Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you Madam Chair. I appreciate the chance to speak on this bill and I appreciate the Minister's last response but he leaves many questions open that members of the farming community would like answered and especially in this committee here today.We understand and everyone in this room understands the need to do something in regard to incursions that may require that but the powers that are being put in place here are unfettered powers. They are not the same powers that are in other legislation that the Minister has tried to hide behind. These are the search and surveillance powers which are the high end you could say of the powers available to any Government organisation in regard to search and surveillance. They are basically unfettered powers which enable an organisation to do what it likes. And I explain that to the New Zealand First members because when the farmers understand what these powers are in comparison to other investigationary powers they are completely different. These are the top end unfettered powers and they were designed in legislation that was for the national interest to protect New Zealand in cases of attack basically and to give New Zealand extreme powers.Now when we're talking about the case of New Zealand farmers and incursions there do need to be powers given to the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and other officials—nobody's denying that—but they need to have some kinds of rules around them otherwise this would be seen as a blatant attack on farmers at a point of weakness when there is an incursion like M. bovis to use this process to put on them more powers than would be on any other organisation. And that will be the reaction of the farming community. It won't be a reaction of Thank you. Let's do this." They will be going "You have now increased the powers that MPI have." And so we want the Minister to actually specify whether warrants are required for those pieces of legislation that he just talked about—do they need a warrant in those circumstances?—and to go through individually and answer that.Hon Amy Adams: Do they need reasonable cause?Hon DAVID BENNETT: Do they need reasonable cause in each of those circumstances under those other pieces of legislation he discussed? We don't want these broad statements about how this was about trying to align legislation that was set up at one time to be put in the other place. It didn't happen that way. The search and surveillance rules were put there for a reason. Now we also have the situation in this House where we're in urgency. Urgency is a very special part of the political process and it's only used in special circumstances. This is not a special circumstance that demands urgency. There certainly is a need to do something as the Minister has reflected on but it does not demand urgency. So why would there be urgency in this situation? It can only lead to one conclusion and that is: because the Minister does not want to have a full and fair process of investigation of these rules. That can be the only reason why there would be urgency at this stage.The select committee has offered to meet in the recess over the next two weeks to go through all these things and to give that comfort to farmers and that has been denied by this House.Hon Nathan Guy: By the Minister not by the House.Hon DAVID BENNETT: By the Minister. If there's nothing to hide why not do that? Why not go through a process which gives comfort to those people out there that are going to be subject to these rules? There's no urgency. The incursion has already happened. The Minister is dealing with it as best he can. This power won't assist them in any part of that incursion at the moment. It simply is using the guise of that emergency situation to pass through laws that will mean that farmers are subject to a higher sense of invasion to their personal privacy and their personal property rights—and anybody else that's a landowner or has any stock or involvement in those industries. That is what is happening here today.I believe that there is a solution that can be looked at in the context of this debate here today. [Time expired]"