Tirikatene Rino: New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 29 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9978. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to speak in support of the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill and I am looking forward to hearing submissions as a member of the Primary Production Committee.This is a really good piece of legislation that is long overdue. The horticulture sector has been quite patient. It made appeals back in 2010 to look to amend the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Act. Sure enough it has taken over 5 years now but rest assured Parliament is on to this piece of legislation and we will be seeing it progress through this House—hopefully expeditiously.This is as I mentioned a very positive piece of legislation. We are dealing largely with small fledgling-type export industries—some of the product groups in question are truffles and tamarillos—through to the major product groups like avocados buttercup squash and kiwifruit to Australia. So there is quite a range. There are some very small players and with a piece of legislation that they have been operating under for some 30 years it is time to modernise and to ensure that our industries are best equipped to compete in the international markets because that is what everyone in this Parliament would want.We want our primary sector to be profitable to be productive and to be able to compete fairly and make sure that we can increase our yields increase our returns and increase our foreign exchange earnings across all of the product groups. I know that the way that the industries have been doing that and it has obviously been proven to be a successful model being nearly 30 years old is through cooperating: cooperating to compete collaborating and making sure that we have consistent quality standards so that when we do supply our wonderful produce our very much discerning customers who will pay premiums for our wonderful produce know not only that they are getting a wonderful product but that the next order that comes along and the following order after that will be of consistent quality—wonderful New Zealand - grown produce.So it is very important that we have the Horticulture Export Authority just to oversee the entire structure and to collect levies—bearing in mind that this is a voluntary organisation. It is a member-supported organisation via the product groups. There is not one cent of Government funding that goes through to this body. It is entirely driven by the levies and the support that it gets from the respective product groups and in turn their members and from the fees that are collected through the licensing of export pack-houses.This is a small organisation. It needs our support and I am glad that our Parliament is finally implementing some real common-sense amendments. It is one thing to export products to one market but within that market there are many different markets and if you segment that out there may be differing requirements that need to be applied to ensure that we can get very good export returns and increase our yield increase our foreign exchange earnings and increase the profitability back to our growers here in New Zealand and our exporters.Just to conclude this is a very positive piece of legislation. I think of the large Māori participation in the horticultural sector. If I think of kiwifruit obviously Māori are probably one of the biggest players if not the biggest player in the kiwifruit industry particularly up in Tauranga—Seeka Te Awanui Huka Pak. If I think of the buttercup squash there are some significant landholdings of Māori up in Gisborne on the East Coast. So this will benefit not only the horticultural sector but those Māori landowners who are also supplying. I commend this bill to the House.