Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. Dairy farmers do not listen to a word from that member Damien O'Connor. That is simply not the intention of what we are seeing here in this House tonight. This is an attack on dairying it is an attack on the values of private enterprise and it is an attempt by the Labour and Green parties and New Zealand First to strip that industry of its economic potential.We've heard today from that Minister—and his very words were—that the Labour members will determine the industry fit for purpose for the future. That was his line from his last speech. That was your exact line. Why would an industry—New Zealand's biggest industry—trust a group of failed Labour academics to determine how a New Zealand industry should actually work itself out? It is up to the New Zealand dairy industry it is up to Fonterra to work out its future. It is not up to those failed academics over there to actually tell New Zealand's biggest industry how it should operate. We know they're going to set up a committee and it will be a committee set up of their own stooges and it will be a committee that's given the intention and told what to do and we have been told what they are going to do. We have been given a broad outline of those terms of reference. And we go back to that quotation from the Minister—the very Minister sitting here today—that said it's about environmental issues land use and the industry in general. And he nods now because the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) was never set up for any of those things. DIRA was set up after the formation of Fonterra to deal with some milk supply issues. It was never set up to determine the future look of what Fonterra or any other company will provide it was never set up to determine the environmental outcomes of the New Zealand dairy industry and it was never set up to actually look at land-use change. This Government is being disingenuous in the way they're using the DIRA legislation to set up a whole review of New Zealand primary industry. That is what they are actually doing and the Greens are loving every moment of this because this gives them the opportunity to put all those crazy ideas that they want to apply to the New Zealand dairy industry in place and the Labour Party are letting it happen because the Labour Party are greener than the Greens. The leader of the Labour Party should be in the Green Party. This is what you are seeing here now with Labour and the Greens and New Zealand First have got as much backbone as you would expect from a party that swivels around in the political landscape looking for the net to be held by—they will not put up a decent fight against this.This is Labour accommodating the Greens' wishes. This will be part of the agenda that those political parties set out. They're looking for a way that they can attack New Zealand dairy farmers and what better way than to go through the DIRA legislation and create a review. Look there's no reason that the member and the Minister opposite didn't follow through with the legislation that National had put through.If we look at some of the things that were in that legislation: first of all exit and entry—exit and entry. You've taken that section out that exit and entry. The Green Party if anything should be supporting that because it says no to new conversions that Fonterra can say no to increasing supply from. That would be what you'd expect the Green Party to support. The Green Party have said that they will let that section be taken out. They know that they've got a bigger angle coming. They know that the entry and exit's only a small thing to give up now because they're going to bring in land-use change legislation as a result of the new DIRA reforms.The second thing that was in that legislation that's been taken out—and this is where New Zealand First has failed again to commit to the New Zealand public—is that where there is regulated milk Fonterra has to sell to new processors. The legislation that we introduced would have taken that away and would have meant that they wouldn't have to do it. The New Zealand First Party had quote after quote saying from their leader that they don't believe New Zealand milk should go to foreign-owned companies—foreign-owned companies that dominate the supply of New Zealand milk—apart from Fonterra. Open Country Dairy Oceania Dairy Yashili New Zealand Dairy you name it—foreign ownership in them. The New Zealand First Party is not standing firm with the words that they said to farmers before the election. They are not standing up for the words that they put out to the New Zealand public.So this legislation is not going to be dressed up as some kind of South Island process that is part of the dairy industry that needs to be sorted out before May. This is a blatant attack on New Zealand dairy farmers and New Zealand dairy farmers need to wake up and stop it. The reason they're doing it in urgency is to not give New Zealand dairy farmers that opportunity. That is the whole purpose they are doing it for because they know they don't want to give people the chance to protest like in Morrinsville where people actually had their say in a democratic country unlike the democracy over the other side that they want to impose on New Zealanders.But there's more. This will affect not only New Zealand dairy farmers because when they are talking about land-use change that will affect all New Zealand agriculture and horticulture. This will not stop at dairy farmers. Once the Labour-Green review comes into place—and they are talking about land-use change—and they come and put down rules such as the Waikato Regional Council has put down around land-use change it cannot apply just to dairy farmers. It has to apply to all agriculture and horticulture to be effective and this will effectively constrain the future of New Zealand's growth industries because a lot of those horticulture and agricultural industries that could take off actually have a higher nitrogen use than dairy. You see that in the Waikato with that land-use change where there's not allowed to be that change into dairying and there's not allowed to be that change into cropping. This will come to all New Zealand landowners. This is an attack on the property rights of those people that run the businesses that keep this country going and this is what this whole bill is about.The other thing that will happen in this case is that the Greens will use this opportunity to put in some of the content that they've always wanted to do to New Zealand dairy farming and that is to limit the number of stock in New Zealand. They have been wanting for years to stop the dairy industry and this gives them the opportunity to put the parts into the legislation such as a limit on the number of cows per hectare. That will definitely constrain the New Zealand dairy industry because what's going to happen under this review is that a group of Labour and Green MPs will determine the future of the New Zealand dairy industry.That is not what happened in Fonterra. In Fonterra the two main companies came together and asked the Government of the day to support that process through legislation to make it a reality. This is not the same case. The New Zealand dairy farmers have not come and asked Labour and the Green Party to do a review and tell us what we need to do on farm to make our businesses better. No this is a mandate that the Greens and the Labour Party have been wanting to do for a long time and New Zealand dairy farmers need to wake up and smell the roses because this will directly affect their ability to do business going forward. It's not a commercial decision that their cooperatives have made; it will be a political decision made by a group of people that have no interest no understanding and no comprehension of what the agricultural sector makes.The worst part of it apart from the Labour and the Green Party doing something that is their ideology is a New Zealand First Party that tries to go around saying they represent regional New Zealand when they are actually supportive of the biggest attack on regional New Zealand that we will see in the next three years. This is a deliberate ploy from the Government parties to attack rural New Zealand. They couldn't do it any other way. They made a deliberate attempt at this stage to use DIRA for that attack and we need to be upfront and aware of that. We don't have to wait for the terms of reference; they've told us what they will be: environmental land use and whatever else they think. These are not terms of reference that we need to wait and see about. We know that they are beyond what DIRA intended in the first instance and this is purely an attempt by those parties to dictate to the rural sector their values of how farming should operate their impression of how farming should operate and their expectation of what farmers will do. And that will be a disaster for New Zealand because those people have never run a business they never will run a business and it is up to the commercial people in those areas to make those decisions and not that pack of left academics that are tired and finished.