Carter DavidRt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): Madam Assistant Speaker thank you for the opportunity to make a second contribution to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Bill (No 2). First of all can I say on the contribution we've just received from Stuart Nash that we're not here debating Fonterra's monopoly position as he said. We're actually here debating the fact that there is now so much competition in the South Island market particularly—in fact 24 percent of the farmers now supply a company other than Fonterra—and that is the reason this legislation has to be before the House today. There is no monopoly for Fonterra. There was at the time that the legislation was first passed when they collected 96 percent of the milk that was produced within New Zealand. Those days are gone Mr Nash and that's a good thing.While Mr Nash claims full credit for the Labour Government for passing the legislation in 2001 as I pointed out in an earlier contribution I made the work was actually done for a long period of time by the former Government which was then not re-elected at the end of 1999. The process of the amalgamation of two major co-ops took probably four or five years. So yes Labour can claim that they finally passed the legislation—Hon Damien O'Connor: National didn't want to do it though.Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: Oh Damien O'Connor interjects that National didn't want to do it. I sat with the likes of John Roadley and with Henry van der Heyden on numerous meetings that went on for many many hours chaired by the Rt Hon Bill Birch who did a stunning job in doing the initial work to get this to conception. For Labour to deny the history of this repeatedly is just wrong.Hon Damien O'Connor: That's why you didn't do it because you couldn't work it out.Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: Oh the Hon Damien O'Connor says we couldn't do it because we couldn't work it out. It was handed to them on a platter. The only thing that hasn't been worked out by the Labour Government is the mess we find ourselves in tonight when that Minister of Agriculture has sat on this issue since he became the Minister in October last year five months ago—hasn't been prepared to do anything about it until he finally finds he's embarrassed by an expiry date which means he's got to bring this to the House and put the House into urgency. That urgency was supported tonight by the Green Party and when the great late Rod Donald sat in this House as the sort of first member of the Green Party he used to talk and rail against the use of urgency. It shouldn't be happening. The farmers of the South Island have a right to have a say on this piece of legislation by going to a select committee.Hon Damien O'Connor: And they will.Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: Damien O'Connor just interjected and said They will." Well I need to point out to Damien O'Connor that we're doing the first reading the second reading the committee stage and then the third reading. There is no chance—no chance—Damien O'Connor and I would have thought for a person that's been around this House for so long he'd actually understand the legislative process. Now I know he took the first contribution for the second reading debate and he lasted about two minutes and 15 seconds with his contribution. It may be because he doesn't understand the significance of this legislation and if that is the case he should stand by and let somebody else attempt to represent the primary sector of New Zealand—Hon Members: Stuart Nash did longer.Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: —because I—well I'm not sure that Stuart Nash has had a charming record either to be honest. But listen the point I want to make is we had a Labour Government that's been talking about honest and transparent Government. It sounded great. I remember the Prime Minister - elect talking about how this Government will be open and transparent. So what the Minister has done is he's rushing this legislation through as quickly as he can evidenced by his two-minute 15-second call earlier in the second reading and then he talks about a review of the dairy industry. Well if he's going to have a review of the dairy industry give us tonight the terms of reference because the Hon Damien O'Connor has been absolutely silent tonight on the terms of reference. Now the Hon Meka Whaitiri got a bit more loose with her tongue and said it would be comprehensive. So that's all we know and I suspect that my colleague the Hon David Bennett is absolutely right that in the terms of reference we're going to see the chance of the Green influence on the Labour - Green - New Zealand First Government and they're going to move this into environmental issues.Hon David Bennett: It's here—it's written.Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: David Bennett says it's already written down on paper. I haven't seen that yet but I think if that's the case then Damien O'Connor has the opportunity to stand in this House and tell this House what's going on.As I said earlier I think Fonterra is a great company. I'm fully supportive of Fonterra. I don't think it's performed to the expectations they said they would when they were first put together. They gave us a significant outlook on where the company could take the New Zealand dairy industry to. They've got part-way there. They haven't done it perfectly but as I said in my first reading contribution they are the envy of many of the dairy producers around the world for the way they operate. They haven't done it perfectly but they've done it pretty well. And now if the Labour - Green - New Zealand First Government proposes a review then why can't we know what that review will encompass? It's a simple question—Hon Members: New Zealand First selling out farmers.Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: Well I don't rely on New Zealand First. They went round the election campaign saying they were the friends of the farmers representing rural New Zealand and then the first thing they did in the coalition discussions was they signed up with the Greens—yeah? So what New Zealand farmer has any trust at all in the Rt Hon Winston Peters and the New Zealand First Party? Now Mr Patterson over there is dumbfounded. He's silent and I'm not the least bit surprised because I listened to his contribution earlier and he made that man Richard Prosser look good. I can tell Mr Patterson having watched the way the New Zealand First Party operates that he'll have to lift his game otherwise he'll get a call from the leader in the not too distant future and it will be a "DCM"—don't come Monday—because that's the way the New Zealand First leader operates and that's why we've got that waka-jumping bill before the House.We're here today because when Fonterra was established we wanted to make sure that we had competition in the industry. At the time it was established 96 percent of all milk collected in this country went to one company and that worried me because if it became a fat inefficient organisation certainly the dairy farmers of New Zealand—and at that stage there were about 12000—suffered but it was far more important than that. This is our biggest export-earning industry in this country. So we set up an arrangement in the DIRA legislation Dairy Industry Restructuring Act which ensured that competition developed to the extent that we're here in urgency tonight because the Hon Damien O'Connor has ignored the fact that we've now triggered the limits put in for the South Island level of competition.Around 24 percent of all milk collected in the South Island doesn't go to Fonterra and that Mr O'Connor is a choice the producers make. They look at the likes of Synlait they look at Oceania Dairy they look at Westland Cooperative Dairy and a number of others and they decide that they'll send their milk somewhere else for various reasons. Now it may be around the capital structure of Fonterra it may be around the price for milk solids but what this legislation did—which I had a significant involvement as a junior Associate Minister in the late 90s in bringing together and introducing to this House—was a complete transformation of the dairy industry where we set up an industry that was competitive.The reason we are here tonight is because that competition threshold for the South Island has now been met. So I say to Mr O'Connor if you're going to have a review because you've spent the last nine years dreaming about the future of the industry rather than getting anything concrete tell us tonight the terms of reference of that proposed review."