O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I was talking briefly to a constituent tonight just before I came down and he said: Go down and give the Government heaps." It is going to be difficult because we do agree with the Government on this piece of legislation and it nice to see Minister Goodhew acknowledge the good work that the Primary Production Committee did to improve a bill. I have said before in speeches in the House that this is a bill to protect New Zealand farmers and primary industry producers from ourselves. It is about innovation and we are very very good at that. So what has happened over the years is that we have had agricultural chemicals and compounds they have been designed and developed for a certain purpose and then in the good old Kiwi way farmers have taken that product and said "Well that might be good somewhere else." and they have applied it. But in the new world of traceability and of maximum residue levels and accountability and registration that is simply not good enough.The Minister has said that this bill is designed to do a couple of things—not to inhibit competition. The Government still believes that competition delivers nirvana to everything and everyone. It does wake up occasionally to the fact that actually—through some good regulation and good law—when we have controlled competition and robust commercial activity we often get a far better outcome. The bill is a balanced piece of legislation that does allow for the protection of data—of course people may be confused: it is basically information that is gathered to show that a chemical works and is not harmful when it is applied to a particular crop or use and is not harmful to the crop or the animal and does not hang around to be harmful to anyone in the food that might be consumed from that. So companies put a lot of money into that science and into the information that then gets provided to Agcarm for registration of the product to say what it is used for what the rates that should be applied are and that if done correctly it will offer no harm to the environment or to the animal or to the crop or to the consumers of the products. We as a country must uphold those core principles absolutely. There should be no doubt that any food produced in this country is indeed the safest best and purest food that people can consume around the world. The premium that we should be getting for that should enable farmers to maintain their viability into the future. This piece of legislation is timely. I have got here a report done by Covec—you know another one of the consultancy agencies that the Government is often happy to throw money at. It was done in February 2009 and in fact it has taken a long long time now—2016; it is almost the end of it—for the Government to get off its butt and get around to actually implementing the recommendations here.A lot of people in the chemical industry and the industry supplying goods for the agricultural sector have probably been frustrated. They will be pleased to see the third reading of this bill go through the House and I am certainly not going to delay that any longer than necessary. Mr Assistant Speaker you will be pleased to hear that. Can I just say that we support the Government bringing the bill to the House finally. The select committee has done the best job we possibly can. It is a balanced bill between protecting the information supplied by companies but leaving the door open for innovation and for the development of new products. So I think this will be a good bill for agribusiness moving forward and I hope that it is implemented used wisely and does indeed protect New Zealand's reputation as the producer of the finest food and fibre for the most discerning customers in the wider world. Thank you."