Eckhoff Gerrard: Estimates Debate —  
Eckhoff Gerrard: Estimates Debate —  
[Volume:610;Page:7251] 
GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I am sure the Minister in the chair Mr Hodgson will not be surprised when he knows that I wish to focus my comments on the climate change appropriation which is about $27.5 million. Yesterday the Minister of Agriculture Jim Sutton stood in this Chamber and said that climate change is the biggest issue facing this world of ours. Well I suspect that back in 1970 after listening to advice from some of the science community parliamentarians throughout the world stood in their various Parliaments and said that global cooling was the greatest environmental threat facing the world and that there was a need for carbon dioxide. Here we are 30 years later saying that global warming is the problem not global cooling. 
New Zealand’s contribution to the problem comes from our livestock which emit methane through belching. Of course those in the science community will tell us that methane breaks down in a relatively short space of time into carbon dioxide which is what the plants on our farms and the trees etc. throughout New Zealand ingest and they emit oxygen. It is actually quite a simple and almost closed cycle. But in answer to a question of mine during question time today the Minister in the chair said that only the livestock in this country are to be taxed because it is human-induced waste or methane that is the real problem. 
Yes one could say that sheep cattle and goats on our farms do emit methane but according to this Minister landfills which we have from one end of this country to the other are not human induced. Pardon? Landfills are a natural phenomenon? Surely a landfill is human induced; it is human produced; indeed it is never reduced. A landfill is a direct result of human habitation. That is why the farmers of this country—almost to a man or indeed to a woman—are united in their attitude that this tax is discriminatory. We are going to whack the farmers but leave urban New Zealand alone. Thirty-five percent of the land in this country is locked up in the conservation estate—land on which methane is being emitted from rotting vegetation on a regular basis. 
If the Government were totally committed to this concept—if it does in fact see this problem as one of the greatest facing the world then I would have thought that a total appropriation of $27.5 million was peanuts. When we break down this amount we see that only $5.4 million is being spent on tangible outcomes and the rest—about $22.1 million—is being spent on monitoring advice and departmental outputs. That is the true response this Government has to climate change. 
However as a practising farmer I would still like to draw this issue to the Minister’s attention. We are told that this tax is not a tax that it is a levy on ruminant research to reduce methane emissions. I respect this Minister. He is a man of science a former vet and he understands these things. I asked the Minister what is this commercial product called BioStart? What is a product called Biolab? There are other products called Ruminant Enzyme ProDairy; Nutrimol and there is even good old Apple Cider. All of those products are designed to help microbes in the rumen break down more rapidly the grass clover and other crops that animals ingest. The impact of that is to enable the lamb sheep cow or goat to convert grass into protein much more quickly. Those animals are not sitting down chewing their cud like the front bench of this Labour Government does on a regular basis; they are converting that protein more rapidly into their wool milk or meat. 
Those products have been on the market for many years. I personally have drenched hundreds of thousands of sheep over the years with a product called Apple Cider and I have used Biolab and BioStart pretty regularly as well. All of which in a roundabout way—not directly I admit—is reducing methane emissions from my livestock. Every other farmer who uses those products—and they are doing so in an increasing way—is reducing methane because the metabolism of the animal is helped remarkably by those products and the end result is less methane. So to turn to the farming community and say that there is no research in that area and no products to reduce methane is simply wrong. 
I have also spoken to—and I invite the Minister to speak to—the mercantile and crop research companies that are found from one end of this country to the other. They tell me that they are spending in round figures in an accumulative way around $25 million on better grasses better clovers and of course better fodder crops to enable a lamb for example to go in round figures from an average weight of about 13 kilograms when it was killed a decade ago to about 17 kilograms today. That is a direct result of the research that has gone on in this country enabling the animal to convert grass to protein so much more rapidly. An indirect contribution I would suspect is to ensure that that conversion is made more rapidly reducing the methane emissions that cows produce when they chew their cud. That is one of the things that the farming community is so upset about because there is no other industry that thirsts more for knowledge or opportunity than the farming industry. One has only to look at places like Mystery Creek where farmers in droves go looking for new technology. If there was one product or one way that would increase our production and therefore our bottom lines it would be grasped and welcomed by the entire farming community. 
But that community knows that it is being put upon by this so-called research levy. It is unjustified and it was not imposed as a result of consultation. Every farmer in this country would be outraged if the Government told him or her to turn up in the middle of winter at a quarter to 10 in the morning and it would consult them. If most farmers could possibly have done that they would have attended but they have a duty to feed their livestock at that time of the morning. To say that the Government consulted by making itself available at 10 o’clock in the morning at Invermay or wherever is insulting to say the very least. All those things together make this industry of mine—the agricultural industry the livestock farmers in this country—absolutely outraged that the Minister or this Government would say that we are not doing anything. We are pulling our weight. 
The Minister in his wisdom decided to put a moratorium on aquaculture marine areas. He would wait and see what happened as a result of the outcome of the foreshore and seabed situation. After the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification put forward its view that we should proceed cautiously the Government rightly or wrongly decided that it would wait and see what happened. It would put on a moratorium and then wait for a period and see whether things worked out the way it wanted them to. So I put this question to the Government: why do we not do that with Kyoto? Why do we not wait and see? Increasing evidence is being put forward by internationally renowned scientists—and I have articles flooding in constantly on that very subject—that says no to the global warming concept.