Walker HamishHAMISH WALKER (National—Clutha-Southland): Thank you for this call. I'd just like to thank that previous speaker. Mark and I actually enjoyed a very good night on Saturday night—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Refer to the member with his full name please. Thank you.HAMISH WALKER: Sorry; Mark Patterson Madam Assistant Speaker. We enjoyed a lovely night in Lawrence where Mark actually lives—he's been there for about 10 years—on Saturday night. It was the Century Farm awards. For anyone out there there's about 450 farms across the country. They have these centenary awards now. To get the award you've got to have a farm within the family for over 100 years and I think on Saturday night there were about 40-odd farms that got awarded. But the favourite part of the night was seeing Mark get up. He actually delivered the Minister's speech but prior to that he spoke for about 15 minutes and what a delight it was. This was Mark Patterson—he spent roughly 20 years in the National Party a long-serving branch chair of the Lawrence wing of the National Party—and he disagreed with a number of Government policies in his speech including Taratahi Roxburgh children's camp gene editing. So it was great to hear your contribution on Saturday night Mark.But getting back to the appropriations farmers have it all coming at them right now—whether it's the land and water plan with Minister Parker going on top or whether it's the methane emissions targets where they want to reach 23 to 47 percent. Farmers have agreed they can get to about 5 percent at the moment. With the current technology that's about the current science available they can reduce methane emissions for about 5 percent. But because they care about the environment they've agreed to get to about 10 percent but to get to 10 percent we need new technology. We can't just dream up these methane emissions targets without getting new technology. And thank you Mark Patterson for your contributions.Forestry is currently owned by about 73 percent foreign—foreign owned: 79 percent—and currently we have over 10000 hectares planted in forestry. Just this morning I met with a couple of mayors who came and visited the National Party. They're so concerned about the forestry policy that they see communities getting completely destroyed completely ripped apart and so far we've lost about 95 workers from the pastoral sector because of forestry. Now it's not just the 95 workers we have to think about. One of those workers that came out publicly last week—they got a job on a farm they brought their wife in and the wife worked at a local school. Because that farm's been bought by a foreign purchaser both of their jobs are gone—their two kids—they all leave the communities. And that's just one example of when a farm worker leaves because the farm's purchased to be put into forestry. One size does not fit all with this one billion dollars tree programme. So that's a huge concern.I just want to touch briefly on Landcorp. We had Landcorp come and present to the Primary Production Committee and this was around the time when Landcorp had put in a one-month late submission to the Tax Working Group. Now what was interesting is when we asked the chair why the submission was a month late he couldn't really answer us. He had about half a dozen goes and he finally said it was Because one of our staff was overseas offshore for a month hence why we had to pay 11 grand to Ernst & Young to put in a submission to the Tax Working Group." What did they submit on? They submitted: they weren't opposed to a capital gains tax and they were quite open to four or five new environmental taxes.I think this is a complete slap in the face to the average farmer out there trying to compete with the Government farmer. Farmers out there are working hard. They get up early. They don't have an unlimited chequebook like the Government. And then to kick them in the guts we have the Government farmer Landcorp come in and submit one month late to the Tax Working Group. Incredibly disappointing.I just want to touch lastly on Mycoplasma bovis. This is a huge concern across New Zealand and there are some frustrations at the moment. The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) staff and Assure Quality who are on the ground are working hard. I'd like to knowledge the Minister. He's working hard with them. Communication: we need to work together to beat this and often some of the problems come when we're not communicating with each other. So I'd just like to acknowledge all the farmers caught up in this horrible beast and in particular the MPI staff Assure Quality. I can assure farmers they are working hard but it's incredibly difficult and we're all doing our part to try and beat this horrible thing."