Tirikatene RinoRINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Thank you Mr Speaker. Before I add my remarks on this bill I too want to acknowledge the Hon Nathan Guy for his significant contribution and service to our country his leadership in the primary sector when he was Minister and in particular the support he gave to the Māori economy and our interests in the primary sector as well. So I wish him all the best. I obviously support this bill. I want to firstly acknowledge Minister Damien O'Connor who has acted very swiftly and decisively in bringing this bill to the House—not just the bill; the complete suite of packages. It's an entire package of the bill plus the detailed regulations which will work hand in hand with the empowering legislation. So it's all out there in the open. I'm looking forward as a member of the Primary Production Committee to hearing from relevant stakeholders their views on this full package but it is a necessity that we put this bill through the House. I do support the time frame that the Minister has laid down for this piece of legislation because the costs are great for non-compliance. I think we've just heard around the cost to farmers in terms of adhering to the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) scheme but we must also consider the costs for biosecurity incursions such as Mycoplasma bovis and the impact that that has not only on the primary sector but on our country as a whole. It's so important that we have a strong world-class biosecurity system and part of that system has to be a strong NAIT system which will deal with the tagging and the registration and the tracking of animal movements. So if an incursion were to occur and we certainly hope it doesn't we can act swiftly through those systems to identify it and to take immediate remedial action. So this is a really important piece of legislation. I want to acknowledge the National Opposition for supporting this bill at its first reading. We know that this is important. We know that we want to encourage and ensure that we get full farmer uptake of the system. It's for their benefit; it's for the sector's benefit as a whole and our country. So we just want to ensure that we make the tweaks that were identified in the review that was undertaken by Operational Solutions for Primary Industries New Zealand and also the further changes that we need to make in light of the Mycoplasma bovis incursion. I commend this legislation and the measures that we are enacting in here. They are not too drastic. The system has been in place for seven years—that has been a good opportunity for the farming sector to embrace the system to use the system and to ensure that now we have an opportunity to make those improvements so we can actually make it better and stronger. As I said our country as a whole our export industries and our primary sector really depends on a world-class biosecurity system. As I call it: that is our pā defences that we need to keep out all of those nasty incursions that may occur. We need to ensure that it is world-class that it is strong and robust and that's what this bill achieves. So can I once again just acknowledge the Minister for bringing this bill through to the House. It's really important that we act thoroughly and we listen to all of the views. I know there are concerns around ownership of data. I think we can tease out those issues but from my reading of the bill it's very prescribed in terms of how the data will be used. But whether it's ownership or access to data the main thing is that we get good data. The main thing is that we get farmers applying and following the NAIT system tagging their animals registering them following their movements and having all that information in the system so that it is there when it is desperately needed but we certainly hope that those instances don't occur. With that I support this bill at its first reading.