Guy NathanHon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Madam Chair thank you very much for allowing me to take a call on the appropriations review of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) 2016-17. It's a great time to reflect on MPI and also the new Minister's performance Damien O'Connor—Hon Chris Hipkins: No it's not—no it's not.Hon NATHAN GUY: —over the last six months. Yes it is. It's been fascinating to see what has occurred because as Minister Hipkins knows this appropriations review is right up to the present day. And if he bothers to have a read of the report he will see a whole lot of things that I'm going to canvass that are very topical for rural communities right now. In particular I'll be talking about Mycoplasma bovis which is a cattle disease that is certainly impacting on a large amount of rural communities and farmers up and down the country. I'm sure that urban MP would be very keen to hear from this side of the House about the financial strain that it is impacting on those farmers up and down the country.What we feel on this side of the House is that while they have gone cap in hand to industry and got some money we feel that the compensation is still too slow. It seems to be a bureaucratic nightmare for farmers to have to work their way through this process. I stood up in the Parliament about five or six weeks ago when Minister O'Connor had a ministerial statement and I challenged the Minister and said that compensation should be fair and fast. We aren't seeing that now. What we are hearing in my office and in other rural electorates throughout the country is that farmers are still waiting and it's just not good enough. These are farming families that have made the right decision to support MPI and get on to cull and hopefully eradicate M. bovis for ever. But we are still waiting to see whether the Government will fully fund in Budget 2018 enough money to compensate these farmers. Let's wait and see. We only have a couple of weeks to know the answer to that.What's also interesting and it's referred to in the report from the Primary Production Committee is that the Minister when he came in to his new role—he decided and he campaigned on it that he wanted to smash apart the Ministry for Primary Industries and create stand alone entities. Well there was huge pushback from officials. They said It's a nonsense; we will lose our competent authority in international markets to do with food safety and biosecurity." So what happened there is that the officials wore down the Minister and the Minister got to a point—he was almost on his knees and had to save face and they came up with this rebranding exercise. So right now we're seeing four business entities rolled out from MPI costing $17 million. This money is coming from the Primary Growth Partnership fund.This is research and development money that's being raided from the front line of the primary sector—lifting value in our export markets innovation and technology—so that there can be a sticker on the door that says "BioSecurity New Zealand" or "Fisheries New Zealand" or "Forestry New Zealand". [Interruption] I can't see—and we wait "Matua Jones" for your little launch of your forestry thing; you'll probably get a hat with a pine tree on the top of it or maybe a mānuka seedling. We'll wait and see whether you can deliver on your aspirational goals and I'm unsure whether you will be able to do that or not.What's also been really interesting of late is to do with irrigation. This afternoon we saw that for the second time in just the last couple of weeks the Minister had to stand up and correct an answer. So he has misled Parliament now just on this one particular topic twice. The first one he stood up in an answer to me in the House and said "Yes I have met Crown Irrigation officials." Then he went back to his office and they scurried through the paperwork and he realised that he had met Crown Irrigation officials in Opposition—probably when they came to the Primary Production Committee—so he had to come into the House and correct that one. Then I peppered him with some more questions and asked him "Has Crown Irrigation requested a meeting with you?" He stood up in the House and said no. Well what we heard today was I think—and I've just got to clarify this—on three if not four occasions Crown Irrigation had written to the Minister requesting a meeting. The Minister didn't have the balls to get those officials in his office and say "I'm sorry; I'm going to raid $100 million from this fund." when farmers and growers rely on it.Particularly when we think about climate change this is all about mitigation and drought protection and food production security for rural communities actually supplying water through to some of our cities and towns. I heard on the weekend that Central Plains Water Ltd has kept two Lake Taupōs of water in the ground—isn't that a fantastic thing? That water then flows into Lake Ellesmere—Te Waihora. These are the benefits of water storage but we've had a raid on the primary sector on the irrigation fund—$100 million has been siphoned out of it because they can't make their numbers match up for Budget 2018.Also what's been really interesting is the Primary Sector Council has just been launched. Some great names in there great people—I know most of them—but when you look through those names there is not one dairy industry processing person. You would think for the size of the New Zealand dairy industry that you would have an industry representative—not you Madam Chair but you would think the Minister would choose to have a dairy industry representative—in that council. Well no; he has turned his back on the New Zealand dairy industry and I'll tell you why: it's because there's a review of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act. We still don't know terms of reference. We know it's going to take about 12 months and I'll bet your bottom dollar that's going to be about dealing to dairy farmers in New Zealand. It's going to be outside of contestability and competition in the New Zealand dairy industry which was how the Act was set up.So the review is going to go from here out to here. It's going to talk about things like land use a cow cap stocking rate emissions water quality and compaction. All of these things are well beyond the scope and the way the legislation was set up in this Parliament. That's why there is no dairy industry processor representative in the Primary Sector Council. That's why I don't think they are going to achieve a lot and I'm disappointed by that but I do wish them well. You would have thought that with nine years in Opposition the Minister wouldn't need a council to tell him what to do in his new role as Minister. What would have been really interesting is if the council had been brought in in the early times of the formation of the coalition. What would they have advised on irrigation? They would have said "Keep it. It's really important. It's improving the environment. We should have more of it." Six regions were declared in drought this summer. You would have thought the Government would want to help regional New Zealand and farmers and growers but no.What would the Primary Industries Council have recommended on an emissions trading scheme (ETS) charge and bringing in biological emissions—that's livestock—into the ETS? The Minister's already indicated at the East Coast Field Days a couple of weeks ago that farmers are going to be taxed to the tune of $5000. This is ahead of the Climate Change Commission doing their investigation and their report. So we already know that that's happening. So once again that's why there's no dairy representative. So in summary it's been a pretty pathetic start for the Minister of Agriculture in his role."