Allan KiritapuKIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): Well I've had the absolute delight of sitting here for the last I don't know hour and a half two hours listening to my colleagues on the Opposition benches espousing and waxing lyrical about how they have been the champions for the dairy industry and they're out there for rural communities. Well you know the funny thing is—and I commend the member Mr van de Molen and the Hon the former Hon—the Hon?—David Bennett who are both from the Waikato.Now when I have a look at this the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2)—blah blah blah blah blah—it is about making amendments for the dairy industry to provide certainty for the South Island. Now I know that the poor little $750 million industry down there in the South Island merely pales in comparison to the $2.2 billion contribution that the Waikato dairy industry contributes to GDP but I can see how these little guys down the South Island got missed off the little agenda. So we can sit here and wax lyrical.Then we get to hear the Hon David Bennett talk about how there's all these urban liberals on this side of the House who wouldn't have a clue about what's going on out there in the dairy sector. Well I had the absolute pleasure of attending the Te Puke A & P show in the weekend and it was fantastic to see members from that side of the House in their brand new sparkling Red Bands with their brand new sparkling blue jackets and their brand new—it looked fantastic. But the reality is that those gumboots were about as close as most of those members have been to touching a spade turning over a piece of sod because all they've done for the last nine years is show up cut pretty ribbons and really have become absolutely disconnected from our dairy industries which is why these plethora of farmers—actually some of your 50000 that you're talking about—are coming back to this side of the House because we actually go in to bat for the little guys the farmers who're actually struggling all over the country.So look you guys talked about as well Fonterra—the most successful co-operative in the world. And then we heard from the Hon Mr Carter that it wasn't the Labour Party that set it up it was National. I don't know if my history's wrong but that occurred under Labour. That occurred under Labour. It absolutely did—under Labour 2001. You know it; we know it. We have been consistently for a very long time swinging a pretty big bat to make sure that the largest export industry from our country is well and truly protected. Now all this bill does is it fixes up a mess that the former Government couldn't deal with. Now you guys had for how long—how long did you have the former Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment (DIRA) Bill sitting on the Order Paper and not get it into the select committee? How long? Months and months and months and months. You didn't care that the expiration for these guys—it was triggered in 2015. The time frame expires in May of this year. You knew that that was an impending time frame for these guys but you also knew that the bill that you were proposing was so challenging for the industry that you were too scared to put it up.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Don't bring me into the debate.KIRITAPU ALLAN: Sorry Madam Assistant Speaker—my colleagues from the other side of the House.The independent dairy consultants that reviewed your bill at that time of the year—they said that they were absolutely terrified by the proposition of that former DIRA bill. So to the Hon Damien O'Connor who has had to cut through and tidy up the mess that was left by the former Government I absolutely commend this bill to the House.Bill read a first time.