Barclay ToddTODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland): I just wanted to begin by acknowledging the Minister for Primary Industries the Hon Nathan Guy the Minister for Food Safety the Hon David Bennett and the chair of our committee Ian McKelvie. I acknowledge you Mr McKelvie with great admiration but with one point of hesitation because I saw a tweet by you the other day where you mentioned that the Rangitīkei electorate produces half of New Zealand's lamb and the best half at that. I would beg to differ on that—Hon David Bennett: Waikato.TODD BARCLAY: —small point there. Ha ha! Well Southland actually. I just wanted to speak on this particular debate because the primary sector as has been outlined by the Minister is incredibly important to the New Zealand economy. It is also incredibly important to my electorate. As the primary sector grows expands and does well then my electorate does well. That filters through the 34 towns and communities that we have; all of which with the exception of Queenstown are service towns to the primary sector. Everybody in the electorate that I represent has either a direct or indirect relationship and reliance on our primary sector.That is why it is incredibly important that as a Parliament we give credit to the success of the thousands of people who are working day to day in that industry who are holding up our economy. As the Minister has pointed out the primary sector is the backbone of our economy. Our new figures forecasting primary sector growth are that it will reach $37.5 billion for the year ending June 2017 which is up $0.8 billion on the previous forecast. But interestingly next year's overall primary sector exports are expected to grow by 9.7 percent to over $41 billion. That just highlights the significance of that sector to our economy.Down south we are seeing that level of investment going into the primary sector in order to support that growth. Just at the end of last year there was a $220 million investment into the Mataura Valley Milk plant which is a collaboration between some local investors and a Chinese animal husbandry group. The investment that has taken place and the construction—well under way now as we speak—is an incredible mark of our positive backing of the sector both down south and also nationally as well.As Mr McKelvie pointed out before prices have increased for milk solids. The interesting thing about this investment is that it is their largest investment in a single initiative in Southland's history. It will employ over 65 people directly when the plant opens. But interestingly between now and when the plant opens there is going to be over 500 contractors and other workers working on that plant and the contribution that that is going to make to the eastern Southland economy in particular is going to be absolutely huge. We talk about Auckland house prices; Gore house prices are actually increasing at the moment Mr Twyford. It is as a direct result of this investment which is fantastic and we welcome that.But if you look at some of the wider Government support in order to support the growth of our primary sector the Minister has been a huge champion of the Primary Growth Partnership (PGP) which has seen Government and industry co-invest over $759 million over time into 21 PGP programmes spread right across the primary sector. So for people to say that the Government is not doing enough to support the primary sector actually we are doing a lot to support the primary sector. But the primary sector is doing a lot to support itself. Through that almost $800 million investment into science research and development right across all of the sectors within the primary industries there is going to be some really interesting and fascinating and exciting results coming out of many of those projects.On biosecurity—the point the Minister was talking about predominantly before—we had the velvetleaf scare down in Southland last year. I wanted to remark to the Minister and MPI on the huge level of support that our community has for the robust response that MPI in conjunction with Environment Southland put into that. They were incredibly swift to come in and support our local farmers to get on top of that issue in the way that they did. So it is incredibly important and I wanted to just basically highlight that and as the Minister says biosecurity is so important to the stability and integrity of our exporting system. So for a response in action as we saw it it was great.Reports noted.