Clark David: New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 29 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9969. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North): It is a delight to get up to support this bill. We in the Labour Party can see the benefit of exploring this area. The Act has been in place since 1987 I understand and in those 26 years the horticultural industry has changed significantly. So it seems timely to revisit the Act and to make sure that we are setting up the appropriate structure to support horticulture exports from New Zealand.It is no surprise and it will come as no surprise to anyone in this House that as a country it benefits us to work together to achieve scale and to be able to market our product abroad in a way that draws attention to its many benefits. If I can draw a parallel I know that when I sat on a board in Otago that was concerned with growing the region one of the better initiatives to come out of it in the time that I was involved was to market apples from the region and market them as organic which achieved a price premium. That marketing was achieved only by the agreement of all of the players in the area who had the say in whether an initiative would be put forward for this. From memory the apples achieved a 15 percent price premium as a result of being marketed as organic and the change in behaviour that was required to market these products was nothing—absolutely nothing. The area where the apples are grown is relatively free of pests because it is an area that is sufficiently cold at the right times of year so the apples were being grown in an organic fashion; they simply were not being marketed in that way. But by achieving scale by achieving agreement across the region to market a product in a certain way it could achieve a market premium.This is part of what I imagine will be achieved by this bill. It will enable producers to come together to pool resources in a modern way to market products abroad and to make sure that minimum standards are being met so that the products can legitimately be marketed in a way that will be attractive overseas. So let me have the rare privilege of congratulating the Government on updating some legislation. It is good that it is doing this. New Zealand is too small to operate at a smaller scale and compete in many of these areas.There are other areas of course that ought to have similar treatment applied and some Government leadership would go a long way—for example in the meat industry where we know that many producers are struggling as they have overheads that make the area less profitable over time and yet they have capital barriers to achieving effective market structures and a Government that has been unwilling to show leadership in that area. That should not stop me congratulating the Government on this particular initiative which does show some leadership in this area—albeit rare it is a thing that should be welcomed because overall this Government is failing to achieve its export targets.That is something of a background to this bill. It was the Government’s target and I believe it still is to raise New Zealand exports to 40 percent of GDP. When the Government started New Zealand exports were over 30 percent of GDP; they are now below 30 percent of GDP. The Government is actually going backwards and is forecast to go backwards further in the area of exports as an overall portion of our gross domestic product. The Government has as one of its central agendas something it calls the Business Growth Agenda which is supposed to achieve this 40 percent target but in fact as I have just explained the Government is moving in the opposite direction. Overall unfortunately the Government’s unwillingness to lead in the area of economic diversification and its unwillingness to make real progress in this area is hampering New Zealand as a country in terms of our future prosperity and in terms of being able to achieve the Kiwi Dream which every New Zealander used to have of having a secure income and opportunity throughout their lifetime to make the most of life. We have the lowest homeownership rates in New Zealand since 1951—there is one example of how that Kiwi Dream is drifting away. Labour of course has a vision to bring back that Kiwi Dream to actually grow our exports to have increasing prosperity as a country and to afford the kind of lifestyle that we think all New Zealanders ought to be able to have.This bill itself does aim to enable product groups to develop more flexible and targeted export marketing strategies and it does that through the permissive mechanisms of collecting levies. It establishes a relationship with the bodies the different horticultural product groups rather than directly with the producers and exporters. In the past the levies were allowed to be directly received only from the producers and exporters as I understand it but now the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority will be able to charge fees to horticultural product groups and they will be able to then onwards levy their members. This mechanism will of course make the whole process a little more efficient a little more modern and it has got to be practical if our exporters are to be left free to get on with doing what they do best: to grow the products that we want to sell offshore.In the 1980s of course when the Act was first brought in we know that we had some big issues in this area. We had fly-by-night exporters who would send one crop off on a boat not caring about the reputation of the country. This Act and its updated version also enables fines for misbehaviour for things that do harm to the industry as a whole and that is important if we are to present a “New Zealand Inc.” image abroad if we are to continue to establish our clean green credentials and to sell our products at a premium on the international stage. That is after all what we would like to do as a country to move towards that more prosperous future that we I think across the House would like to see—albeit that we may differ on the ways that we might get there. I may have some criticisms of the Government’s particular approach but I think we all share the desire to see a more prosperous future.As I said at the outset we will be supporting this bill. We will be supporting the more flexible and targeted export market strategies that we think will result from this bill and also the intention which I have not spoken to yet of clarifying the requirements for product groups to enter and to exit the export framework which seems again a sensible modernising move. In the papers that we have been supplied so far that is part of what the bill sets out to achieve. All of these things will be examined at the select committee and we will have the opportunity as members to contribute—those who sit on the Primary Production Committee and those who want to substitute in to refine the Act—and make sure that it actually does get on with the job of making sure that those credentials the ways of entering and exiting that particular framework are as good as they can be to make sure that the process is set up optimally and to make sure that when the powers of those bodies to levy are set they are set up in a way that actually clarifies the Act and makes it more user-friendly for the groups that will be doing the exporting.Although the Government overall is failing to meet its export targets we see this as a small positive step in the right direction and it is nice to see that the Government is not in this regard distracted by hair straighteners over-expensive TV screens barbecues sun decks or blow-up sheep. Here is one occasion where it is taking a small step in the right direction and making sure that New Zealand’s exporters are supported through up-to-date legislation. We will be supporting this bill and the promotion of the “New Zealand Inc.” brand abroad in respect of horticultural products.