Eckhoff Gerrard: Hop Industry Restructuring Bill — Third Reading 
Eckhoff Gerrard: Hop Industry Restructuring Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:607;Page:4848] 
GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT NZ) 
: 
 How we reinvent history in this House! I have just listened to Mr Clayton Cosgrove who I believe is a former trade union official and who understands all about producer boards talking arrant nonsense. What he has just told us about the apple industry is arrant nonsense. I am here to pay tribute—but not to those on the left who have finally woken up to the benefits of deregulation. I believe that it is important in a third reading speech to render under Caesar that which is Caesar’s if I can put it like that. I believe that it is important to pay homage to people like John Luxton Owen Jennings and the free-thinkers of this primary industry of ours who many many years ago suffered the slings arrows and poisoned shafts of derision because they dared to challenge the conventional wisdom of control: “We must have a single-desk seller. We must have Government influence.” Those are the things that have constrained our country and have taken away the ability of New Zealand to be in the top 10 of the OECD. 
Mr David Parker mentioned in the  
Otago Daily Times 
 the other day that we desperately want to be back in the OECD—I do not think he used the word “desperately”. He thought that it might be OK in 50 years’ time. But I and the ACT party are desperate for New Zealand to get back into the top 10 of the OECD and this Hop Industry Restructuring Bill is in its own small way a step forward to what we believe is the only way to achieve it. That is by our tapping into the natural capital of our people—not of a producer board not necessarily of a cooperative not of a Government and not of some huge monolith but of individuals’ capacity to go out there and sell throughout the world a product they produce. Whether it is hops or apples or kiwifruit I do not mind. 
It is important to recognise at this time a certain irony in that yesterday we passed a bill constraining trade with those who wish to sell kiwifruit to Australia. It passed by 112 votes to 8. ACT did not support that bill and I believe we will revisit that situation in a very short space of time in order to do another restructuring. It will be a “Kiwifruit Industry Restructuring Bill” not a Hop Industry Restructuring Bill as it is today. 
As I said earlier it is important to reflect on the efforts of those in the House before us who fought tooth and nail to ensure that finally on this day in April 2003 the House finally understands just what those people were striving to achieve all that time ago. They were vilified for it either by industry leaders seeking to protect their own little patch or by those members in the House who did not understand what they were trying to do for that industry. It was not out of any self-interest that John Luxton Owen Jennings and others stood up and argued for deregulation. They did it in the interests of this country and of the industry they were talking about at the time. 
Again whether it was the meat apple or hop industry does not really matter. What matters is principle and the principle we must never lose sight of in this House is the right of individuals to sell their product either in a cooperative or as a single entity and to the exporter of their choice. What a wonderful word “choice” is. A word I put alongside it is the word “freedom”. That is a word we should be reflecting on very deeply in these days of troubled times in lands far away from New Zealand. These are very very fundamental issues. 
I take the Speaker’s point. He is indicating that I am perhaps moving away from the bill. But whether we are talking about a hop industry or about international relationships the words “freedom” and “índividual choice” are hugely important. This is a wonderful day for the House and it is a wonderful day for New Zealand when yet again just a little bit of deregulation finally has been chipped off the huge monolithic block.