King Colin: State-Owned Enterprises (AgriQuality Limited and Asure New Zealand Limited) Bill — In Committee 
King Colin: State-Owned Enterprises (AgriQuality Limited and Asure New Zealand Limited) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10055] 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 Speaking to the State-Owned Enterprises (AgriQuality Limited and Asure New Zealand Limited) Bill I appreciate the Minister’s being so forthright. It is refreshing and quite candid of the Minister to come out and answer those questions. But I would like to say as we consider Part 1 that I think it would have been a lot better had the bill gone to the Primary Production Committee. I would like the Minister to tell us why it did not go to that committee because those organisations those State-owned enterprises in effect come before the Primary Production Committee and we as farmers find it quite challenging to be a third party to a lot of the debate. 
Really when we look at the bill we look between the lines—to borrow a line from Minister Maharey today—and when we see that the Government wishes to prevent this competition from occurring because it considers it would result in a net cost to the Crown we look a bit deeper into some of the activities that we know about in relation to AgriQuality Ltd. We want to see why in fact the Minister is trying to prevent a State-owned enterprise from going belly up because of the transactions it was involved in such as Target Pest and things like that. 
We do not have a lot of confidence around some of the explanations and trade-offs on redundancies that the Minister speaks about; we look at the side of the debate around meat companies. I pick up some challenges that the Minister likewise obviously picks up—for example that there has to be a measurement of costs going forward and the Minister talks about the fact that within 3 years there will be a Commerce Commission examination of costs going forward. That can all be forgotten about if the meat companies and the Commerce Commission agree to walk away from it. But I put it to the Minister as my learned colleague Eric Roy mentioned— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No he’s not learned; he’s not a lawyer. You’re only learned if you’re a lawyer. 
COLIN KING 
: Farmers are very learned. I want some assurance from the Minister that farmers are involved in that process as well because at the end of the day they pick up the charges around the costs of inspection slaughter and so on and so forth. Where Part 1 talks about animal materials and animal products it is talking about a very large industry—about a $5 billion or $6 billion industry. It is talking about carcasses being inspected for health reasons so that we give integrity and certainty to the quota markets we have and about materials which would possibly be by-products and exports into other countries that also need certification. 
But I come back to that original point: why did the bill not go to the Primary Production Committee? That committee does the financial reviews for these organisations. It would have dealt with the bill in a way that would have given comfort and certainty to the agricultural sector and to the farming community as a whole. Farmers whether or not we like to admit it are the biggest players in this field. On that basis I would really like the Minister to try to answer a couple of those questions especially the one about why the bill went to the Commerce Committee and not to the Primary Production Committee.