English Bill: Wool Industry Restructuring Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
English Bill: Wool Industry Restructuring Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:7107] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I rise to welcome this legislation to the House even if it has taken a long time to get here. In the rural community this legislation is a further signal of the massive change that has gone on—a change in attitudes in farming practice and in the way that people see the path to a successful future. 
It has been a long hard road to get this legislation here to the House. In 1991 as a brand new MP I can recall going to a large farmer meeting in Gore to discuss the hugely controversial decision made by the Wool Board then to withdraw its price support scheme. It is not so very long ago that the New Zealanders who produced wool were tied up in price support schemes. At that stage the board also made controversial decisions like cutting back the contribution to the International Wool Secretariat. To my mind as a long-suffering levy payer to the Wool Board the contribution to the International Wool Secretariat really summed up the problems that needed to be solved in the Wool Board. In 1990 the Wool Board donated $90 million of farmers’ money to the International Wool Secretariat—a contribution that it stoutly defended—but under pressure it was suddenly able to cut that in half and still argue that it was about the right amount. 
So the Wool Board is a relic of a bygone age. It came from a time when the statutory boards were the on-ramp to the protein highway to Britain. They were convenient Government structures that were able to organise the flow of product to the British market. But unfortunately that market became unhitched from New Zealand some 30 years ago and it is only today that we are finally putting the board out of its misery now that its functions have long since ceased to be useful. 
The rural community has changed dramatically and this bill is a sign of that. In particular the attitudes of today’s producers have changed. It used to be the peak of a farmer’s achievement to become a member of the electoral college which was the body that decided on who would become members of the Wool Board. There was a very clear career path and many of the more competent more skilled and certainly more articulate farmers went down that path. They started out by becoming the chairperson of the local meat and wool section of Federated Farmers then gradually worked themselves up the tree and if they were elected to the Wool Board itself they were then entitled to trips around the world to talk to the board’s customers. The Wool Board had salubrious headquarters here in Wellington. Its members talked to the Minister of Agriculture and to all sorts of important and official people and the main function of the board was to maintain its political viability. 
In that respect the board let farmers down. I can still remember receiving the receipts for the wool that I was selling and looking at the line that deducted 6 percent of the gross income. For many years that exceeded the profits that most sheep farmers in Southland would make. I am pleased to see that over the decade of the 1990s wool producers came to realise that the board was essentially a political body not a commercial one and that any organisation that has a guaranteed statutorily declared income like the Wool Board levy is bound to become lazy and unfocused and is bound to spend much of that resource on the maintenance of its own political viability. I can remember the Wool Board running a campaign about $5 a kilogram and 5 kilograms of wool on every sheep and it sounded great. It was a public relations idea and the board members went around the country whipping up the enthusiasm of farmers. Within 2 years the price was about half that because it had dropped precipitously. The Wool Board needs to be more than restructured and in some respects this bill is misnamed because it abolishes the Wool Board. I am very pleased to be able to stand in this House and to see that happen. 
I want to pay a tribute to the leadership of the farming community which has finally brought this bill to this House and which will bring about the ultimate dismantling of the Wool Board. I will mention two people in particular—Geoff Grant and Mike Petersen. Those people represent a new generation of farmer politicians who understand that their main function is to bring about change not to maintain the status quo because markets and farming practice change so quickly. Therefore the organisations that are the conduit between the farmer and the market need to change very quickly. Of course the Wool Board because of the statutory protection it was given by this Parliament for so many years did not change quickly. The changes it went through were very painful slow and expensive. However in the future we will have no cause to have to spend parliamentary time as we have done a lot over the last decade on trying to adapt that out-of-date organisation to contemporary pressures and times. 
The Wool Board did some good things and I see that this bill makes the attempt to preserve the desirable aspects of what was there. I want to refer to a couple of organisations that are important to the industry but that need to be subject to commercial pressures rather than to political sponsorship. The first is Wool Services International. The wool industry is one that has a continuous need for higher and higher levels of understanding of the product and of the market requirements for that product. Various organisations have contributed to technology transfer in order to increase the skills and knowledge of the industry about the product that it produces. 
I also want to refer to the Wool Research Organisation of New Zealand. It has been typical of many publicly funded science organisations and the Wool Board levy has been virtually equivalent to public funding. The Wool Research Organisation has done some excellent science. It has also chewed up millions and millions of dollars on projects of dubious merit and in the end there has been no real test by the industry or by the market of the activities of that organisation. However the intellectual capital that is there in the form of some outstanding people and some excellent ideas can be carried over into the new environment. We want to make sure that that is the case. 
I am pleased to see that there has been a very vigorous discussion about the issue of what amounts to public good in the wool industry. A feature of that discussion has been the role of research. In the past the agricultural industry has relied far too much on the Government and on levies to fund its research. It is my hope that the wool industry will follow the path that the meat industry is starting to follow without the automatic funding of the levies and without relying totally on Government funding for all aspects of research. I hope that the industry will take on some of that role itself and will take responsibility for long-term investment and research in order to get a better understanding of the enormous potential of the protein-based products that we produce so effectively and so cheaply and that it will take some of the risks that go with investments that use biotechnology to increase returns. 
We stand four-square behind this bill. I know there will be debate about the detail but it is long past time that the Wool Board was dismantled and the industry was able to get on with its own future subject to the pressures of the world market and the strong incentives that that puts on participants in the industry to do a good job for New Zealand as well as for the sake of their own profits.