Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to take a call on this the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill. I do want to acknowledge the Minister and the fact that he's motivated by the right thing and that is to make improvements that he's identified in the bill to help with what has been a serious issue for the country in terms of dealing with the M. bovis outbreak. But the problem—and this is the way I see it—is that although initially in his briefings from officials he was told and he believed that this was merely a technical change to the bill actually through the process he's realised now that it's not a technical change. It's actually a major change to the bill.One of the changes that's proposed that I've looked at is a very good one and that's around National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) - registered animals. Right now if they're moved from a NAIT property on to another property that's not a NAIT property then they don't have to be registered or reported on. So that is a good change. But when you are making the changes to this or when the Minister's making the changes to this bill you should be looking very carefully at the way you're going to genuinely strengthen the bill and the way that you're going to be able to make that apply through NAIT offices in the country to make a better stronger regime with cooperation and by working alongside the farming sector and the rural sector. If you don't have a spirit of cooperation if you don't have their buy-in and if they don't actually trust in what you're doing then actually the system's going to become worse not better. This is a fundamental argument that exists inside the bill in its current form and it's why we're taking a very strong positon in saying that this needs to go through a select committee process so that actually submissions can be made on it and especially so that this part of the bill around a warrantless search is interrogated properly. I sat in the meeting with the Hon Gerry Brownlee the Hon Amy Adams and with officials and this was the bit that we really wanted to interrogate because we feel that it is absolutely not a technical change. It's a massive change in terms of the number of powers that are going to be passed to these NAIT officers and that is going to create a whole lot of new issues to deal with. We couldn't get any straight clear answers. The officials are doing their job but at the end of the meeting we could not get any clear answers. We actually asked them—and I'd still like to see this information—to go away and show us clearly where other agencies share the same powers and have got the same access around warrantless searches. I just want to highlight just how powerful the powers that are going to be conferred upon NAIT officers with this bill are. Again the Hon Nathan Guy referred to some calls that the Hon Eugenie Sage took yesterday. It's clear it's very clear—and I'd ask Gareth Hughes who's in the House today to maybe take a call and ask the Minister to clarify this—that she referred to searches with a warrant. So she's confused; she's talking about searches with a warrant. Fundamentally we're happy with that. Warranted searches—there are no issues there for us either.The issues that we have are the new powers that are being conferred for warrantless searches. Let's just give a clear example of it: right now under the National Animal Identification and Tracing Act a NAIT officer is able to go on to the property for the purpose of an inspection—and maybe the Minister can take a call and answer this because we couldn't get an answer on this yesterday. So right now as the Act provides for a NAIT officer can go on to a property with the purpose of inspecting and checking on compliance in terms of the Act. They can do that today right now. If they identify or they think that maybe someone's not compliant or that the law is being broken there's a very simple next step for them and that is to go and apply for a warrant. They need to make their case; that gets tested. You know we can't have a regime whether it be the police or fisheries or anyone else that has a power to search just being given a wholesale power to be able to search without there being any checks and balances—that's what we have in this country a very good system of checks and balances. So they can go away and they can apply for a search warrant. If they meet the criteria and if they meet the standard for a search warrant being issued then they can go if they need to—I mean you know the police often do this: they'll be there for one purpose and they'll realise that there could be some evidence that they need to gather for a court case—[Time expired]