McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for the opportunity to speak on the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill. It gives me great pleasure to follow that very well-known farmer from Rongotai who introduced this topic today. I say that with very good reason because if you think about the contribution that Minister Finlayson has made to agriculture in New Zealand—in my electorate particularly where you have got Ngāti Apa and Atihau-Whanganui Incorporation partnering in a pretty amazing farming arrangement—he will be known in the future as someone who established some of New Zealand's great farms in his time as a Minister. So I think that it is very appropriate that he should introduce this bill.I want to go into the background of this bill a little bit because—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): He'll be calling you hayseeds".IAN McKELVIE: There are no hayseeds on him! I want to go into the background of this bill a little bit because there was a lot of discussion in the industry leading up to this bill coming to the House and some disagreement as to how this bill might I guess take place. As it turned out in the end it was pretty much unanimously supported by all participants and all those who commented on the bill and made submissions on it.I just want to go into the history of it a bit though because you have got to remember that we are a small country—not a very attractive market place. If our compliance and costs of entry are too high we are then precluded from accessing some of the best products in the world. We are a small but very diverse market for both veterinary medicines and agricultural compounds and many of these are multi-use. If the cost of application for that use is too great they will not come to New Zealand.The introduction of new generations of products into the New Zealand market is hugely important for us—and I am sure that will be gone into a little later. One of the reasons it is so important is it enables us to get rid of a large number of older products that no longer have a useful place in agriculture but are being used in places in the world simply because the new products either have not got there or are not able to be utilised in those markets. It is very important that we enable that to happen. It has also been a long-held view in the industry that too long a period of protection for data or patent was deferential to the industry as the prices stayed high for too long. However the access to new product is seen as a much greater advantage to the industry than the fact that the price might I guess remain a little higher for a little longer. So there was almost universal agreement among the submitters as to the best solution for New Zealand. I think that was quite exciting. I think it is also a very opportune time to be putting through legislation like this because we have probably never seen changes like this in the agricultural and pastoral sector at the rate that we are seeing at the moment. The opportunity is amazingly different from what it has been in the past and we need to keep up with the times and enable change to happen very quickly.As a matter of interest there are about 300 companies with about 3000 products that are registered for sale in New Zealand under the principal Act. It can be as simple a product as an insect repellent that can be claimed under this Act. It can be rat poison. Clearly under the Act there are a number of the products that have already been talked about like some of the chemicals that are very prevalent in New Zealand today particularly in pasture farming. For those of us who have been around the industry for a long time it could be the simple old drench—all those drenches that we use for worm control and things like that in animals. They are all registered under this Act as well.I want to thank the Primary Production Committee for its pretty good work in the course of getting through this bill and also Minister Goodhew who brought this bill to the committee.I want to make a very brief comment on the Greens' opinion. They have chosen to introduce a minority view on this bill which I think makes a number of political points—the relevance of some are questionable. Of course the Greens have every right—everyone has every right—to bring a minority report to a bill but I do think that from a New Zealand Inc. point of view as I said earlier it is very important that we enable these new-generation products to come on to this market and be utilised as they are.I just want to comment on a few of the changes to the bill as introduced. We are extending the base level of data protection from 5 years to 10 years in New Zealand for the reasons I have outlined before. Just as an example from around the world in Australia I think the time that this data protection is in place is for about 8 years. In the USA and the European Union it is for 10 years and in Japan it is for 15 years. We have placed ourselves at 10 years which I think gives us a much stronger place in the market. It enables our companies to come into the country with some confidence.There are new uses for innovative compounds. The previous speaker Damien O'Connor went into this to some extent. With New Zealand being an innovative kind of country we have always found ways of using products designed for one thing that can easily be used for something else. In the past they have been used in that way but not necessarily in a manner that we would perhaps approve. This legislation enables that to happen. It allows those compounds to be protected for the remaining period of either the original 10-year period or 5 years after the new-use application is decided whichever is the longer. The committee decided to do this because it encourages the early registration of new uses. It covers what I just talked about where there are so many different uses we can have for these products.We also went into the ability of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to reassess this stuff. That is necessary because MPI—and I am sure this will be raised later in the discussion—needs the ability to look into these products if they are suspicious or if it is suspected that they are not performing as they should.I have probably used my time. I look forward to the discussion that will take place during the Committee stage of this bill. Thank you."