our farmers that there's a propensity for mental health issues. I heard Jan Logie get up here the other day and say—in terms of our response to the suicide rates—that farmers should actually be a category of their own. I guess there are so many factors that lend themselves to being susceptible to those mental health issues and I think isolation is certainly one of them. It is the perfect environment to withdraw from society without potentially anyone knowing you're doing so and withdrawing into yourself.So when you come under financial pressure this bill gives a mediation process. It gives a security blanket of sorts that when you're faced with this massive power imbalance when you're up against a major multinational financial institution you will have a mediation process that guarantees some fairness and some transparency. That is not to say that that will be a "get out of jail free" card. This is not designed to protect businesses farmers as businesses making poor financial decisions or just poor financial performance; it's not about that. It's about making sure the process is a fair one and getting the fence at the top of the cliff rather than waiting for the train crash at the bottom when it all turns pear-shaped.The banks have gotten behind this and I welcome their support. They were a wee bit reluctant at the start. They were favouring a voluntary process. We've seen many of the same banks operating on the other side of the Tasman not performing as ethically as we would expect here. There's not the same level of evidence of that here but they're also not without precedent in terms of how they had behaved. It's not that long ago that the credit default swaps that they were—not forcing upon farmers but marketing very hard on farmers. It's quite a technical financial instrument that up to about 2000 farmers took on board many of them under false pretences and there was some compensation paid out. So banks aren't without previous history of putting some pressure on them. We've heard a Federated Farmers' survey recently that farmers are feeling under pressure from their banks: 23 percent up from 11 percent last year. So it is on the rise as these capital requirements and the squeeze comes on our farmers.Just going back to the select committee process it was a good select committee process. I think it's the best select committee process I've been through. Hamish Walker alluded to it in his contribution. I acknowledge Amy Adams here who I thought put her formidable legal mind in play and the likes of Kiritapu Allan and others that had the skills to really tease this out because there were some issues there to work through.I'd acknowledge the chairman David Bennett. David Bennett for those cricket tragics out there I would consider him to be the Martin Guptill of select committee chairmen: can be brilliant on his day but does lack quite a bit of consistency and when he's bad he can be very bad. But in this particular case he did a very good job. So thank you to the committee. I'd also like to thank the submitters. There were 30 of them as was referred to earlier. There are a few that stood out; some of the farmers that came forward with their heart-wrenching stories—Richard McIntyre from the Federated Farmers sharemilkers. One of the main changes that we made was on Richard's recommendation that we made a maximum cost to the farmers of $2000 because he felt that even those $6000 or a half share of a $6000 estimated cost would be perhaps off-putting to some financially stressed sharemilkers who are some of the more vulnerable of our farmers. So on that recommendation the committee had put a $2000 cap on the cost to farmers.We widened the scope a little bit too to bring in things like apiculture and the aforementioned sharemilking. We took out some stuff too: agricultural contractors. So it was a really good shaping of the bill.So just in conclusion I would like to circle back to the start because as a smaller political party within the spectrum—and I'm sure the Green Party or the ACT Party would agree—you don't get to enact your whole policy programme much as New Zealand would be a better place if we could put that visionary New Zealand First policy platform in place. But the reality is we don't. We have to compromise on so much. But in regards to this bill this has been a longstanding New Zealand First bill and policy platform. We are really proud that we've been able to get it through. We do acknowledge again the Minister and the whole Parliament for getting behind this bill and allowing it to come into legislation. So without further ado I commend this bill to the House."