Guy Nathan: Address in ReplyText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGuy Nathan: Address in Reply[Sitting date: 28 October 2014. Volume:701;Page:267. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries):Can I take a moment to welcome all the new members to Parliament. Can I congratulate the National Party on returning back into Government after the strong leadership and campaign by our fantastic Prime Minister the Rt Hon John Key. Can I also acknowledge the 14 new National MPs who have come in. On this side of the House we have certainly refreshed and rejuvenated our caucus. Welcome to them. We have already seen the strength and depth of the National Party caucus through some fantastic maiden speeches being delivered. There are 14 new MPs on this side of the House. I think across the whole of the rest of the House there are 10 new MPs and I welcome them.Can I also acknowledge the Speakers as well. Mr Borrows can I acknowledge you in your new role. Can I acknowledge the Hon Trevor Mallard Lindsay Tisch and importantly the Rt Hon David Carter who is going to do a fantastic job as he proved he could do over the term of the previous Parliament.While I am in a mood of congratulations can I congratulate the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and especially the Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully on securing our nomination and our place at the top table of the United Nations Security Council. That is a fantastic result for a small country down here in the South Pacific New Zealand. Well done to all the officials who have done a fantastic job in securing a seat at the top table in New York. I know it will bring very tangible benefits for the New Zealand Government for the next 2 years when we begin at the top table early next year.Can I also address the Speech from the Throne. It is hugely important for the direction of New Zealand and hugely important to outline the work programme for the John Key Government into the next 3 years. What you heard from the Speech from the Throne was the importance of the primary sector for the New Zealand economy and also getting back to the election campaign how rural and provincial New Zealand back the National Party. What we heard in the Speech from the Throne was that we are going to have a relentless focus on returning to surplus and that we are also going to aim to reduce Crown debt to 20 percent of GDP by 2020.The Speech from the Throne talked about a real focus on trade. It is great that the Minister of Trade the Hon Tim Groser has just come back from a ministerial meeting in Australia over the weekend. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is moving in the right direction—maybe it is not moving quite as quickly as those of us on this side of the House would like but it is making solid progress. Hopefully in the early part of 2015 we can see some even greater progress. We know that that is vitally important in opening up new markets for our exporters. What is also going to be important is landing a free-trade agreement with Korea and the Gulf States as well and many other countries. We should also acknowledge the focus that New Zealand Trade and Enterprise the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have on enlarging our international footprint to make sure that we have got the right offices in the right places to open up new opportunities for our exporters.Also the Speech from the Throne focused on investment into research and development. The challenge for industry and for businesses in New Zealand is to continue to invest in research and development. We are currently at about half a percent of GDP and we want to focus and make sure that we can extend that to 1 percent by 2018.We have also got a focus on food safety and biosecurity. The Speech from the Throne talked about the Food Safety Science and Research Centre which is going to be one of the important things that came out of the Fonterra whey protein concentrate ministerial inquiry last year. We have also got a real focus on Primary Growth Partnership programmes—there are 16 of them under way delivering value right across the primary sector value chain. We have a real focus also on infrastructure. That is to do with roading that is to do with rural broadband and that is to do with irrigation.If we think about roading let us think about the tangible benefits in my electorate of the Kapiti Expressway a project that across the Parliament Labour and the Greens have opposed all the way. It is a road that is investing $630 million into my region. It is a road that is going to connect communities. Already we are seeing 400 jobs created and it will grow to 1000. So when our opponents stand up and say that we are doing nothing for the regions and nothing to create jobs well here is a classic example. It was fantastic during the campaign to turn the sod with the Prime Minister on Transmission Gully; a project that has been on the cards—hot cold and lukewarm—for decades. Now we have a Government with the guts and vision to build Transmission Gully which is going to be vitally important for the Wellington region.Now we need to focus specifically on connectivity for our rural and provincial towns and communities. That is why it is fantastic that $150 million is going to be rolled out on increasing our mobile coverage and also on rolling out rural broadband because we know that our rural communities are the powerhouse of the New Zealand economy. They need to be able to connect with consumers and customers around the world and it is frustrating when they cannot do that so we are backing rural and provincial New Zealand. In the last couple of years since I have been Minister we have been through periods of drought and we know that water storage is hugely important for the most productive part of the New Zealand economy and that is the primary sector. We do not have a shortage of water in this country; it just falls at the wrong time in the wrong place. We collect and store only about 2 percent of the water that falls in this country. That is why the Government is investing $120 million in the Crown Irrigation Investments company to kickstart these regional water storage projects. We know that they are going to help to grow our exports. We know there are about 400000 hectares of land in New Zealand that could be under irrigation that are not currently. We know that it is also vitally important for the environment that you can maintain summer water flows and that is good for the aquatic and marine life.There is also going to be a real focus on water quality because we have brought in national standards for freshwater—bottom lines—and also we have in the campaign said that we are going to bring in a policy that is going to mean that dairy farmers will need to ensure that their cattle are excluded from waterways by 1 July 2017. We need to acknowledge that our dairy farmers in New Zealand have come a long way. They have fenced 22500 kilometres so far which is fantastic and we have got just a little bit more to go. We have also indicated that we are going to invest $100 million in a voluntary buy-back of significant land near waterways of significance. That is going to be done on a voluntary basis with the landowner. We need to acknowledge the fact that farmers in my opinion are environmentalists. They want to ensure they are leaving their farms and their land to their children and grandchildren in a better place than when they took them over.We are also going to have a focus on making sure that we do the Resource Management Act reform that we have talked about. I need to acknowledge we have done a fair bit already but there is more to be done to ensure we give more certainty timeliness and cost-effectiveness. We are also going to have a focus—as you heard from the previous speaker the Hon Maggie Barry—on the ocean’s environment and some of that touches on the area that I look after which is fisheries. We are going to modernise the marine protected areas legislation which will allow us to create recreational fishing parks in the inner Hauraki and also in the Marlborough Sounds. We are going to focus on international research to do with greenhouse gases—and there is much more to do in terms of encouraging industry to come and plant more trees.Finally we are working closely with Minister Flavell the new Minister of Māori Development because a big part of the growth opportunities in the New Zealand primary sector is in Māori agribusiness and I will be working closely with him. There is a fantastic programme of work laid out for the next 3 years and I am really excited about it.