Dean Jacqui: Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDean Jacqui: Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10000. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): I want to congratulate Damien O’Connor on having his bill drawn from the ballot—the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2)—and I am very pleased to be speaking in its first reading. It is a little bit obvious though that this bill is doomed for failure. There is probably a very good reason for that which is that it is an ill-conceived bill that really encapsulates why Labour hates farmers. It has really demonstrated that to New Zealand and to the farming community over a number of years it has demonstrated it to the Waitaki electorate a couple of times and everything that Labour has done subsequently during my time in Parliament and when Labour was still in Government has illustrated that it has no empathy with the agricultural sector. It with the Greens has no love for the agricultural sector. It actively campaigns and actively brings policies and bills to this House that are to the detriment of the productive agricultural sector in New Zealand.So this bill this dairy industry restructuring bill is really a demonstration through Damien O’Connor of the strong desire of Labour and the Greens to have absolute State control over private business in New Zealand. It is the most interventionist little piece of member’s bill that I have seen coming through this House. What it seeks to do is tell and direct the directors of Fonterra how to go about their business even though there has been the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Act passed very recently through this House. I understand that the issue raised in this bill was considered in the Committee stage of that Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill. It was thoroughly canvassed and the only people who thought it was a good idea were—I do not know—Labour and New Zealand First members as it happens and even the Greens in this instance thought that this particular idea of limiting the co-op fund to 20 percent of the total was a good idea. Everyone else considered it and put it in the waste-paper bin where it belonged with a lot of the other Green and Labour proposals that have come before this House.It was a previous member on that side of the House who crowed very proudly about some of the other interventionist policies that those members would bring and foist on the New Zealand public if by any sad chance they ever happened to be the Government—a very faint chance—such as bulk-buying electricity putting a price on water and crippling the agricultural industry with an emissions trading scheme obligation that would absolutely cripple agriculture industry and the New Zealand economy and they would even go so far as limiting stock numbers on farms. That would surely drive farming and agriculture into the ground.Of course Labour was also the party of David Parker who sought to run high country farmers off the land by basing their rents on the view that the merino sheep had as they were grazing the pastures on the slopes overlooking Lake Wānaka.Hon Ruth Dyson: How stupid.JACQUI DEAN: I beg your pardon? Sorry?Hon Ruth Dyson: Stupid.JACQUI DEAN: Oh right. So this is a most excellent bill because—and I am looking forward to Ruth Dyson’s contribution on this bill because she is a well-known agricultural expert and I cannot wait to hear what she has to say—all that this bill does is try to intervene on Fonterra directors. Fonterra is a world-renowned world-leading and farmer-owned company. It has been through the process of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Act which amended the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act and all that this bill seeks to do is impose a little bit of Labour interventionism a little bit of Labour-Greens State control and this side of the House will not have a bar of it.