Woolerton R Doug: Veterinarians Bill — First Reading 
Woolerton R Doug: Veterinarians Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:623;Page:18763] 
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) 
: 
 I think right there we have just found out where the motions of no confidence in the Minister of Agriculture are coming from. I would suggest to Federated Farmers that they very quickly adopt what used to be the rule of having a non-partisan role in politics. I will be talking to their new chief executive officer when she comes to see me. [ 
Interruption 
] I am sure the member has; I can see by the motion that he has. When she comes to see me I will advise her that partisan politics in a lobby group such as Federated Farmers is not a very good idea. New Zealand First will be in favour of sending this bill to the select committee and we look forward to doing that. However I take note of and recognise the authenticity of what my National colleague David Carter was saying when he said that our goodwill in the Primary Production Committee is being traded on just a little by Labour members and that they should not do that. They are continually asking us to rush bills through that select committee—because we largely agree with one another—but that is not a good idea because the day may come when we are not as cooperative as we currently are. 
I think it is important to look behind this bill to understand its ramifications and why it has come about. We are once again in a situation in this country where we are short of people on farms and in particular in this case we are short of veterinarians who work on farms. The core intent of this bill is to ask us to bring into this country people with degrees or training that are lesser in standard than what we have imposed on our own veterinarians to date. We may ask ourselves why that is and Mr Carter has given us the answer. It is because our veterinarians well trained in a 5-year course are going overseas and we are being forced to accept veterinarians from other countries with lesser degrees coming to practise in this country. Admittedly there will be top-up exams and training courses for them but that is a very sad situation. My leader who is not one for clichés would say that we are exporting First World expertise and importing Third World expertise for our citizens and that can never be a good thing. So we understand the reasons for this bill but we urge members to look further and ask why our veterinarians are leaving as Mr Carter said to go and practise in Australia or elsewhere which means we face the situation of accepting into this country people with lesser degrees. That is not good. 
I also hope that when these people come to this country we will not see the situation we have seen in other professions where people have been imported to fill a space on farms which are the backbone of this country. We heard the dialogue between the two old parties in the House just a wee while ago about farmers being the backbone of the country—and they still are. I just hope that the people who come in really will commit themselves to serving or to carrying out their profession on farms. It would be sad indeed if we were to import them and they did not go on to farms but instead parked themselves in Auckland or in other big cities around the country and attended to what veterinarians term their bread and butter: the small animal practices they run in cities where they neuter cats drench the like and so on and so forth. Those city practices are very profitable but they are not there for our No. 1 export. I am not downgrading somebody’s pet dog or anything else but we are short of veterinarians on farms— 
Brian Connell 
: Or their budgies. 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: Or their budgies—and if this bill is carried through we want to see that shortage fixed up. So I say that New Zealand First has that concern and that members should look behind what is happening here and recognise the situation for what it is. 
It is also interesting to note that the Act this bill is modifying was set in place only back in 1994 so it is not a very old Act at all. That is another concern—that bills coming to this Parliament nowadays are replacing Acts that are not very old. In actual fact not enough foresight is being put into the bills that are coming into the House these days. 
Hon David Carter 
: We’ll watch that. 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: We will have to watch that as this bill comes through the select committee—a very very cooperative select committee indeed. 
I want to raise another question. Where is the foresight and the training and where are the skills being put in place to train more veterinarians in this country? If we are to lose a percentage—a good percentage by the look of it—of our veterinarians to other countries because they are so well qualified and well recognised let us produce more of them instead of importing people of a lesser standard. I think that instead of seeing what we are seeing and hearing what is exposed to us in question time when we learn of courses in this country that pass for university or training courses in such things as cooking pork bones or whatever else it may be let us see more resources being put in to the serious stuff like training veterinarians doctors and the like. Members will notice that I left lawyers off the list there because there is a suggestion that we may already have enough of them. But let us put our resources into the productive areas. 
Lastly I want to suggest to the Labour Government when it is talking about what it has done for farmers that it has not done anything for them at all. Before the National members start to burst into hysterical laughter I would suggest that National has not done anything for farmers either. It has not been fashionable to do things for farmers over the last vast number of years. In closing I can certainly tell the Labour Government what farmers have done for it. Farmers are still the backbone of this country. They are still the people who provide the exports and set the living standard for this country and this Labour Government should never ever forget that.