King MattMATT KING (National—Northland): I think the Labour members over there have got to get some new material get some new lines—that nine years of neglect" is wearing very thin. The facts don't back it up so get some new material get your spin doctors working. We at National we kicked off a review of National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) in 2016 and we acknowledge that it has been severely tested by Mycoplasma bovis and it's been found wanting. We acknowledge that. This bill amends NAIT to make improvements to the framework governing it so I acknowledge that. It's all about animal tracing and identification but it also overlaps into biosecurity and food safety. So we're supporting this bill. We want to ensure that it's fit for purpose and that it's working. You know when we're in Opposition unlike the Government we don't oppose everything for the sake of opposing. We've supported a good portion of the bills that have gone through the House in the last two years. We've supported them. Some of them are our bills so of course we support them—Hon Member: Most of them.MATT KING: Most of them are our bills actually—yeah. There were 92 submissions; 10 gave oral evidence. I was privy to about an hour or two of submissions when I subbed in on the Primary Production Committee. I'm a farmer myself so I know all the issues to do with NAIT. National recommended removing the reference to core data being the property of the Crown as it could be problematic and I understand that. Also exempting transport operators—I was in the select committee when the transport operators were coming in. And when you're a truck driver and you're loading cattle late at night and especially wild cattle ensuring that they're all NAIT-tagged would be a nightmare. And so it's just a practical amendment to the bill to be realistic. So the farmer takes the liability. He takes that off the transport operators' books so I agree with that. We requested it. Amending unsafe tags to cover over five years—I've had cattle on my farm that you could not get near a cattle yard and in fact recently I had to have one destroyed because of that; it was out of control. So I think it's a good amendment to the bill to allow that—just a practical way. And so we need to improve our system our system of traceability. We all agree to that. I understand when NAIT came it was phased in over a period of time. And for me it necessitates the purchase of a $2000 scanning gun plus the NAIT tags themselves. It's really expensive. And I found that is a decent-sized expense for a farm my size. Also the NAIT issues are hard. When I'm buying stock off neighbouring farms or nearby farms they're meant to scan them and send it away. Well my experience with doing that with NAIT has been a nightmare actually—I'll be honest with you. I've scanned all my animals on my farm and sent them in to NAIT in a nice little spreadsheet left messages for them phoned them emailed them several times and not one reply. So I think there are issues at the moment with the NAIT system and I'd like to see that they are sorted out.Having one NAIT number per farm location is a good idea. In the previous situation there you could have one NAIT number for a farmer and he could have several farms or two or three and so that's a sensible amendment. I agree with that. And non-compliance with NAIT is a real concern and I understand that. It's a frustration for farmers it's a frustration for NAIT but non-compliance is an issue. If you have a system that's foolproof and you have a NAIT system that works you would have more compliance from farmers. I acknowledge that. My own experience was sending in information and it not being loaded—very frustrating for me. And privacy issues—I see this bill solves the privacy issues around information being shared and it increases the penalties: $10000 to $100000; $20000 for body corporates to $200000; for minor small-scale offending $300 to $800; failing to tag offence $150 to $400—it makes sense. In terms of data access I had—some people had some stock stolen the thief put them through the works. They got notified that their stock had gone through the works and applied to the freezing works for the information to try and track down who put it through. The freezing works cited privacy issues and didn't produce it. So I'm glad to see that those sorts of issues will be sorted out. So all in all a reasonable bill; I commend it to the House."