Woolerton R Doug: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Woolerton R Doug: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:630;Page:2426] 
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) 
: 
 I too would like to talk about the new Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Forestry but I want to take a bit of a different tack and say that I think it is appropriate believe it or not that we have a Minister of Agriculture who does not have a long history in farming or in matters applying to land. The reason is that on two fronts we have some particular issues that need to be attended to and with due respect they need to be attended to by a person who is seen as being for want of a better word non-partisan. 
The first issue—and I am surprised it is not mentioned more often by my colleagues these days in Parliament—is our huge balance of payments deficit. As everybody in this Chamber knows or should know there is only one real sector of the economy we can realistically look to for the sorts of numbers that will do anything about that balance of payment deficit—and I see the Minister in the chair Mr Anderton and my colleague Shane Ardern both nodding—and that is the pastoral farming and forestry sector. There is also fishing and tourism but this discussion is on agriculture and forestry. We need somebody in the role of Minister who can look at all who are in those industries as being exporters not just as farmers as pastoral farmers or as forestry or sector groups because with any other area of exporting in this country the imports to fuel the exports—if that makes any sense—are so high that the net gain to New Zealand is infinitesimal. This sector is our major exporting area. 
We have a Minister who is non-partisan so hopefully he will look at these things in a holistic manner. I have read a couple of things he has written that indicate he will. I hope he thinks I am on the right track and that he sees things as we in New Zealand First do because we do not accept that all economic activity is good. We believe in the old-fashioned way of earning more than one spends and our country has not been doing that. We look to the Minister to make this thing right. 
The other area is far more difficult far more delicate and it something that we all know about. Certainly when I was farming I shied away from it and my brothers who are still farming shy away from it: the quality of our water in New Zealand. About 3 years ago Fonterra took the initiative to try to sort this problem out. It required farmers to fence streams and plant appropriate plantings besides streams. It was criticised at the time but it is not being criticised now. In fact I am pleased to be able to say—and I hope the Minister will confirm this—we are ahead of the targets in those areas which just shows that if farmers are shown the need they will respond. Here I acknowledge my friend Shane Ardern who I know personally got out there in his gumboots and planted thousands of trees on his properties or on his numerous blocks of land whatever he happens to own at this point in time. He is not a man to go along with whatever the current fashion is; he is doing it because the science tells him it needs to be done. 
I have heard that from our Minister as well that if the science says it must be done then it will be done. We need input from central government we need local bodies to attend to the matter and we need farmers to be involved. But I dare go one step further and say that we need other people downstream of them to be involved in the clean-up too because clean-up is what it is all about. We in this country cannot have a situation or accept a situation where our rivers are being polluted and our lakes are dying—so they tell us.