Guy NathanGENERAL DEBATEHon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. We don't know how lucky we are." Of course that is what Jacinda Ardern supporters were thinking last week when Andrew Little was in the dock—"We don't know how lucky we are mate." That is what they were thinking. What a photo opportunity from hell that was for Andrew Little. And then also thinking about John Clarke and his famous words that we also should not forget: "If it weren't for your gumboots where would you be?". Well in my particular case in Edgecumbe yesterday I would be standing in half a metre of silt or floodwaters indeed over my Red Band gumboots. My heart goes out all of those people who are affected by the Edgecumbe event and now it has been broadened out to the Bay of Plenty.But importantly the reason I am going to talk about not only John Clarke but Murray Ball this afternoon is that these two gentlemen are iconic rural people who have connected urban communities. They have brought humour into the households of New Zealand. They have brought humour with their cartoons and the film. When you think about those characters in Footrot Flats—who was it: Wal Dog Horse and Major the pigdog—that gave the ability for everyone to connect to rural communities and have a good old laugh. And we have lost that now.What we see this afternoon are questions of attack from the Opposition on water quality. Of course they do not even want to acknowledge what farmers have done in a short period of time. Let us take them back for a step in time. Over the last 10 years or so farmers have excluded livestock from rivers water tributaries streams and lakes to the tune of about 26000 kilometres. Last time I looked that gets you from here to London and part of the way back as well. A lot of these fences are now riparian planted. They have nutrient budgets. They are very mindful of the fact that they need to do more. We are now having a discussion with other lowland farmers about moving the dial for them and we know there is a bit of cost involved. We know that it will require 56000 kilometres of fencing to occur. We know there are productivity benefits as well as environmental ones.Farmers are environmentalists. They want to leave the land in a better state than when they came on to it for their children and their grandchildren. We do not hear that this afternoon in any of the questions from the Labour Party or Green Party members. It is just full-on attack. They would prefer to have a moratorium: no more dairy cows anywhere in New Zealand—in fact go and kill half of them. You just move farmers into the dole queue. We feed 40 million people. We export to 130 countries around the world. We should be proud of that. We should be proud of the fact that we produce premium food and we need to do more in terms of environmental sustainability.But what we do not hear from the other side of the House is that our farmers are doing their utmost and we want to support them through this. But it is so easy for our Opposition members to have the blame game. It is so easy to cherry-pick Sir Peter Gluckman's report and say that it is all farming. Well the reality is that it is to do with urbanisation and it is to do with industry growth. It is pointless looking over your shoulder. It is about moving collectively forward as one.Iain Lees-Galloway: What a lazy Minister.Hon NATHAN GUY: And what would Iain Lees-Galloway know in Palmerston North? What would he know? He would never back any farmers in his community. He will never acknowledge the fact that the Manawatū River is being cleaned up under this Government and the great work that Nick Smith is doing.Also I want to talk about something that was significant last night and it focuses in on environmental sustainability. It is to do with our fish stocks. Here is a book that was launched last night: Roughy on the Rise. This orange roughy fishery collapsed in the 1980s and 1990s. Now with science and third-party accreditation through the marine stewardship certification we can take a premium product to market. I acknowledge our farmers I acknowledge our fishers and foresters—they do a fantastic job."