O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm happy to answer a few of the queries. I appreciate the oratory skills of Mr Brownlee but I'm not sure I appreciate all the points that he's raised. I guess trying to overplay what we're trying to do here probably might raise some concern with farmers but is completely without justification.What we are trying to do here is align the powers under the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) Act to be equivalent to those under the Search and Surveillance Act—no more no less: that is we're wanting to assist NAIT officers and Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) people who are going in firstly under the powers of checking compliance whether warrantless entry—there's a warranted entry and a warrantless one. The warrantless one is the one that we're looking at to ensure that if they are moving not into a house not into a marae but into a building on a farm to check to ensure that compliance with the NAIT Act is in fact occurring they have the ability to I guess look around see what might be going on—Hon Amy Adams: They have that now.Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: —and lawfully seize anything that might assist them—lawfully seize.Now the member sitting in the front there understands full well—better than I do—what lawful seizure" means in case law in precedent. If we are to make any adjustments to that that has huge ramifications not just across the Search and Surveillance Act but actually in many other Acts. What we're not attempting to do is make any major change. In fact these are just technical changes which is why we are not going to select committee because we will have probably early next year another piece of legislation that legitimately goes through more changes of policy under NAIT and under biosecurity.I would have thought that actually the National Party the former Government would have been more helpful and conciliatory in this whole process because without going and digging too deep I think the former Minister Mr Carter has identified a few of the problems himself—that is that he got the NAIT regime in front of the select committee asked questions and wasn't comforted. Well I have to say I've not been comforted at all while I've been Minister. Firstly we've had a focus on eradication of M. bovis and then improvement of the NAIT system. Then in terms of changes to NAIT Ltd or to Operational Solutions for Primary Industries New Zealand (OSPRI) those things are evolving. Can I just say that I'm happy. I would've rather had them happen more quickly but a former colleague of theirs has now gone to London. He was in charge of NAIT and OSPRI and we are seeing the change at a CEO level. I think those things will help us move forward and the faster the better—no more said in that area.Can I just work through a couple of the other issues. The urgency is because we want these changes to occur as quickly as possible. We've been working systematically through the challenges of M. bovis including the need to upgrade NAIT to ensure that the investigations under way do deliver an outcome. The question I think from Mr Carter is "Will anyone be prosecuted?" Yes I can assure him of that. In spite of I guess the technical glitches that we've had in seizing information and getting the right evidence the changes that we're putting through here will assist in that in the future.One thing that the previous Government never did—or NAIT or OSPRI; call it what you like—is they never sent clear messages to farmers that they should adhere to this. The previous speaker Mr Carter says "Well should all stock movements be recorded?" And he quite clearly I guess exposed what has been the problem: that being apologetic and trying to make excuses for farmers not to do things as the previous Government did hasn't helped here. So I'll be upfront and say yes all movements should be recorded—absolutely—because we're paying $886 million or maybe more to try and eradicate M. bovis. That would've cost us hundreds of millions of dollars less if we'd had a proper operating NAIT system—fact. So yes we will ask farmers to record all movement. Yes we will change the NAIT system to make it more effective and efficient because it's been clunky and the changes that most speakers are referring to should've happened under the previous Government.We're getting on and doing it and I know that Opposition members understand the need for us to do that. As we've moved forward and exposed some of the deficiencies we're going to make the changes. So we can have some assistance and move this through as quickly as possible so that NAIT officers and MPI officials as well can do their jobs properly because if they can't then we're likely to end up with hundreds of millions of dollars of expenditure through other biosecurity incursions.Can I just refer to a couple of other questions around lifestylers moving stock between blocks. Yes you should record those movements because as with many of the unfortunate farmers who are caught up in the M. bovis situation at the moment some of them have different blocks of land. Some of them have been able to work with MPI and identify different blocks and different management regimes and that means that not all the animals off all their farms have then had to be killed—just the ones off clearly identified blocks. If we'd had better traceability around all of those movements other farmers may not have had to kill all their animals—the point being we need identification and NAIT numbers connected to land blocks we need to have all movements recorded and we need to have all animals recorded. These things have not been happening and we're trying to move through to make sure that they do.One of the signals that farmers should clearly have is that if they don't adhere to the system and there's a suspicion that they're not adhering to it then officers can come on to their property and investigate properly. That's the basis of good law: implementation. The fact that it hasn't occurred under the previous five years is not our fault. I have to say that we are doing that now. It hasn't happened in the past and what we're trying to do is rectify that. I guess the member—and there'll be lots of speeches no doubt; righteous speeches on all sorts of areas of overreach etc. The bottom line is I think most of the members of the Opposition know that we've got to do this. We've got to do it quickly to make sure that the NAIT system operates and we will have the ability to scrutinise the areas of policy change in the select committee when the new bill is brought before this House.Rt Hon David Carter: When?Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: What we're wanting to do—it'll be next year early next year. But can I say that we as a Government are wanting to bring in good law and ensure that we have a good outcome from that law. The fact that we are having to debate issues around the NAIT Act is because the NAIT Act passed by the previous Government left a whole lot of holes exposed and in part contributed to the frustration and the cost that we have in running the M. bovis eradication programme.We're trying to move forward here and so I'd appreciate it if the Opposition could see their way through to run a better NAIT system to have better levels of compliance and to have more cooperation. We'd welcome that. Otherwise I'm happy to answer any of the questions raised here."