Woolerton R Doug: Wine Bill — Second Reading Procedure In Committee Third Reading 
Woolerton R Doug: Wine Bill — Second Reading Procedure In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:612;Page:9481] 
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First will be supporting this bill. I want to thank the officials and I want to thank the select committee chair. He did speak about himself—I thought he would be far more modest than that—but I had it in mind to congratulate him. The bill was in some difficulty. It was looked on with not only distaste but also suspicion by the industry which thought it far too heavy-handed. It was at the chairman’s suggestion that Mr Philip Gregan worked alongside the officials and I thank the officials for accepting that and working with him in the manner they did. They were able to overcome the distrust and suspicion and I believe they worked for what we all want which is good law. 
Phil Heatley 
: Good wine. 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: And good wine as the interjector said. The industry sought this bill. It is concerned that things are tightening up. It faced tariffs and non-tariff barriers in countries it exports to. It was with those threats hanging over its head that the industry sought this bill and sought some regulation. The wine standards management plans take the place of several other Government impositions that the industry has had to fulfil so they are not the burden that one might at first glance expect them to be. 
The industry through Mr Philip Gregan—a man who must be admired and certainly is admired by myself; he has seven women and no other men on his staff and runs a fine operation as one would expect—in many cases came up with the ideas that have been put in this bill. Mr Gregan was the one who went back to his members and saw the changes through. He did not always agree with them and in the beginning he rarely agreed. I am sure the officials took him through them very carefully and they came out with a consensus. This made the work of the committee very easy even though we were working in a short time frame. 
My colleague Dail Jones hails from a winegrowing area and has many good friends among the Dalmatian community many of whom were founders—and we will not mention what that shows about Mr Dail Jones’ age—of the wine industry. He said in his first reading speech that changes needed to be made to the bill and those changes have by and large been made. Because he is a lawyer I will bow to his superior knowledge of technical matters and he will speak on those changes in the Committee stage of this bill. Suffice to say he had the wisdom to foresee what was wrong with the bill he talked of those changes in his speech and those changes have come to pass. 
Much has been made of the size of the wine industry but it pays to get it into perspective. It is still a small and emerging industry by world standards. It is still a small and emerging industry by dairy industry and meat industry standards. But it is a hugely important industry because it is undertaken in places where pastoral farming is shall we say more difficult than in other parts of New Zealand. It is a nice niche market that we can extract out of our land-based products in New Zealand. It is a niche market in the world market as well. It is very important from that perspective. 
It is important as an emerging market because it is seen as a sophisticated industry. I do not quite know how that comes to pass. I hail from the dairy industry and I think that is a hugely sophisticated industry. The wine industry sees itself as the epitome of sophistication. When we listened to Mr Gerry Eckhoff we almost felt that wine took on magical powers. I have been witness to wine producing magical powers in people in the dead of night but I have not been witness to that magical transformation in a stone cold sober member of a select committee. Mr Eckhoff knows a lot about this subject and we see from his minority report that he abhorred and saw as a sin that this industry should take on any form of regulation should have to conform to any standards whatsoever and should in any way have to be anything other than a magical product of the grape the mysteries of which nobody would even attempt to unravel. Mr Eckhoff’s minority report springs from that basis. It will be no surprise to you Madam Speaker or to members to hear me say I think his minority report is a load of rubbish. 
Hon Jim Sutton 
: An invasion of property rights. 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: That is right. He did not mention property rights as far as this issue was concerned but we heard a lot about boutique wineries in Otago. Whether that added to the debate was debatable. 
The wine industry is very important. It is an emerging industry. It is an industry that we have to nurture. It is an industry of the future. It is an industry that fits with all the agricultural products that we produce so well in this country. I commend the bill. I even want to say a kind word about my colleagues from the other parties. We worked for a common cause and I believe that we have come up with a very sensible bill that does away with a lot of overly bureaucratic nonsense. I believe that it will work well within the industry and I believe that it has the industry’s backing.