Guy NathanHon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Can I congratulate you on your election—you will do a fantastic job in the Chair I am sure. It's a great opportunity to review the last five weeks of this new Government isn't it? It's fascinating what's really occurred in the last five weeks. In my view it's been a very weak start for this new Government. The coalition looks like a three-legged wobbly stool in the first five weeks. Just think back to when they couldn't even get their votes organised to get the Speaker elected into the House—on the first day. That was a shambles. And now we see backsliding on numerous fronts. Just think about what they are proposing to do on paid parental leave: locking out the opportunity for parents to share that special time with their children and not be forced to go back to work when they may need to look after other children in the family. I just think that that is already nanny State creeping in in the first five weeks of this Government.Then we think about another big issue that obviously Chris Hipkins wanted to get stuck into and this is another one about nanny State knows best" and that's locking kids that aren't yet five out of school. I can't believe that they would want to say to parents when a child is four years and 10 months "Sorry they can't go to school." If I was a teacher—and I've got a few mates that are teachers; they say to me "Well it makes sense to have these children in together as one cohort at the start of a term rather than being interrupted throughout that term." Obviously that is a big issue for the Government which they want to use a sledgehammer to fix. Then we see national standards. Once again are they in or are they out? And the list goes on.Even today and over the last 48 hours: the secret coalition document. This document's going to come out no matter what. It'll be prised out by the Ombudsman or it'll get to a point because of the political pressure that's building not just by the biggest Opposition party in the Parliament but by the media as well because they can smell something here—whether it's 38 pages or 33 pages—and they know that this Prime Minister has stood up in this House and said "I want to lead a very transparent Government." This strikes to the heart of this coalition deal with New Zealand First. You can bet your bottom dollar that this document will be coming out in a matter of moments because the New Zealand public deserves to see it and to see what this Government is up to.Then we focus in on the primary sector. Over the last five years as the Minister for Primary Industries and a couple of years before that as Associate Minister for the primary sector I've built numerous relationships up and down the country. As I go around the country and talk to farmers and growers and exporters they are petrified about the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) being smashed apart by this coalition Government. There are 2500 employees that work in MPI and by and large they do a fantastic job. They are petrified right now about their future. Are they going to be told that they need to move to such and such a region when in fact their families and their kids are settled here in Wellington or in other parts around the country?What will happen is that they will focus on themselves instead of doing what they should do—and that's supporting our exporters to get their products into market. Smashing apart MPI into five different entities will be costly. They'll need to get new chief executives and they'll need to get new premises up and down the country. MPI already has a massive footprint up and down New Zealand; they already have an enlarged footprint around the world. So for MPI to be smashed apart is going to mean that the ball will get dropped and the balls that MPI has to juggle and deal with are numerous. You will see those employees focus on themselves instead of focusing on what they should be doing—and that's growing our exports and doing wonderfully well in terms of the whole aspect of supporting our primary sector.We've got a new Minister Damien O'Conner who has had nine years to build up policies—and that one in my view is a daft one. He's also been talking big time about collaboration in the primary sector: "There should be more of it." Well in the primary sector with MPI you've already got collaboration. You've already got the biggest Government regulator working across all the different sectors. Why would you want to smash that apart? I can't believe that it's to do with anything other than being ideology driven.Also when we think about collaboration in the primary sector this week we've got the Primary Growth Partnership annual meeting. They're all coming into Wellington. They will be intrigued to hear a speech from Damien O'Connor because he has gone up and down the country ridiculing the biggest investment in the primary sector under the previous Government. He's called it a slush fund he's called it corporate welfare—he's called it a whole lot of things—and now he has to stand up and speak to hundreds of people this week and talk about collaboration in the primary sector when it will be staring him in the face in this room. The Red Meat Profit Partnership: six different meat companies all sitting around the table together. If you think about Lifestyle Wines there are 18 different wineries that are involved in this programme. And the list goes on and on and on. He is going to set up a primary advisory council and also a chief agriculture adviser. Now what's going to be fascinating is when this group of advisers goes back to the Minister Damien O'Connor and says "Actually you need to be supporting regional water storage projects up and down the country." when they've ruled out a whole lot of them because of the influence of Eugenie Sage and because David Parker hates farmers and hates irrigation. We are on the cusp of a big drought occurring in New Zealand any time soon. In my patch it's very very dry right now in the Horowhenua. I was out at the Horowhenua Taste Trail on the weekend talking to exporters—Genoese Foods Turk's Poultry RJ's Licorice—all worried about this new coalition Government and what it means for them as exporters.What's also going to be interesting is where the Government ends up on stock exclusion and water quality because that is going to have a massive cost on the primary sector. What we don't hear from the new Minister for the Environment David Parker is the great work that farmers have done already fencing off 26000 kilometres of streams and lakes which gets you on a plane from Wellington to Chicago and back again. That's a massive contribution that our farmers have made in a voluntary capacity and soon this coalition Government will be out with grandiose plans of doing more fencing up hills and beyond. They'll be tougher on water quality because that's what they said in the campaign and so the primary sector—the big engine room; the primary sector—is petrified about economic growth slowing down; exports slowing down; no irrigation; biological emissions for animals coming into the emissions trading scheme ahead of research once again; and more tax on our most productive part of the New Zealand economy getting ahead of the investment made by the last Government which was trying to come up with solutions not taxes.So the primary sector right now is in a state of flux. Over the road at Pastoral House there are a thousand MPI workers doing all the work that they do diligently day in day out and they are really worried about their future. And I can tell you what: it's going to be costly it's going to be disruptive and there's going to be a huge amount of redundancy. I know that the State Services Commission and MPI are busy trying to talk the Minister out of what he is currently proposing and we will be watching on this side of the House to ensure that the new coalition Government continues to do what they can to support the primary sector because everything I'm hearing at the moment scares the bejeebers out of me and a lot of farmers and growers and fishers up and down the country."