Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): You know as the old guy in those cheese ads used to say Good things take time." This is so important that I'm wearing a tie. It's a big day in the House and it is a day that this House has anticipated for a long long long time. But don't panic go organic. Many members of this House—that was Teanau's joke by the way. Many members of this House I think have queried of their own volition with entirely pure motives when we might perhaps finally reach the third reading of this esteemed storied piece of legislation. I think it is fair to say that the Green Party has waited even longer than most of those in the 53rd Parliament. On the first day that Parliament sat this millennium Jeanette Fitzsimons stood in this House and challenged the Government of the day to and I quote "achieve the high value added economy by becoming a centre of excellence in organic growing and in the science that underpins it". That was 23 years ago. Even if some organic crops do take a little bit longer to grow without intensive production they don't take as long as it has taken for us to pass a law in this place. And we are under urgency but of course this bill has still taken us five years.I digress it is a day to celebrate. Because now we are finally here passing a bill that will take us a step closer to the goal that Jeanette set the Clark Government in the year 2000. So Madam Speaker you will not be surprised to learn that the Green Party could not be happier. It is a change that has shall we say not been without struggle to achieve—the bill has taken nearly five years to reach this point but it was precipitated by very strong work well before then from the organic sector. It turns out that winning people over does take time. I want to specifically mention the work of Organics Aotearoa New Zealand OANZ because their advocacy for the benefits of organics has had a real impact on legitimising the push for healthier and more sustainable forms of farming in Aotearoa New Zealand.I do want to just mark a couple of things that have put us on the journey here one of which was actually in 2005 in the post-election negotiations when Jeanette Fitzsimons negotiated for $3 million to go to the organic sector to kind of start to sort of lay the groundwork and to provide a more professional service to farmers as well. Now I have to say I would probably at least add a zero if I was in that situation today. But you know as we said it kind of started small and it started a long time ago but it's really taken an effect.There have been a number of other kind of key points along the way. So I think it was in 2013 OANZ said "Well actually we do need a regulatory environment to underpin this."—so that was 10 years ago—and formed a regulation working group and established terms of reference and kind of got the ball rolling essentially on where we are today. In 2015 they produced their position paper on why we needed to regulate that and matched it up with the Ministry for Primary Industries' smart regulation approach at the time under the previous National Government. And so that again started to align the interests of the sector with where the regulatory approach was going.In 2016 there of course was the launch of the organic markets report at Parliament which was backed by our spokesperson Steffan Browning at the time and Damien O'Connor the Labour Party's agricultural spokesperson at the time—and I just want to thank Damien again for his support over the years for this. I think that was significant because it really helped to underpin the confidence in the sector that this was the right way to go with that market study. And then that led to the presentation to the Primary Production Committee and started the ball rolling. Until eventually in 2018 the OANZ forum which the then Minister Damien O'Connor attended and affirmed his support. And that kind of got us into the beginning of this process.So it was you know 10 years ago—more than 10 years ago now actually—that that first report on the economic potential of the sector came out. And there has been a huge amount of work that's been done since to build the case on this bill but also on myriad other reports—on strategies and on research and so on. Organic Farm New Zealand Te Waka Kai Ora and many others that I won't list here have played their part too. But I do want to mention some individuals in particular: Chris Morrison Viv Williams Brendon Hoare as well as my Green colleagues Sue Kedgley Steffan Browning Eugenie Sage Gareth Hughes and Teanau Tuiono who have put their work into this over the years.So I'll just say some brief comments about the content of the legislation. You know obviously others have said quite a lot about it. It does at its heart a relatively simple thing: it enables the implementation of organic standards for Aotearoa New Zealand. But that fairly simple thing has the potential to do so much for the prominence and the success of the sector and of course now regenerative organics production in New Zealand. OANZ's sector strategy that was released in 2012 said that there is the potential to add $4.7 billion in what they call "better growth" to our economy by the year 2030. And the strategy identifies this bill—soon very soon to be the Act—as a key tool for formalising and maintaining the organic trade arrangements.I want to just shout out to Barbara Kuriger for her intervention earlier here in the third reading just talking about the premium that the organic sector has over the kind of regular commodity or more intensive production systems. For Aotearoa New Zealand which has so aggressively adopted moving away from just volume and towards value and towards values—particularly in those high-end markets that we are participating in and aspire to participate more in—this bill actually becomes a really important economic underpinning of that entire strategy. So I actually have great hopes for it. There are other jurisdictions around the world that we have looked at where once there was a set of nationwide standards in place in the regulatory environment and the organic sector actually quadrupled in some cases. So that really does start to offer our farmers and producers some alternatives and some real economic options for less intensive more environmentally friendly healthier but also more valuable forms of production.So by incentivising those cleaner forms of farming the organic sector really does have the potential here to do so much for the things that we truly value here in this country: for our waterways for our land for our climate for our people. Other nations are well ahead of us in recognising the potential—as we formalise the free-trade agreement with the European Union it's worth making note that they have a target of 25 percent of all agricultural land in organics by 2030. This one bill won't be a silver bullet for us but we do need to take a range of actions to reduce the environmental impacts and to cut pollution. We've known that for a very very long time and there remains a long road ahead. But this is a really important part of our pathway there.It is high time that we truly recognise the contribution that organics can make to this journey and it is high time that we get on and pass this bill. I had hoped—I would have loved it if Jeanette could have been here to witness its final passage through the House but as I said before good things take time. Ngā mihi Madam Speaker."