Prosser RichardRICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I also will not take very much of the Committee's time on this. I would like to echo some of the sentiments and statements of my colleague Mr O'Connor with regard to certainly the model that the Horticulture Export Authority provides for possible rolling out to other sectors of the primary sector.I do have a couple of questions around Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 247 from the Minister for Primary Industries which he has partly addressed. We did discuss this at caucus this morning. Obviously it was fairly short notice—the Minister was kind enough to give us a heads-up on this—and there were some concerns amongst New Zealand First members that this situation has come about. I do confess that I missed at least one meeting of the Primary Production Committee when this was being discussed—and this submission obviously slipped through then—so my apologies to the Committee for that. Had I been on my game and there for every meeting obviously it would not have.The Minister has explained that the Government did publicly consult on enabling the authority to collect both fees and levies and there was no opposition to this proposal. However the reference to levies was removed during the drafting of the bill at the request of the authority due to a misunderstanding and this technical SOP rectifies this. This obviously we take on spec from the Minister. I have no reason to believe that anything else occurred but some members of our caucus would like some further clarification of that if the Minister would be good enough to provide it. Perhaps not even that—if the Minister wants to take the chair again to point me in the direction of where that could be found that would be helpful. The one thing that we do not want to be doing is supporting a measure that does not actually have the support of industry itself. But as I say again we take it on spec that the authority does speak for its members and we recognise that the sector groups that are part of the authority are there voluntarily. Presumably they would have made some noise had they had some objection to it.I do have to say that for it to have got through the officials through the ministry and through the select committee with this omission in place is rather sloppy. Obviously we point the finger at Government for that and will undertake to ensure that when New Zealand First is leading the Government these sorts of errors will not happen. If the Minister in the chair Nathan Guy could point me in the direction of some supporting information or give me some more assurance that in fact this is what the industry itself is asking for because as I understand it—as the Minister explained it—the collection of levies is something that happens between the authority and its member groups anyway but it happens on an individualised basis. This SOP will empower the legislation to say that the authority can do that across the board. If industry is happy with that then we are happy with that—but we would like to have that confirmed. Otherwise we support the rest of the bill as we have from the start.Obviously we have a lot of skin in the game as far as New Zealand Inc." is concerned and like other parties in the House we understand the importance of "New Zealand Inc." working together single-desk marketing large cooperatives—those sorts of approaches. This is a halfway measure toward that which as Mr O'Connor points out could be applied to the meat industry and perhaps other sectors. So confirmation on the SOP aside we continue to support the bill and I look forward to hearing more from the Minister on that. Thank you."