Luxton JoANNUAL REVIEW DEBATEIn CommitteeDebate resumed on the Appropriation (2016/17 Confirmation and Validation) Bill.Primary Sector (continued)JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm pleased to be able to take a call on this Appropriation (2016/17 Confirmation and Validation) Bill with the theme being the primary sector. It's been an interesting process for me being a new member of the Primary Production Committee. Having all the different entities come and present to us their annual reports was really quite an interesting exercise. We had various entities present to us. We had the Ministry for Primary Industries Quotable Value New Zealand Ltd Animal Control Products Ltd AsureQuality Ltd Crown Irrigation Investments Ltd Land Information New Zealand and Landcorp Farming so we were quite a busy committee with all of our annual reports that we had presented to us.I think it would be fair to say that the committee has worked well during this process. There was definitely some robust questioning of some of these entities. They were certainly put through their paces shall we say at times and I think that taxpayers can be assured that this committee has been thorough in its review of these entities.In particular I want to focus on the Ministry for Primary Industries' annual review and the reason for that is Mycoplasma bovis is something that came up quite a lot during this review. I feel that because this is something that is quite relevant to the area where I live down in Ashburton that's something I wanted to talk about in particular.Mycoplasma bovis—I think this just about has to be one of the most devastating diseases to hit our primary sector for many many many years. We know that it's a bacteria that can cause serious conditions in cattle—mastitis pneumonia arthritis late-term pregnancy loss—and it doesn't respond to any treatment. It was July 2017 when Mycoplasma bovis was first found in cattle in Ōāmaru and we now know that approximately 22300 animals will be culled as a result of this. This is devastating—absolutely devastating—for farmers all round New Zealand but in particular Southland and Canterbury. I can't even begin to fathom as to how it has come to the point where we've had to cull over 20000 animals. Clearly someone has been asleep at the wheel and has been too slow to limit cattle movement.I've got a family that has contacted me a young family. They sent me an email and I just want to read a wee part from their email. It says The last three months have propelled us to an all-time low in our farming career. Having struggled through two difficult financial seasons we'd begun to finally progress with real satisfaction only to be dealt this unfortunate blow. It is extremely hard to explain how difficult this has been for our family our business partners and our staff." This is a story—and one of many I'm sure—that many farmers who have experienced this Mycoplasma outbreak can relate to. I think that the ball has really been dropped here and I think it's a lot to do with our National Animal Identification and Tracing system and certain farmers complying but some not. We can probably look to trace Mycoplasma bovis back to some of the discrepancies there.But we are lucky actually now that we have a Minister that is ready to make those hard decisions and he has made those hard decisions about culling the animals and still working towards eradication as opposed to just managing it at this point. I just think that we're very lucky now that we have a new Government that is ready to take action on these extremely dire situations where we have biosecurity incursions and I really hope that we don't have to be faced with something like this any time soon. Thank you."