Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you Mr Speaker. That was a particularly weak speak from the weakest Minister of Agriculture that this country has ever seen and we expect that kind of activity. He spent five minutes talking about the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) legislation without actually talking about the Primary Production Committee and what actually happened there. It is disgraceful I know what that Labour Party gets up to. Let's tell the truth of what happened in the committee and what the Labour Party actually did to farmers in this legislation.There was a process where all farming organisations were engaging with the Minister in good faith and they were then sitting down and talking about how we could make the NAIT system better and that was all fine. And then that Minister at the last minute—you can see the grin on his face—changed the bill on them and took ownership of the data of farmers. That was what this Minister was trying to do in the bill. He had to capitulate in the select committee and give up on that attack on the farming base of New Zealand. That's the reality of what happened in this bill. He'll go and talk about how he never had the regulation and the ability to do what he wanted to do; that is rubbish—absolute rubbish. The Minister had all the powers he needed at any point in time. It was his inefficiency and his misguidance that meant that it wasn't used properly.This bill is just another part of the development of our animal identification system and that will continue in the future. This bill will not be the end of the system. But what actually happened in this bill is that the Government tried to make an attack on the data ownership of the New Zealand primary sector—that's what actually happened. Now the Minister is not going to dispute that I'm sure because that's exactly what the bill said. At the Primary Production Committee we had to deal with that issue because it became a very blatant attack on the farming sector because data is so important for any industry going forward.To have the data of one industry taken in one fell swoop is a very New Zealand First concept of corporatisation by the Government. They were going to do that with the power industry; it never actually happened though did it? We were going to have that grandiose plan. Well they tried it with NAIT's data but they didn't realise that they had a slight problem with trying to take the NAIT data off farmers and that was that the NAIT organisation itself had been sold some years prior to that.So you could probably make a legal argument that if the Government owned the organisation that that data went to they may then own the data. But you can't make that legal argument once the organisation has been sold. So we got Crown legal opinion which showed that the Government was out of step that the Minister had breached his rights in the sense that he had no ability to take ownership of that data that the submitters were actually completely right in saying that there was never any intent for data to be taken by the Minister that the Government had actually overstepped and the Government had to backtrack and—by their own legal opinion—the Crown found that this Government had acted outside the law in trying to take that data off the farming sector.Now they took this clause out of the bill and now we see in it that the core data is no longer in Government ownership and although not clarified to the satisfaction of all farmers—Hon Nathan Guy: No one owns it.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well no one owns it for this stage of the commentary—but in legal terms you actually look at the debates in the House as well; they are very important to give context around the commentary. I would say that the debates in this House will clearly show that there can never be—there can never be—any attempt by a Labour Government to try and nationalise the data like they did in this attempt because they do not have that ability and they do not have that legal standing to do so. So to anybody that may be looking at this in the future and wondering what the legal standing of the data is: the Labour - New Zealand First Government had no right to nationalise it and they actually had to withdraw.So it is more than being silent around ownership of data; it is actually saying that the Government does not have the right to that data because it tried to gain that ownership and then failed through the select committee process.Hon Member: Is that the best you can do?Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well that's pretty good. You know it's not often that many Governments are found by their own legal opinions to have acted outside of the power that's entrusted in them and were trying to nationalise an asset that they shouldn't be allowed to. So thank you for that interruption over there from the member that's a new member I note but who will soon learn not to do that again.Then my second issue when we came to the legislation—which was another point which we had to deal with the Labour Party on—was in regards to transport companies. Now the Labour Government and New Zealand First tried to bring in a requirement that all transport companies would now be liable—not actually the farmer; the liability would be on the transport company. It took a while for them to understand that that wasn't a great smart idea; we had to go through it about five times before they realised that it wasn't in the best interests of the transport community and necessarily anybody involved in the industry. But finally we did get there and we had to coax them around to looking at different options around what could be done and the best we could get out of them was that they would have another declaration on the declaration paper in regards to animals that had been transported off a property and it puts the responsibility back on to the farm owner which is truly where it should be; not on to the transport company because it's very difficult in a range of circumstances for transport companies to be able to guarantee that.So that was bad enough and the Labour Party and the New Zealand First Party finally came to a realisation that they were impractical in wanting to make sure that transport companies had to operate under the basis that they were liable. So it was added to the documentation that would come off a farm. There was no attempt at all from the New Zealand First or Labour members to have any consideration of costs that that would impose on the Government. So there will be an extra cost on the Government because of the decisions of those two parties at select committee. And there was no consideration of the timing of it; they just thought you just click your hands and you can change all the documentation in New Zealand. So it wasn't until officials came in and said Well you might want to have a six-month limit on that to actually make it practical" that the Labour and New Zealand First members actually woke up to the idea of what they were doing which was actually causing a lot more documentation and another set of processes within the farming sector.Now there were a couple of other little things in the bill as well that were changed at select committee: cost recovery for audits and accreditation quite minor changes in regards to the unsafe exemption that is limited now to five years—Federated Farmers wanted that to continue but it now has the five-year limit on it. So effectively there are a number of other smaller changes but the two fundamental things that came through the select committee process were the ownership of the NAIT data and also the liability for those that transport NAIT animals. It is a major backdown by the Government in this area. We were never told by the Government why they wanted to get the data; we can only surmise that they wanted it for purposes that were not needed for this bill that they wanted it in a manner which could be used on other purposes and it was very obvious that there is no limitation on the Minister in being able to pass on this information—basically any Government organisation can apply and basically get this information from the Minister once the Minister has it. Why they would want ownership is something that was never explained to the select committee and really left us—as members of the Opposition—and also the submitters thinking only the worst of this Government as you would do because they are not in the interests of anybody in the agriculture sector.Jamie Strange: Ha ha!Hon DAVID BENNETT: And we've seen that—and they may laugh over there but this is one of the steps that they have done to attack the farming sector and the National Party stood up for farmers and got the result we needed. New Zealand First were backing the Labour Party in trying to nationalise the assets of farmers—that's what they were doing in this bill. We stood up we stopped it we used their own lawyers against them and we managed to get a result which is fair and reasonable for New Zealanders and for New Zealand farmers. It's a win for the Opposition and another failure for that failing Government."