Guy Nathan: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Guy Nathan: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8619. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries) 
: 
 It is an opportunity for me to respond to the member Damien O’Connor who has just resumed his seat because I think that Mr O’Connor wants to play politics with what is a very serious issue. Actually I challenge Mr O’Connor as to whether he has actually read the whole report or just read the executive summary. If Mr O’Connor has read the whole report he will realise that the Auditor-General actually said that we have got a pretty good system and there are seven recommendations that I and the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries have said we will take on board. What Mr O’Connor fails to recognise—what he fails to recognise—is that we do have a world-class biosecurity system. 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: No we don’t. 
Hon NATHAN GUY 
: Yes we do. The Auditor-General was sitting in the room when we ran the foot-and-mouth exercise called Exercise Taurus last year and as a result of that exercise we are adopting a lot of the learnings from that unlike when that member was last in Government. When that member was last in Government it is worthwhile noting that it ran a simulation on foot-and-mouth. What was interesting was that those recommendations just sat on the shelf. The 2005 recommendations under Labour from running a foot-and-mouth disease exercise were not even adopted. They were not even adopted. How dare that member come down into this Chamber and say that we are sitting on our hands? Because that is not true. We will take these recommendations. We will take them seriously. I say to the member that this is my No. 1 priority—biosecurity. How dare that member come in here and say that we are not prepared? 
I want to raise another issue with him and that is about capability. Last year the Ministry for Primary Industries employed an extra 45 new quarantine inspectors 11 more were recruited in January this year seven detector dog handlers were recruited as well and there are a further four—11 new detector dogs have graduated as well. We take our biosecurity and our border control extremely seriously. 
Importantly what I want to say is that right now the country is under a pretty severe state of drought and it is good that it has rained. It is fantastic. What it will do this rainfall is a couple of things. One it will lift the spirits of rural communities. The second thing is that we will get pasture growing as well which is hugely important. We do not have a shortage of rainfall in this country. We have a storage issue. We need to store rain in the winter months and utilise it in the summer months. It is good for our economic growth. It is good for our environment. It is pretty simple. But when you look at Labour I am pretty sure it is opposed. Here is a question for Damien O’Connor. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: No no. 
Hon NATHAN GUY 
: Does Damien O’Connor support irrigation schemes or not? 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: You answer the questions Minister. 
Hon NATHAN GUY 
: He cannot answer it. Damien O’Connor is silent because here is what his finance spokesman David Parker said recently: “its ill-considered subsidies that are coming from the taxpayer dollar to irrigation schemes”. That is what Labour thinks. So right now the country is pretty much under a drought—although let us hope it is breaking—and Labour is not prepared to help rural regional communities invest in irrigation schemes unlike this Government. We have said: “Here is $80 million to kick-start some of these regional irrigation schemes.” We would like to see that go to $400 million. We believe we can increase the productivity and look after the environment better with these regional irrigation schemes. There are about 400000 hectares where we can lift our productivity and improve the water quality of our freshwater rivers yet Labour is not prepared to back rural New Zealand—shameful. 
What we are also debating right now out in our communities is a generational change in water and fresh water and also the Resource Management Act as well. This is the once-in-a-generation water reform that we are having pretty good dialogue about across New Zealand at the moment. I wish to acknowledge the Land and Water Forum which has worked hard on this issue over the last 4 years. It has done fantastic work and we need to acknowledge that. The biggest issue that we are talking about up and down New Zealand in terms of fresh water and storage is to do with water quality and water quantity. We are getting very very good feedback. 
Overall water is just one part of growing our economic development. We have a very ambitious target of increasing our exports from 30 percent to 40 percent of GDP by 2025. The primary industry of course we all know plays a huge part—72 percent of merchandise exports. We are a nation of around 4.5 million people and we feed about 40 million people around the world. We export to 160 markets. We are recognised here in New Zealand as a bit of a world leader in innovation and food safety standards. Indeed recently I have just been over to Latin America with the Prime Minister and a business delegation of about 25. It becomes very apparent that we are world leading in our food safety standards. We carefully manage the impacts of our production on the environment. We have a real emphasis on animal welfare as well and looking after our animals. And we have a world-class biosecurity system. 
If you think about where we have come from since the 1980s when we had those big reforms—and that is what happens when we get on the world stage; they want to learn from us what happened in the 1980s and how we adjusted—the important point is that now we are exporting the same amount of lamb meat as we did in the 1980s but from about half the number of sheep. When you get on the world stage they look down on little old New Zealand and think that we are fantastic with our innovation our technology and lifting our productivity. That is why this Government has invested in the Primary Growth Partnership. That is the Government investing side by side with industry. It has been hugely successful. There are 13 projects up and running as we speak and $650 million invested in collaboration with the Government and the industry. That has been extremely worthwhile. 
We think about the Latin American trip. What became hugely important to me when I got into places like Colombia where most of the countries have a huge amount of land that is undeveloped is that they are very keen to foster joint ventures and partnerships with New Zealand because they realise that we have this wealth of experience in innovation and technology. That is going to be the future. We already have a very close working relationship with Chile. Chile is pretty much a cousin of New Zealand. You think about Colombia when President Santos stands up and says they want to see a free-trade agreement with New Zealand. That is absolutely fantastic because of the huge potential for New Zealand in Latin America particularly in Colombia. What we have also signalled that we are keen to invest in in Colombia is $4 million with some aid money to get this technology and expertise to work with their farmers closely. The signal that I have got from Colombia is 150 of their farmers are keen to come down to New Zealand. We can showcase all of the good work that we do in our primary industries. 
 In conclusion New Zealand is extremely well placed on the world stage. It was a very successful trip to Latin America with some deliverables to come from those 25-odd business groups that travelled with us. They had something like 138 meetings and about 42 now have concrete leads that they can follow up to continue to work on joint ventures and partnerships with these countries of Latin America. 
I am very ambitious for the primary industries. We have got a world-class biosecurity system we will adopt the recommendations from the Auditor-General and we will continue to make improvements. This Government is backing rural New Zealand. This Government cares about rural New Zealand. Labour does not care because it does not back irrigation projects. The Greens do not care because they do not believe that irrigation projects are sustainable. Rural New Zealand knows that the Greens and Labour coming together with New Zealand First will mean a capital gains tax and an enlarged emissions trading scheme that will cripple business. This National Government supported by ACT and United Future supports rural communities. The other side of the Chamber I am embarrassed to say does not.