Tabuteau Fletcher: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: General Debate[Sitting date: 08 June 2016. Volume:714;Page:11789. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. More and more New Zealand First and the New Zealand public are beginning to see that the battle against the National Government is rather a battle against its sponsors. The National Government avoids issues of national significance and puts them aside and in fact it denies that they even exist.I want to talk today in this time slot about the Government not talking about Silver Fern Farms. In fact it is very clear that it would rather disavow any knowledge and claim that it does not know what is going on. The reality is though that this highlights its lack of commitment to the rural community and to our farmers. But we know that for 23 years New Zealand First has stood up in this House and supported and backed marginalised New Zealanders and more and more we are beginning to see that it is the rural community and New Zealand farmers who are actually being marginalised by that Government across the House today. The Rt Hon Winston Peters has never been afraid to stand up and take a battle to the powers that may prevail at any given time but the Government refuses to acknowledge that there is even a problem. It either cannot be bothered it is not interested or it has a self-interest in denying that there is a problem.The Newshub article from last week was an opportunity for the New Zealand public to finally see that there is a fundamental flaw within the regulatory framework and oversight of this country when it comes to the Financial Markets Authority. These concerns arise particularly from Shanghai Maling’s current application for the so-called joint venture with Silver Fern Farms—New Zealand’s largest meat exporter and a code-listed company here in New Zealand. It is now clear that Silver Fern Farms did not advise its shareholders correctly or honestly on its current levels of debt and most particularly claims to the shareholders that it could not get forward projections for more than a year have been proved to be demonstrably false. I say this because the evidence that New Zealand First has does prove conclusively that the statement was false and shows that there were forward projections but those 4-year projections were actually given to the potential overseas investors and not the shareholders and the farmers of New Zealand.Critically we now know that 574 pages of documentation went to the overseas investors but this same information was withheld—and I say it again: withheld—from the shareholders. In fact New Zealand First laid complaints over the sale of Silver Fern Farms with the Financial Markets Authority. We actually supplied the documentation so that the authority could follow up but it failed to do this. Actually it did not even call us once to follow up on the submissions that we made to it. It did not include an accurate chronological order of the financial accounts which would be critical to any meaningful investigation. The Financial Markets Authority failed to send anyone into Silver Fern Farms’ head office to actually ask questions of the management and the board—not a single person actually went to have that conversation.This so-called National Government needs to be held to account. New Zealand First does not intend to let highly paid public officials get away with anything less than at the very least competent performance. It should consider itself here now warned that we will be holding it to account. New Zealand First has new information that will reveal the truth to the New Zealand public the shareholders and the owners of the Silver Fern Farms—serious documents that could construe serious fraud. This is a dirty deal and one that speaks to the aspirations of the National Government and the tenants whom it calls farmers in New Zealand.