Patterson Mark; Rurawhe AdrianMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): It is a pleasure for me to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support this National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill (No 2) to make sure that our primary biosecurity response and animal tracing programme is fit for purpose. Just picking up on some of the comments that were made by the previous speaker Todd Muller there has been a real effort within this Mycoplasma bovis biosecurity outbreak to depoliticise this because there was some squabbling at the start which wasn't doing our farmers any good. This was a significant outbreak and it was time for us to support our farmers not to play political games. So it's a little disappointing to see that reversing out a little bit this afternoon.There has been with this biosecurity outbreak a huge threat to our bovine agriculture sector about $20 billion or probably close to $25 billion between dairy and beef. We found that we had a National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) system that was found wanting. Frankly we had inherited a scheme that had been administered in benign neglect. Quite extraordinarily in terms of enforcement there had been one $150 fine up until that outbreak. That was the fact of the matter. It had almost been totally unenforced. We heard through the select committee process that non-compliance of the NAIT system could have been as high as 50 percent and boy have we paid that price. The cost of dealing with this Mycoplasma bovis outbreak which has been complicated incredibly by a lack of ability to trace animals as was intended and is actually the purpose of the scheme has cost us—we have allocated $900 million to that response. If there was ever an example of this Government getting behind our farmers and sitting alongside our farmers that has got to be it. For those just tuned in or listening in on radio the previous bill was the Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2) another example of this Government getting beside its farmers.So it's absolutely imperative that we have a system that works well. Cattle particularly beef cattle are traded heavily. There is a lot of movement of cattle. We have to have an efficient system and one of the key failings of the system is the tags. The tags often come out and how that is dealt with is key to making sure that the system stays updated and accurate. One of the core issues is with unsafe animals and through this process we have a new category unsafe to tag". It was previously "impractical to tag" and there is a difference there because I think what was happening—and with that 50 percent non-compliance there was a portion of PICAs or persons in charge of an animal who just weren't really bothered. There was no enforcement; there was "just put the animals on the truck and be done with it". We have tightened that up considerably and made "unsafe to tag" as the threshold.It's important that that threshold remains because for those of us that do live in rural New Zealand and do work on farms and have had a lot of experience in putting stock cattle on trucks there are some cattle that are just dangerous. They need to get on a truck and they need to go to the works. That's the place for them to be but it is a health and safety matter for those farmers to not have to take their own health into their own hands by being absolutely obligated to have a tag in the ear. But we have to have that threshold high so that it is a genuinely unsafe animal—does have to be visibly rattled—and we are looking to have that review in five years to make sure that that system has not been taken advantage of as it had potentially been previously.The other thing I think it does just talking about the non-compliance before and that single $150 fine—what we had previously was that non-tagging of an animal was $150. That is now $400 under these proposals. Non-registration of an animal has gone up from $300 to $800. Of course if this gets to court if it's a particularly egregious case that gets to court it was $10000 for an individual farmer family farmer; that has gone up to $100000 and $20000 for a corporate has gone up to $200000. So this bill now has teeth.There's been quite a lot of discussion around the privacy and who has the access to the information or who owns the information and that's been traversed by previous speakers. I guess my comment on that would be how the Government let this key information get into private hands in the first place. We're not here to relitigate that. We're here to work out how we can make the best of a situation that probably should not have been. We did take on a lot of advice and we did land in a place that made the information more available to the Minister so that the data can be available to the likes of the police or territorial authorities and it has clarified some of those provisions. It exempts animal compliance officers who essentially could have been classified as PICAs or persons in charge of an animal if they are rounding up stray animals. It authorises the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to access NAIT data.Of course this is a unique situation where this data is held by essentially a private company. The Minister for Biosecurity did say within his contribution that in real time responding to a genuinely significant biosecurity outbreak the lack of access to that information by him as a Minister had impeded the response of MPI. So it's now much clearer who can apply to access this data and we did thrash that out through the select committee process. It was potentially a little bit loose. We know where the chain of command is now and it's much clearer who has access.The work around the transport operators: as the bill was originally introduced the transport operators were going to be caught up in this and they're not totally exonerated but they do have the ability to contract out or get a declaration from the PICA that the animals are tagged as they should be to be legally compliant. So it doesn't totally exonerate the transport operator but it does take them out of full responsibility because essentially it's not them that will not have tagged the animals. But what we found in real time is if those animals are getting on a truck not tagged the transport operators have often known about this and not had any power to intervene and make sure. So there's an extra level of accountability for the PICAs in terms of not wanting to put their transport operators in a position of vulnerability. I would say it is credit to the farmers and through the select committee process—Miles Anderson from Federated Farmers was mentioned—they said "It is up to us. It's up to us as farmers to take responsibility for our animals and we don't want the transport operators to be unintentionally captured in this." So that is to the credit of farmers and farming organisations that they are taking full responsibility.So this is an evolving process I think this NAIT process. I personally believe that we have to look to some alternative technologies. I think the tags are not—you know that's where it breaks down a lot of the time when the tags come out and they do come out; probably in my experience 10 to 15 percent of them will come out in the lifetime an animal. So that's a significant issue and we do have to keep evolving the system but this is a step in the right direction. The Primary Production Committee has worked through the original bill well improved the bill and New Zealand First believe this is a further step in the right direction as we evolve our ability to respond to major biosecurity outbreaks. So we continue to support this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Can I just ask members on both sides of the House to remove the boxes and party files from their desks please—Mr McAnulty and Mr Guy."