Perry Edwin: Animal Products (Dairy Products and Other Matters) Bill — In Committee 
Perry Edwin: Animal Products (Dairy Products and Other Matters) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:624;Page:19142] 
EDWIN PERRY (NZ First) 
: 
 I too have had experience in the dairy industry just like my colleague Mr Connell. New Zealand First supports Part 2. The products produced by this industry are wide ranging and very well received offshore. We need to protect the borders and to make sure the industry is protected for the rest of our lives because this country was built on the efforts of the pioneers in the primary industries. This Government has been rewarded not because of its own efforts but because the Rt Hon Winston Peters and the Rt Hon Jim Bolger interfered with the dollar and the industry got on its own two feet demonstrated its reliability and returned to the Government a percentage of the surplus it now enjoys. 
I have to be very careful in speaking to this bill because the Minister in the chair the Hon Annette King saw me one day in Masterton eating some of these products. I am being very guarded and hope she does not let out the secret about what I was eating. 
The dairy industry has grown. What was once sheep country on the Napier - Taupo plains is now huge dairy farms. Some of those farms are milking over a thousand cows. The dairy industry provides this country with huge dollars. 
I want to touch on something Mr Connell mentioned. He was brought up on a dairy farm; I was brought up on a sheep farm but I did have to milk two cows every day before I went to school—only two but that was an effort. I had to drag the cream can out to the front gate and at the end of the week make sure I got the cream can back with a chit in it saying what the quality of the milk was and I was paid according to that. Today when driving around the country one sees milk tankers collecting milk from a wide range of areas including places that previously were not dairy-farming country. Around Taupo my colleague Ron Mark is a director of a trust that has won a number of awards for being one of the top dairy providers in this country. 
New Zealand First supports Part 2 of this bill. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister for Food Safety) 
: 
 I would like to take this opportunity to thank members for their contribution to this debate and to thank the Primary Production Committee for the way it dealt with the bill and reported it back without amendment. I thank the committee members for the points they raised but I do not agree with all of them. This bill is all about managing the risk to human and animal health from the consumption and use of dairy products and facilitating the entry of dairy products into overseas markets. I do not think there is any argument about that and I think both our medical professional people here today outlined very well the first objective when it comes to protecting people’s health. 
I was a little disappointed in Mr Connell’s contribution in that he did criticise the New Zealand Food Safety Authority. It is a very new organisation and not a threat to industry but there to help industry—to help facilitate exports and the making of quality products. I am particularly proud of that organisation. I know that it works incredibly well with industry and what the member said was a little unfair of him. I realise he was trying to put a bit of spice into the debate—trying to gear it up a bit—and maybe to have something to say. But I personally am very proud of the agency and I think many other New Zealanders are as well. 
The only other comment I would make to Mr Connell is that I take his point about us not wanting to have standards forced on us by overseas European markets. There is only one problem with that: if we do not accept the standards that they will accept in order to allow our products in they have the right to say they do not want our products. So there is a balance between saying: “Well stuff your standards.” and making sure we have a standard that is acceptable to the people who buy our products. After all it is a buyer’s market. We are the best in the world but it is still a buyer’s market out there and we have to meet the standards that buyers find acceptable. In the same way we expect people who send products to our country to meet our standards. 
I thank members for their contributions. This bill will see through a measure that started some time ago and at the end of the day it will bring the dairy industry in line with the Animal Products Act. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 330 in the name of the Hon Annette King to Part 2 be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to and Part 2 as amended agreed to.