McAnulty KieranKIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Thank you very much Madam Chairperson Williams. It is indeed a great honour to stand here to speak to this bill. I have been waiting for quite some time but on that fact I'm not surprised because this is a very important bill. It seems today if we were to look at just what's on offer the Labour Party is the only party that's taking this bill seriously. This bill provides certainty for the industry. It is a very small and very specific bill but it is a bill that's important and will provide certainty not only to the industry as a whole but to those individual players those farmers and those who work within the industry—just like my father who's a dairy shed inspector and has been for 40 years. The fact is—Rt Hon David Carter: Vested interest. KIERAN McANULTY: Oh yeah—well OK. The point here is that this Government—the Labour Government—wants to give New Zealanders the opportunity to hear what it is we're proposing here and what it is that this bill is going to do. You would think that the Opposition would take the opportunity available to it and want to speak on it. In fact all we have seen in the last half an hour from the contributions of a former Speaker of the House is to act the goat cross the floor and pass a piece of paper to a speaker—which I found to be highly inappropriate—and then stand up and at that point I thought Here we go. Finally the National Party will say something." but all it was was a closure motion. I wonder why that may be. Perhaps it's because this bill or something very similar was available to be discussed and implemented in March of last year. Did they do anything with it? Hon Members: No. KIERAN McANULTY: No. No they fluffed about. They fluffed about for two potential reasons: one they wanted to avoid taking responsibility—they wanted to actually avoid having this debate—or two because they couldn't be bothered. They ran out of time. And here the only contributions that we saw on this bill from the National Party last night were criticisms of it being considered under urgency. Perhaps if the opportunity was taken at the time there wouldn't be the need for urgency. Now talking specifically to the purpose of this bill I want to highlight why we wouldn't just leave it and let the expiration date that this bill proposes to push out come into force. When the original Act was passed in 2001 Fonterra had a dominant position in the market by the nature of its establishment. The main purpose of the original Act was to ensure that that dominance until sufficient competition emerged within the market still allowed for those smaller or alternative contributors to the industry to actually be there. We wanted to ensure a competitive market. You would think given the founding principles of the National Party that they would want to take the opportunity to discuss why it is so important to ensure competition in the market or is that not what the National Party stands for? Kiritapu Allan: We thought so. KIERAN McANULTY: We thought so of course. But obviously not today. This bill gives certainty to the market because it pushes out what would have been the expiry date of May this year and in doing so it provides this Government the time to consider a broad review of the industry—something that is good practice particularly when there hasn't been one in an industry that has seen significant growth over the last couple of decades. It also gives those producers in the South Island that are worried about their particular farm and the contract that they have—without this expiration date being pushed out they have no certainty within their contract of supply. They could live beyond any arbitrary boundary and miss out on what was previously a guaranteed contract because it is not preserved in legislation. So I'm pleased to be able to be part of a Government that is actually wanting to take the initiative that does take the dairy industry seriously and that is therefore putting this forward to the House so that no more are those within the industry showing concern. But touching on the key provisions that are being maintained here there are three in particular."