SpeechMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Tēnā koutou katoa e Te Whare.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Are you seeking a call?MARK PATTERSON: Oh yes. Sorry I was getting carried away with Māori Language Week. Thank you Madam Chair. Tēnā koutou katoa e Te Whare. Kia kaha Te Reo Māori.Just responding to that last speaker I am a farmer. I have been a farmer for 30 years. I live in those communities. We absolutely understand farming and this is a time of change. There is no doubt about this. We had come before us in the Estimates debate a number of Ministers. They are reforming Ministers. We have come up against the ecological limits of some of our farming practices. We have signed international agreements that we must honour—Kieran McAnulty: That's right. Who signed those—who signed those?MARK PATTERSON: —and when I say We have signed international agreements"—Kieran McAnulty: They did.MARK PATTERSON: —the National Party signed the international agreements.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Sorry to interrupt the member but can I just remind Mr McAnulty to just keep it down all right? Let the speaker have a turn.MARK PATTERSON: Thank you. I thought it was going so well. It's a good chance to segue into the fact that we should not catastrophise what's going on. We are sitting on as Kiritapu Allan pointed out record exports—$46 billion dollars last year—coming from our primary sector. This is not a time of catastrophe. I did start my farming career in the 1980s. I do know what dire situations look like and they don't look like what they are now. What we have is a period of uncertainty as we land some of these big issues. That's the challenge for this Government. It's to get these through the pipeline. Once farmers have got their head around where they're going—they are problem solvers—they will get there. We've just got to get them to the right place.Just addressing some of the issues in the Estimates bill we have had a major biosecurity outbreak in Mycoplasma bovis which was referenced by Minister O'Connor in his contribution. It's important we do not forget those farmers. There are still farmers battling through this. There was a $900 million contribution—I heard that being trivialized before—$900 million! That could have been zero. We could have just left the sector to its own devices and let the disease go but we took the courageous path and we are supporting our farmers through that. And of course we've had a fruit fly incursion and we've got the brown marmorated stink bug that's raging through Europe. So we've got all sorts of threats in our biosecurity space. Minister O'Connor has outlined to us the changes to the Biosecurity Act that are coming through. There was new funding of $12 million in the Budget and $62 million of course to customs which is also part of it and we've got the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill (No 2) coming forward. Of course one of the problems we've had with our response to M. bovis is that the National Animal Identification and Tracing system was under absolute benign neglect by the previous Government. Just to cover some of the other big issues: the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. We've had a lot of debate about that. The Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases: the funding going into that is good funding. The money that AgResearch are putting into the GE rye grasses that is a debate that we absolutely need to have as well. Farmers are prepared to do their bit but they want to have the tools at their disposal and that's a debate that I'm sure we'll have through this House often and shortly.In terms of landing that zero carbon bill I would say that having sat on that committee there has been a wave of particularly business interests coming in—no; across the spectrum to be fair—saying how important it is to get cross-party consensus. We need every party in this Parliament involved. We cannot have chopping and changing with such a far-reaching bill. So I hope that that consensus is something that we can still reach as we go through that committee stage and the second reading.The freshwater stuff the discussion document that was brought out yesterday: I just would like to emphasise that it is a discussion document. That is the nature of those announcements. I went to the first of those public meetings yesterday where there was some very constructive dialogue in Dunedin. It is a wide-ranging piece of work. We must work through the details and yes we must look at the implications for our rural communities and we will. I will note the $230 million that was allocated in Budget 2019 to the sustainable farming package. That is there for that reason to help those farmers to adjust and to essentially I guess subsidise their response and their ability. But we must do this. We must get our agriculture back on a more sustainable platform."