Guy Nathan: Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Guy Nathan: Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:12164] 
NATHAN GUY (National) 
: 
 I wish to take a call on the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill. It will be drive time up on the Kapiti coast now with people heading away and listening to their radios—I read today with interest that this is the first day that Parliament will be live on television. In particular I want to talk about this bill being really a one-stop shop tidying-up bill and about managing risks as we heard before in a very good address from Mr Sharples of the Maori Party. 
In the Primary Production Committee we heard from four submitters and we received six submissions of very good quality as well. In particular we spent quite a bit of time—and the submitters helped us with this process—on compliance costs because that was an issue for a lot of the submitters. It is interesting to see that there will be a small increase in costs as users become familiar with this legislation after it is passed this evening. It is forecast that compliance costs around this legislation will in time be reduced. We will be watching that with a great deal of interest. 
The submitters before the Primary Production Committee also pointed out the issue around data protection and how different parts of the world prescribe a period of 10 years; I think that in Canada in particular it is 8 years. New Zealand currently has a period of 5 years for registration and a further 5 years for full registration. The first 5 years are provisional with another 5 years for full registration. There was a concern that we are not keeping up with the rest of the world and that the time should be pushed out further but the officials told us that that could not be part of this bill. So that is something we will have to look at moving into in the future. 
The National Party supports the passage of this bill in its third reading in Parliament this evening. I guess the biggest concern I have is that this legislation will have to be implemented by veterinarians around New Zealand. New Zealand currently has a shortage of veterinarians and we are not training enough through Massey University so we are having to go around the world to recruit them. This afternoon we heard from Annette King the Minister for Food Safety that the Food Safety Authority is trying to recruit veterinarians from around the world to come to New Zealand and that is proving to be extremely costly. I am sure we need to do more to train more New Zealand students and we need to ensure they stay in New Zealand as well. I guess they will have to look to the National Party to provide the right incentives for them to stay in New Zealand. 
In conclusion the National Party supports the third reading of the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill. I wish to thank the Primary Production Committee for all the work it has done on the passage of this bill which has taken I think about 9 months—and that is actually pretty quick for Parliament. We look forward to the 3-yearly review of the legislation to ensure that it is delivering on the mechanisms set out in it. 
Bill read a third time.