Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First for this national animal identification and tracing (NAIT) legislation. It's been referenced by others earlier that this is an important bulwark against biosecurity outbreaks. Our system has been found wanting and it has needed a tidy up and I commend Minister Damien O'Connor for having taken the action that he has. I note that the chairman of the Primary Production Committee David Bennett is claiming all the credit for it but what he doesn't realise is that it was such a mess and it was such a shambles that the Minister needed to step in. So it's a bit rich him coming in here and trying to take credit for something that we were needing to tidy up. We're looking for better traceability here or the ability to trace back more efficiently and as we say when we got actually road-tested with the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak our system was found wanting. It was a credit to the select committee in the whole process that we did work well together to tidy the bill up and make sure that it was I think fit for purpose at the end of the day and I think we did make some small but important changes. The PICAs—or the persons in charge of an animal—can only use a tag for a specific location now. I note the tag needs to be related to the birthplace of the actual animal so that is a fundamental plank in how we can obviously trace back to source. But with the unsafe to tag" definition there was a bit of a discussion around this and I think this is an important one. We had some lack of compliance there where there may have been some laziness I guess or non-compliance or "wilful non-compliance" would be the better term where some of these animals whether they'd be—what were they?—the stroppy stags or something which Hamish Walker was referring to or large steers or cows. They are heavy—you know some of them would be 1500 kilos—and they are quite dangerous and difficult to tag if the tags have come out and the tags do come out. In my experience there's probably a good 15 percent that would come out between tagging and when an animal goes on the truck. So this is an issue that we need to deal with but it had become a bit lax. There were too many stock where they were using that loophole so we have changed the "impractical to tag" definition to "unsafe to tag" because there will be still those dangerous animals where we don't want to put people in breach. Compliance ownership of the data—there was a lot of talk about that. From my perspective I don't know how the Government let that data go in the first place and allowed it to be controlled by an outside entity because when push did come to shove and we did have a biosecurity response the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) was constrained in its ability to get information at times I understand—from information coming back from MPI. So that's just not good enough. When we've got an outbreak we've got to be able to act and we don't need any impediments to that. I don't think the data itself was particularly sensitive in any case but that did exercise the minds of the select committee members for a while. Also with the infringements the fees at the top end have gone up considerably. Right through the spectrum they have but for wilful non-compliance it's gone up from $10000 to $20000 for individual farmers—the regulation family farms—and for corporate farmers it's up from $100000 to $200000. So that's a genuine deterrent there. Also the transport was referred to before. We did look at how transport could be brought into this because it's a comprehensive response we want. I think once again under real-time pressure we have discovered that the transporters were often carting stock that did not have tags. They knew that those stock didn't have tags but they were still doing it. So how do you bring them under the jurisdiction of the Act and make sure that they are playing their part whilst recognising and—through the select committee process—accepting the representations from the farmers and from Federated Farmers in particular? And to their credit Federated Farmers wanted farmers to be accepting the responsibility not the transport operators. So we came down on the side of I guess an elegant solution where there is an exemption or a waiver that can be signed so the transport operators can essentially contract out. But it does not exempt them totally and if there's systematic non-compliance we will be able to get back and trace it back to the transport operators as well. But I think the level of responsibility has fallen where it should. So overall this is a good bill. It's a good tidy-up bill. Considering what we inherited I mean the enforcement in the previous legislation was one $150 fine for the life of the—and it's cost us nearly a billion dollars—a billion dollars—with the—Dan Bidois: Say it again. MARK PATTERSON: —Mycoplasma bovis. Matt King: Say it again—come on. MARK PATTERSON: A billion dollars a billion trees $3 billion for the Provincial Growth Fund—there's billions everywhere. But that was just money down the tubes and we were asleep at the wheel with our tracing of animals through the NAIT scheme—or the previous Government was—and just that one $150 enforcement. So it just was totally missing in action in terms of how we were responding. But this is a big step forward. I commend the Minister for bringing this forward. I commend the select committee and the officials who worked very well together actually to shape this bill up into a better bill. We are now much more prepared—or we will be when this comes into force—to respond in future to a major biosecurity outbreak. So New Zealand First commends this bill to the House. Thank you."