Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Mr Speaker. First up on speaking to this Dairy Industry Restructuring (Fonterra Capital Restructuring) Amendment Bill I just want to congratulate Fonterra today on coming out with a final farm-gate milk price for the season just passed of $9.30. That is a record payout for Fonterra and I'm sure that it will be much appreciated by the farmers of New Zealand but also by the economy of New Zealand. And before people start talking about us—you know National just being about the economy—there's a couple of other little stats that I'd actually like to give you in terms of what else Fonterra's doing on behalf of farmers: 50 million kick-start breakfasts served 12 million dairy serves donated to New Zealand's food network $13.7 billion is to the economy—which we were talking about the economy a moment ago—6200 farm environment plans delivered. And that's really significant because what is really relevant here is that since 2018 11.2 percent downward on greenhouse gas emissions for scope one and two. So that's particularly relevant that farmers are not only being successful in terms of productivity and profitability but also making progress in the environmental space which is excellent.I also wanted to comment on this because Fonterra farmers have voted in support of this piece of legislation and recently there was a comment out by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the Parliamentary Commissioner does some really good work but I'm a little confused about this particular piece of work that says Fonterra restructure law risks pushing up emissions and diminishing freshwater quality environmental commissioner warns." Part of the commentary was that the Government appears to be unmoved by those concerns. I have to say in the National caucus supporting this piece of legislation we don't share the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment's direct concerns in relation to this because actually I think that if you went back 15 years ago and we were talking about the cost of the share price dropping people would've seen that as an opportunity for more cows and more cows. But I've spent a lot of time talking to people lately about how we've reached pretty much "peak cow" in New Zealand—there's a lot of catchments that are "cowed-out" if you like—and we do recognise now that probably 15 years ago going back that there wasn't such a recognition of the environmental constraints.So even though the share price will be lower the ability to get resource consents will actually build on the cow numbers—with the environmental compliance that's happening right now it's very unlikely this is going to happen.And I also think the one good thing about this legislation that we tried to get in the last piece—we went round and round as a Primary Production Committee trying to find a way to get new shareholders into Fonterra i.e. sharemilkers contract milkers farm lessors associated shareholders and because we were trying to define it quite tightly; there's so many different types of equity forms out there that it was quite difficult to do. So when the Parliamentary Commissioner says doing so will be making it easier for new farmers to join the co-op this is not in our view new farmers—as in more farms and more cows—it is actually new farmers who currently don't have the ability to be part of the co-op. I think if we're looking after the succession plan of the future of Fonterra and New Zealand farmers by letting younger farmers and sharemilkers and contract milkers participate that has to be a good thing. So the changes that are being proposed here have Fonterra adopting a more flexible shareholding structure allowing farmers to hold fewer shares and widening the pool as I said to let some newer farmers in. Fonterra's competitors don't require their farmers to purchase shares to supply milk and Fonterra's concern is that it will become a smaller less efficient business that we'd continue to lose milk supply without this amendment and that's a fair comment because it is the cooperative which—you know a lot of our businesses in New Zealand that have been extremely successful are cooperatives and have a shareholding base and this one is no exception. So when we went into the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act in the early 2000s Fonterra was about 95 percent of the milk supply or somewhere round there. It's currently 79 percent and what happened 20 years ago was really a lot of these rules were put around Fonterra to make sure that competition evolved and actually competition has evolved to quite a substantial proportion over the last few years and we wouldn't want to weaken our large cooperative in terms of constraining it too much.So there's just a couple of concerns that the National caucus has with this piece of legislation and we are supporting it but we are concerned about increasing the number of ministerial nominees to Fonterra's milk price panel from one to two. And the other piece of that is requiring an independent chair appointed with the approval of the Minister. Now when I spoke to the Minister about this I said "That's three people". The Minister made the case that it may be three people or it may be two people because one of those two ministerial nominees may well be a nominee and the chair so that could be two or three. On this side of the House we think that's a bit much. We don't really see that there's been any evidence that Fonterra has tried to spin the wheels in any case in any of this and everything's been done open and upfront—in fact I was on the shareholders' council back 20 years ago when a lot of this milk pricing was worked out and it's worked out in a way that's pretty logical and pretty fair.The other one that we are not supportive of is to give the Commerce Commission power to issue binding directions to Fonterra following reviews. We see this as another piece in addition to the extra directors—will be just more and more obligations on Fonterra. And sometimes I think Governments create—or they go looking for answers for problems that don't actually exist and we don't see why that extra step needs to be made. That's something that we'll be having a good conversation about when we go to select committee because our cooperative does quite well and we don't feel like it needs any more Government restrictions than we've already got.So I just want to say over the last month six weeks couple of months—depending on which part of the country people are in—we've had farmers out there who have been calving their cows getting their calves fed going through their farm duties in what has been some exceptionally bad weather in some parts of the country; it hasn't been too bad where our farms are situated. And if people said to me "How's the weather been and how are the farms going?" I'd say well in all honesty at times I would have to say "A bit wet" but "a bit wet" is in proportion to those people in Northland Canterbury East Coast—you know look at Nelson Tasman how it was hit. And so I just want to give a shout-out to the farmers. As I say a record payout today—but the thing is that farmers are now doing this environmentally in a much more friendly way than ever creating a great lot of value for this country. We are the most efficient climate-emitter farmers in the world and the goal is that if we continue to do the right things and continue to put the right steps in place we will continue to be the most efficient farmers in the world.So we support the piece of legislation we look forward to the select committee process—we will be contesting a couple of these points and see where we get to see if we can ask the Government if they can change their mind on those two points. But I commend this bill to the House because we think it's a very worthwhile piece of legislation. Thank you."