Prosser RichardRICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): Before I begin my contribution I would also like to add my voice to those who have given their congratulations to yourself Chairperson Borrows and appreciation for your services both in the Chairman's Chair and the Speaker's Chair and through the Primary Production Committee which I have very much enjoyed serving on with you and the chair of the committee and other members.New Zealand First has supported this bill up to this point and I do have to say now as my colleague Mr Damien O'Connor has referenced that in the dying stages of the 51st Parliament we are no longer supporting this bill. That is not a reflection on either the select committee process or the Minister whom I do genuinely respect and believe has morphed—as I made mention of earlier—from being National's attack dog to being really quite an amenable sort of a chap. I think he has been open to the representations that have been made to him.But I reference back to a comment that my colleague Darroch Ball made in an earlier speech tonight and also to something that Clare Curran said just before and it is about talking to the provinces. Our initial objection to this bill—because we did initially object to some parts of it—was that it did not include country-of-origin labelling. However when Steffan Browning managed to get his Consumers' Right to Know (Country of Origin of Food) Bill drawn from the ballot most of those objections went away.However since that time and since the select committee process we have been talking to people out in rural New Zealand out in the provinces out in the heartland. And like other people we do listen to what the provinces are saying. The message that we have been getting back from those people—and partly as a result of the Rt Hon Winston Peters' bus tour of this country where he has been speaking to people in real New Zealand—is that we have discovered that their feelings about where this bill goes are not in line with the approach that the Government appears to be taking.We fully understand that in the wake of the Fonterra botulism scare something did need to be done for operations of that scale and for operations of that scale that were primarily directed towards export. But we have also become very very cognisant of the fact that ordinary people out in middle New Zealand are very concerned about the repercussions the effects of legislation of this type on the ordinary activities of regular everyday New Zealanders.When we look at food plans as they are proposed and as they are suggested in this bill—food plans that are designed to apply to the likes of Fonterra the likes of Synlait the likes of the other big industrial export-orientated industries and the fact that every stage of a process has to be subject to a specified schedule of activity and has to be tested and has to be certified—that is fine for operations of a large scale. But when we start talking about small operators—and I will refer to Biddy and her cheese in Eketāhuna. It is people like Biddy and her cheese—the artisan producers the creative people the people who epitomise that innovative spirit that defines New Zealand. They are the ones who are going to suffer because of this bill and there needs to be a clear distinction made between the approach that is taken by the Government and by the regulatory authorities to the large industrial organisations—between that and the approach that is taken to the small artisan producer who does not export.It is worth mentioning that Biddy's cheese is ordered and purchased by Bellamy's to bring it here to Parliament when there are foreign delegations. Biddy has four cows on 10 acres near Eketāhuna and she makes some cheese. Biddy's turnover is about $50000 a year and her compliance costs under this bill are about $40000. I am afraid that the feedback that we have had not just from Biddy but from people out in the heartland is that the regime that puts them all in the same basket is just not going to cut it. I am not going to drag this process on because this bill is not going to pass through the course of this Parliament anyway but I do want to make the point that it is extremely important that the Government whatever its flavour does not lose sight of what it is that makes New Zealand New Zealand. Part of what makes New Zealand New Zealand is an appreciation of the innovative spirit of the artisans of the creators of the people out there in the heartland who make the primary industries what they are. For that reason because of the impositions that this bill puts upon them we cannot continue to support it.