Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you Madam Speaker and I think the member the Hon Damien O'Connor meant to commend" the bill to the House rather than "commit" it but—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry and I should have said "The question is that the motion be agreed to." Thank you for that. The Hon David Bennett—resume.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Speaking of committing people to the House we had a fine contribution today from the Rt Hon Winston Peters who managed to miss his first speech on the racing legislation which was the focal point of his parliamentary contribution in this three-year session. This was his chance to shine in front of the House but he managed to stuff it up and had to sit down and miss his 10-minute speech. But at least this Minister turned up tonight and got it right. I just want to congratulate this Minister because I think that his heart is in the right place—some of the time; most of the time it's not of course. You know when you've got the emissions trading scheme you've got land-use change you've got taxes on farmers you've got nitrogen restrictions and the capital requirements they're putting on banks—all those things are killing the rural sector. But this is actually something that needs to happen and I suggest that the Minister has done a good job on this bill. And I think that all members of the Primary Production Committee need to be congratulated for the way that they worked through this bill because we do need to make sure that we have fundamentally the best system for recording our stock. And there's no two ways about it: M. bovis was a warning for New Zealand. It was a warning that our systems weren't up to scratch and that we needed to do more and I think that this is a step in that direction. It's not the full process that we need to go through—that will come in time and future Governments will do that but this is a good step at this point. It was interesting in the Minister's speech though that he failed to really focus on two elements of the bill. One of them at the very end got half a focus. I want to go through the two core elements of this bill that actually the Primary Production Committee dealt with. The first was data ownership and just for the information of those that are listening the Minister had a process here where he discussed with those in the industry what should be in this legislation and they came to an agreement: this is what should be in the legislation for the good of New Zealand's primary industries. At no point during that discussion did the Minister raise the issue of the Government nationalising data ownership. Only when the bill was introduced to this House did the sector become aware that the Government intended to nationalise data ownership through this bill. Effectively what they were doing was taking something they didn't own—and we got a legal opinion in the committee that showed that the Minister was not on solid ground. This bill needs to be taken in context of that legal opinion because the Government does not have rights to the data ownership. The database is held within the industry organisations; the data ownership is not in Government hands. Now the Minister may argue differently but that is the reality and if the Minister felt he had a secure base to go on he would have continued through his process and made sure that data ownership was part of this bill. But he didn't; he submitted to the Opposition and the Opposition had one of the biggest wins they will have had in the select committee process over the last term in taking data ownership out of this bill. The second issue which the Minister did talk about was the transporting of stock. Although he indicated that it was something the committee came to a reasoned approach on it was only the National members that forced the Labour and New Zealand First members to realise what this was about because they would have put the liability on the trucking companies for the registration of those animals and the requirements around NAIT. That is particularly unfair on those transport companies. They are farmers' animals; they are the farmers' responsibilities not the trucking companies. We can go through all the mechanics of how stock are loaded in the middle of the night to make that very obvious to everybody but at the end of the day the Government members and New Zealand First members came to the conclusion they were wrong. Hon Tracey Martin: We are Government members. Hon DAVID BENNETT: They are members are they of the Government? Well that's unusual sometimes. But they came to the conclusion that they were wrong and submitted to the Opposition's approach which would have been far more reasonable and rational. We are seeing somewhat of that in this bill here tonight even though it will have a very big compliance cost in the sense that declaration forms will now have to be modified to accommodate that change. So this is a bill which is needed for the New Zealand primary sector. I'd like to thank everybody that has been involved in getting this bill to this stage. I want to have on record though that the National Party made this bill an effective bill that came before select committee—the National Party gave data ownership back to farmers the National Party looked after the trucking companies the National Party made this bill workable. The National Party should be thanked for doing the right thing for New Zealand farmers and not the Government of the day. Thank you Mr Speaker."