O'Connor Damien; Mallard TrevorHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): I'd like to follow on and acknowledge the challenges that many of those farmers in Canterbury are facing up to. As someone who is very familiar with the effects of flooding from the West Coast I know all too well and all too often the challenges and indeed I saw this morning again where a farmer was saying that they are having to look at what needs to be done next. The issue of the regional council allowing action to occur in the river waste—that should happen. There shouldn't be a blockage to that. It still does beg the question: what's the best thing for the farmers to do next? It might be bringing in a bulldozer or it might be bringing in a digger but there's still a lot of work to be done. Can I say that the Prime Minister and I visited to see it firsthand for ourselves and indeed it's good to see that the road link is back up and running there. There are still widespread challenges across the region and I have to say that long term we are going to face many more of those acute events. What we had today was the launch of the Climate Change Commission's report which is New Zealand's attempt to get ahead of what are going to be some challenging climatic times ahead of us. If we don't take action now and indeed if we don't encourage action across the globe then in fact whether it be farming or just living in rural in New Zealand it is going to be more and more difficult to face up to these climatic events. So that's indeed the reason that we are doing this. We've given half a million dollars there. We need to know from people on the ground what more they need and where they need it because we're not going to throw that money around and indeed the Rural Support Trust don't want us to. So we're committed to working with them. We've had a tough 12 months and I think we've committed about $50 billion to COVID recovery requirements. Do members know how much money we earned offshore last year from our primary production exports? About $48 billion. That puts it in perspective. Through the COVID crisis we generated about $48 billion worth of exports—a huge achievement and I want to say thank you to the people across the primary sectors for doing that—and we will continue to do that as I say in supporting the people across rural New Zealand to achieve that. We have to support that export-led growth. We've pivoted—and I don't like using that word. But New Zealand—Hon Stuart Nash: Again—again. Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: I've got to get it out there—I've got to get it out there. We've pivoted—that is New Zealand Trade and Enterprise or NZTE that the Hon Stuart Nash and I have responsibility for. Indeed we gave $54 million for them—they weren't able to travel offshore—to support exporters to get out and connect with the world and sell their wares and they did an incredible job. In fact we doubled the number of companies that we were helping directly in-market. We connected them up to a digital service. We gave them in-market reports. We enabled them to remain connected to their customers and that's why we saw $48 billion of export revenue—an amazing achievement. What we are getting from the markets though is increasing signals—if not directly from the consumers at this point but certainly from the supermarkets and those buying—that they want to connect to more sustainably friendly products and New Zealand is well positioned to provide those. They want lower-carbon produce. They want produce that is produced to the highest standards of animal welfare and that indeed ensures that we are looking after the environment as we deliver those. We are in a great position to do that and we will assist farmers horticulturalists foresters and all of those people across our industry to sell into the higher-value markets that continue to grow that $48 billion. Last weekend we signed a statement with APEC economies. A third of the world's population half of the world's trade and we committed firstly to recover from COVID by ensuring the flow of vaccines and medical goods could be unhindered throughout the globe. That was a massive achievement to have that clear statement from half the world's trade and indeed it will go forward. We then extended that to say that beyond COVID we need to continue to open markets—not close them down—to international trade. The message that was going from APEC through to the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the end of this year is that we want to see the WTO be a relevant up-to-date and effective organisation that protects not just small countries but also big ones when it comes to trading internationally. We realise the importance of vaccine and the trade and movement of that. We realise that medical equipment is necessary and food. Trade is—SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired. Stuart Smith.