O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm more than happy to answer some of the questions here. The member who's new to the portfolio and new to farming—I'm happy to give him some advice. What has got us to where we are now—and we are one of the proudest and most innovative and efficient farming countries in the world—won't be enough to get us to where we need to go. And if he hasn't noticed and he should have as a former trade Minister as you get out around the world there are different requirements being imposed upon us and different expectations from consumers now than there were even five years ago because the issues of climate change are now very acute. Be it fires and droughts around the world or be it massive floods people are aware that we all have to do our bit while producing food to feed the world. Aside from the fact that we waste one-third of all the food that we produce in the world we in this country are efficient but we are still challenged by some of those things.His first question was: what did I do to advocate for farming. Well he can go back many many years to look at my advocacy for farmers not just now but actually farmers for the future because if we don't have enough young people coming in to farming to learn the skills to acquire the capital to take over then the older farmers—and there are quite a few of them—won't be able to sell their farms on to those other farmers. I have staunchly advocated for the requirements for new sustainable farming systems and I will continue to do that.He asked another question regarding the costs on farmers. I acknowledge the war in Ukraine and global inflation has imposed in the last 12 months inflation on farming systems that is not sustainable. Thankfully those prices on fertiliser and fuel in particular are starting to come right back and that's great because I don't think that our farming systems no matter how good they are could sustain those for too long. We now have talk of dairy farmers requiring an $8 per kilogram of milk solids payment to break even. Well it's not because of—and I contest his claim that farmers are having to spend hours and hours in compliance costs for the Government. Well there are some for councils; there are some for their processing companies. There are more requirements coming from the market back on traceability—National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT). When we got into Government the previous National Government had ignored the value the importance of the NAIT system. And so when they delivered to this incoming Government not only Mycoplasma bovis as a disease and had done nothing about it—nothing—and delivered for us a NAIT system that was failed and broken we had to impose upon the farmers a bit more kind of discipline around NAIT and to get on with eradicating M. bovis. Now we've got almost to that point we have one farm. And I want to thank all of those farmers and thank all the people in the Ministry for Primary Industries and across this country who have committed a lot to try and eradicate M. bovis. There are more costs on farmers there are more requirements because that's what the market consumers demand be they people at the supermarket shelf or be they customers like Nestlé the single biggest customer to the single biggest company in this country Fonterra. They are demanding of Fonterra and all their suppliers a whole lot more requirements. Can I just refer to—there were claims of 10000 consents. The kind of rhetoric and ranting that we saw when it came to what would be required for winter grazing. I think we've got about 100 consents or 200 consents that have been applied for a small number in reality. And even if there are other farmers that maybe need one and haven't applied the reality is that the clear signals that we sent from this Government to farmers about those market requirements that images of animals standing in half a metre of mud projected around the world are not good for our country and do not project the high standards that the vast majority of farmers in this country adhere to. Those farmers were saying Deal to those farmers who don't have proper winter grazing practice." Indeed we have. We've moved on and in fact we've put in place some clear guidelines and so that the number of consents applied for is minuscule compared to the number that were projected by the doomsdayers sayers and prayers and all the rest of them out there who said the sky was going to fall. And what I have to say is: $55 billion record exports from our primary producers. I'd like to acknowledge my colleagues in the Primary Production Committee who have provided this overview. And in fact we hear claims of parties wanting to know where money is spent in Government. Well I trust the Primary Production Committee—members from all parties they can ask any question they like about any area of expenditure here and they have and good on you to know where money is being spent. We don't need some kind of stupid system of receipts for every bit of each Government expenditure.Can I also acknowledge while I'm here my ministerial colleagues in the areas of forestry and fishing; my associates who have done an outstanding job to guide us in a time of so much change of so many climatic adverse events and new expectations from the markets. We are taking our primary sectors—the most important part of our economy—into a sustainable future not burying our heads in the sand like the previous National Government did when it came to agriculture."