Tabuteau Fletcher: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: General Debate[Sitting date: 12 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5710. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): I just want to talk about the flow-on effects of this Government’s decisions of late. I want to talk about the flow-on effects of the actual foreign economic downturn. The National Government seems to be the only group in society that is still in denial about the situation that is facing this country. I want to say to its members: “Let’s talk about it National. Let’s have a conversation. Let’s actually acknowledge that there are problems. We are heading in the wrong direction and your go-to answer is apparently that dairy exports are only 20 percent of the export take.” Then we heard the Minister today having to resort to talking about other nations’ economies and how well they are performing. It just does not seem to make any sense.Let us face some facts. Fonterra has slashed its forecast payout for the season to $3.85 a kilo—far below break-even point for many of our farmers. Farmer debt New Zealand dairy debt has trebled to $34.5 billion in the past 10 years—$34.5 billion in the past 10 years—and the National Government has made it worse. It has made it worse. It was happy to encourage New Zealanders to put all of their eggs in the dairy basket and so players in the dairy industry expanded. Young New Zealand couples went into the dairy industry hoping to partake in that growth market without realising the realities of the market because this Government misled them.Last week Fonterra said that it would pay dairy farmers only $3.85 a kilo for milk solids—the lowest payment since the 2005-06 season and well below the estimated $5.40 break-even costs. What does this mean? It has already led to consequences in New Zealand—in our regions in particular. We now have the number of mortgagee sales jumping nationwide in the past quarter as lower dairy prices have already hit provincial New Zealand. Support industries are already shutting down. They are already shutting up shop or laying off staff in the hope of seeing the downturn through.David Bennett: OK—tell us how many.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: I will tell you how many in a minute Mr Bennett. Experts are warning of more foreclosures outside of Auckland’s surging property market as financially strapped homeowners in regional New Zealand start defaulting on their mortgages: 149 people lost their homes in distress sales—149 in the past 3 months.David Bennett: So 149 farms?FLETCHER TABUTEAU: It is a jump Mr Bennett—who does not seem to care—of 56 percent on the previous quarter. Five of the nation’s 14 regions recorded a jump in forced sales.New Zealand First and New Zealanders are saying that the National Government must act now to stop the sale of our land to foreign buyers. Foreign buyers have swathes of cash that New Zealanders do not have. New Zealanders will lose large amounts of land to foreign ownership as overseas buyers snap up what we anticipate will be cheap dairy farms. Kiwi farm owners do not want to sell their land but when the banks are forced to act—and they will act—the people with the most money to spend will unfortunately not be New Zealand residents. Overseas investors looking to build up their capital while the going is good will mean that our future generations will lose out. It is intergenerational theft.The last quarterly review from Westpac suggests that GDP will fall to 1.6 percent next year. It is also expected that unemployment will rise and wage growth will slow down even further. I beg the National Government to stop denying the facts. We now face the worse rate of unemployment in New Zealandsince 2000—more than double the number that it was when National took office. Stop denying the facts. Let us have an adult conversation about this. National needs to come up with some real solutions but first of all it actually needs to acknowledge that there is a problem. That is the first step in identifying how we can create a solution for New Zealanders. Thank you.