Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki-King Country): It's an absolute pleasure to be standing here this morning on the third reading of the Organic Products Bill. The bill goes back a long way not just in this Parliament but I can remember when I first came here almost nine years ago we had people like Brendan Hoare and others who presented to us and had been asking for a long time for some protection and some standards around organic products. And I know myself as an organic farmer—although my daughter and her husband Rachel and Kenneth take all the credit for the transition and certification around that—that there are a lot of countries that expect a different compliance level and there's lots and lots of different audits that go on and it would be really really good to have one standard in New Zealand where we can say All organics comply to this level". Then if a particular country wants something a little different well it's up to them then to ask for it.I also wanted to mention this morning the Hon James Shaw. His persistence has been remarkable in terms of every Thursday afternoon that this House has sat actually standing up and asking where the organic products bill was on the Order Paper. We almost got through it at the last segment of urgency back before Christmas and didn't quite make it so it's very good to be here today. So the organic sector—as the Minister said—has been rapidly growing and is growing and there's more and more interest in it as time goes on. And you know we do have a lot of vegetables in this country—fruit and vegetables largely. Dairy meat and wool combined actually make up quite a lot in agriculture and then processed food. And I will make a note of the recent announcement. So in our situation the farms are supplying Fonterra and the current milk price forecast for conventional milk production is currently at $8.50 and the forecast for organic milk production is $10.80. So it does give an indication that there is a demand growing for organic product—it's something that's been sitting at a level in the early days and over the last few years it has been growing and growing and growing to a point where we are starting to get a good name for ourselves in organics as well as our other food production in conventional ways; we do it in the market. As the Minister mentioned we are very good at food safety and we are very good at producing food not just for our own people but for export. So I do want to note as the Minister did that we did have some concerns. So I think back to the last Parliament where the Hon Kiri Allan and I were on the Primary Production Committee and we spent a lot of time working through submissions on this. So it does take me back to what's been going on for a very long time—and as the Minister said the concerns of some of the smaller suppliers are not so much the major exporting groups but the smaller suppliers and the farmers markets didn't want the regulatory system to cost them out of the market because what happens when products come on board is that it's normally those smaller providers and growers who actually pave the way and so we would really stifle some of our start-ups and some of our growth in organic if we costed those people out of the system. So it's good that the Minister and the ministry are cognisant of that. So having said that I don't know whether there's a whole lot more to say this morning—I'm just very keen to get this bill passed and get it going. It's actually taken a very long time but very proud to be standing here today and I have great pleasure in commending it to the House. Thank you."