Ardern Shane: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Ardern Shane: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:623;Page:18301] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 Mr Speaker as I rise to speak in the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement I first welcome you back for the new parliamentary year in your rightful job. I congratulate you and your colleagues on the work you do and I congratulate my parliamentary colleagues. It has been interesting to note the number of Labour Party speakers who have gone for almost two-thirds—sometimes three-quarters—of their speeches without even referring to the Prime Minister’s statement. That is because it is the most forgettable document we have ever seen presented to the Parliament. It has absolutely no vision and definitely no leadership—unlike the leadership of the National Party which has articulated clearly tonight and over the last wee while where we intend to go. [ 
Interruption 
] It is great to hear the member for Whanganui carping away. I heard a great line over the Christmas break: “Don’t get into a debate with idiots; they’ll only bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” I am not going to respond to the member for Whanganui. But let me just say that there is no vision. 
I listened to John Tamihere. The irony of the debate over the last few days about the changes in the National Party is apparent when we hear John Tamihere speaking. Suddenly the National Party changes spokesmen and it is headline news; the Labour Party of course does that on about a weekly basis. Let us look—and let us look at the duplicity of the media on this as well—at the long line of Labour Cabinet Ministers who have been casualties under this regime. We started with Phillida Bunkle and Marian Hobbs. Then we had Dover Samuels Ruth Dyson and Lianne Dalziel. The list goes on. And of course it includes the famous one Tariana Turia who has formed her own political party and is now in opposition to the Labour Party. I say to the media which has kept running this line over and over in the last few days that it should look at what goes on in the Labour Party because National Party members are very moderate by comparison. 
Let us come back to the Prime Minister’s statement for a moment and look at the vision she articulates for New Zealand. The best I can make of it is that she is articulating that she and her band of Labour socialist colleagues know best for New Zealand. They will tax people and tell them what is good for them. There is nothing aspirational nothing about leadership and nothing about young New Zealanders getting out there and making it happen—Labour knows what is best for the people. 
Let us look at where the wealth the Prime Minister crowed about in her statement comes from. I went to the Parliamentary Library because I could not find anything in the Prime Minister’s statement to find out where the figures came from. What did the Parliamentary Library tell me? It told me that $3.677 billion came from land-based agricultural industries. So I went back to the Prime Minister’s statement thinking that there would be at least half a dozen paragraphs about how agriculture and land-based industries the strong economic base of New Zealand would benefit from this Government. I saw not a single mention of it in the Prime Minister’s statement. Over the summer I watched all of the media with great interest particularly the rural media. I noticed that we have a new Minister for Rural Affairs Damien O’Connor. He is in the House now and I congratulate him on being the new Minister for Rural Affairs. I say that he will be the next Labour Minister of Agriculture. The problem is that he will have to wait until he is Jim Sutton’s age before he gets there. That is the problem because the Labour Party will not be in Government post the next election. I hope the new Minister for Rural Affairs can do better than the last Minister for Rural Affairs and actually secure one cent in a Budget for rural affairs. As it stands at the moment rural affairs has no budget. We have a Minister for Rural Affairs but we have no budget for rural affairs. Some money is tossed aside by the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Forestry but there is no budget for rural affairs. The Minister for Rural Affairs should try to get a budget because it would be useful in carrying out his portfolio duties. I also tell that Minister who will eventually be Minister of Agriculture if he hangs around here until he is in his 70s that there is absolutely no mention of biosecurity or customs—or money for it—in the Prime Minister’s statement to the House. 
We have seen the bizarre situation this summer where a scorpion hitchhiked into Auckland International Airport and then managed to get a bus or a taxi down town stayed in a hotel room overnight came back to the domestic terminal the next morning jumped out of a bag walked up to somebody standing at the check-in counter and bit that person on the ankle. 
 I say: “Well done to the scorpion!” But at the same time that that happened the Minister for Biosecurity was proposing a major Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry exercise concerning what would happen in New Zealand if we had a foot-and-mouth outbreak. Foot-and-mouth is a virus and is undetectable to the naked eye. Something that is 7 centimetres long like a scorpion can travel through all our border controls travel around Auckland on a sightseeing tour stay overnight in a hotel and come back to the domestic airport and bite somebody on the foot—and the Minister for Biosecurity is going to carry out an exercise to see what would happen if we had an outbreak of foot-and-mouth in New Zealand! 
I say to the Minister that in his own press statement Treasury warned him that if there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth in New Zealand it would cost $6 billion in the first year. Given that the total exports from New Zealand in a year are about $6.9 billion—and I am sure my finance colleague John Key will correct me if I am wrong—the Minister is quite rightly focusing on foot-and-mouth because that would have a serious outcome for New Zealand. But what is the Minister doing to improve surveillance now? Absolutely nothing is happening. The scorpion that walked through the airport is absolute testimony to that. I ask the Government where the comments were in the Prime Minister’s statement about that. There was not a single dicky bird. 
I will look at another great issue that took place over the summer months and before. Despite the fact that the Government and the Minister of Agriculture said time and time again that the Government would not take property rights off farmers we now have legislation that is likely to pop up at any time—but nobody knows where it is—called the Land Access Bill. 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: Where? 
SHANE ARDERN 
: I tell that member who is now the Minister for Rural Affairs to stand in Parliament tonight and tell us where that legislation is and what it is that he is trying to fix. 
One of the surveys I did over the summer was to talk to farming and recreational groups about what is wrong with the status quo. The Government has been creating a perception for at least 12 months that there is a problem with the current structure. But nobody knows what it is except for the country’s most famous tramper the Prime Minister of New Zealand who has flown into the odd private station in the South Island without asking first and been told: “Helen please ask. You may be the Prime Minister but you haven’t bought the whole of the South Island yet—not quite.” She has only 40 percent of it. Because the Prime Minister has dropped into a couple of stations in the South Island without permission and it has been suggested to her that she might have asked first she has decided she will fix that. The socialists know how to fix that. They will pass legislation that says that people can wander over private property without asking. If that is not what the Government is doing Government members should stand and tell us what they are doing and what the problem is that they are trying to fix because nobody knows what the problem is or what the Government is intending to do. 
If there has ever been duplicity in comments from the Government then people should look at the range of comments that have come from the Government over this issue. The Minister in one of the rural papers over the summer months said that no means no. I hope he is correct because we will support “no means no”. That is all we are really campaigning for. If people turn up at the farm gate and say they want access and the farmer says that they cannot have access then that is what it means. I say to the Minister for Rural Affairs that that is where the issue should lie and he should clear it up tonight. 
Another issue is the amount of land that is going into the Department of Conservation. The Minister is jumping up and down. There was nothing in the famous tramper’s speech about the fact that the department now owns 40 percent of the South Island and recently bought Birchwood Station in the South Island for $10 million. Why is it that people do not now have access where they used to have access previously on to Birchwood Station?