Adams Amy: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: General Debate[Sitting date: 12 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5711. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): This week we have heard Opposition parties rail large about the effect of the drop in dairy prices and the outlook for our farmers. We have heard two themes coming through that I want to touch on and the member who has just resumed his seat Fletcher Tabuteau certainly repeated some of them.First of all you hear Opposition parties saying that somehow National is not backing the farmers. Suddenly there is a river of crocodile tears coming from the Opposition benches for the farmers. Well I think that Nathan Guy said it exactly right in the House today: if you are going to stand in this House and talk about supporting farmers let us look at the track record. First of all which party in this House actually has farmers in its caucus? National. Does New Zealand First? No. Do the Greens? No. Does Labour? No. National is the party that has supported farmers for a long time.Where are the Opposition members when we are talking about reforming the Resource Management Act? Where are the Opposition members when we are talking about backing water storage? Where are the Opposition members when we are talking about sensible moderate water standards that allow farmers to continue to farm? They oppose all of that. They oppose all of that and yet they have the barefaced cheek to come in here and pretend that suddenly they are the defenders of the farmers. Well farmers are not simple folk even though the Labour Opposition the Greens and New Zealand First seem to think so. They have got long memories and they know which party backs them.Nathan Guy said it today did he not? How can the Opposition parties protest on the steps of Parliament against free-trade agreements against the Trans-Pacific Partnership against removing tariffs to our economic exports and then come in here and say: “Oh the poor farmers. Oh the poor farmers.”? We want you to pay 300 percent tariffs into your markets but: “Boy the poor farmers.” There is a word for that that starts with “h” that I am not allowed to talk about.Then there is the other great fallacy that we have heard from that bunch of people who have variable positions depending on the circumstances—I say that so as not to offend the Standing Orders—and that fallacy is that somehow the National Party has been blocking a diversification of the economy. Let us look at the track record there. I can tell you that this is the party that backed rolling out digital infrastructure and digital skills across this economy and the results are paying dividends.We know that phase one of the broadband programme alone is worth $33 billion to this country and Labour opposed it—Labour opposed it; it voted against it. We know that even going back to that last issue that programme alone is worth $9.1 billion to the dairy sector over 20 years—$9.1 billion to the dairy sector and Labour voted against it. We know that it will create 100000 extra jobs with highly skilled highly paid workers in our economy and the Opposition voted against it. This is the sector—the information and communications technology sector—that is our third-largest export sector. You will not hear the Opposition talking about that anymore because Labour knows it blocked that programme.Information and communications technology is our third-largest sector and last year its services were worth more than $23.5 billion—10 percent of our GDP and 3 percent more than a few years ago. In fact exports in this sector rose 23 percent last year alone. You have got the information and communications technology sector exports going up 23 percent in 1 year year-on-year growth across the sector of an annualised 9 percent over the last 10 years and a sector where information and communications technology stocks now make up 10 percent of the value of all the listings on the NZX. Five years ago it was just 1 percent. So 5 years ago 1 percent of our stocks were for information and communications technology and now it is 10 percent alone.We on this side of the House recognise that this is because we have innovative hard-working imaginative Kiwis out there doing it. But the difference is that we have rolled out the infrastructure the skills the training the research and development and the free-trade agreements to allow them to do it. I say to the Opposition parties: do not come into this House and cry crocodile tears about diversifying the economy and supporting farmers when you block it at every opportunity you get.