Walker Hamish; Rurawhe AdrianHAMISH WALKER (National—Clutha-Southland): We support this bill through to the select committee stage. It's a bit like life: life's never perfect nor is this bill. But we're voting it through to the select committee because we're hearing that with the spread of M. bovis some payments are taking their time to come through and some banks are putting pressure on farmers.Banks are an interesting one. We can't live without them and sometimes we wish we could. With banks for farmers and for businesses to grow and to ensure future generations stay on the land we need capital and the reason why banks provide the lowest cost of capital is because they have information on us. So if we didn't have the banks I would have to come up to you Andrew Falloon and say I'd like to borrow some money." You don't know too much info about me. Therefore the interest rate would have to be a lot higher.I think another important aspect of putting this through to the select committee stage is the fact that we will hear from the banks. I'd better acknowledge Rino a previous speaker for the Labour Party. He made a really good point: we don't want to impose additional costs on to farmers additional red tape so it will be good to hear from the banks to get their thinking around this because at the end of the day we don't want interest rates to go up which would cost farmers a lot more. I do want to acknowledge the banks in Southland dealing with a lot of farmers affected by M. bovis at the moment. The feedback is banks are working with them well in Southland. It's not so true in areas like South Canterbury and North Otago. There are four or five farmers that are really really struggling up there with M. bovis and the banks are putting pressure on them so it's very timely that this bill's come up.I was speaking to one farmer this morning talking about this member's bill lodged by New Zealand First member Darroch Ball and I acknowledge Darroch and also Mark your contribution earlier. It's great to have you in the electorate as well. But when I was talking to this farmer I was sort of describing and outlining the bill to him and he was talking about his experience of the bank that he's been dealing with for about 25 30 years. He had a second bank come in just for a chat just to review his banking facilities and his lending and one point that bank made was "Well we do feel you have been under a bit of undue pressure here from your bank." So he did mention that this bill would be a good idea and just having an independent voice will help. Farmers especially when they first buy farms are under a huge amount of debt for the first 10 to 15 years. A lot of that is because of the good work that they've been doing for their environment. They've been investing in riparian planting effluent systems fencing—97 percent of farms are now fenced which is the equivalent of I think from Wellington to Chicago and back. So quite often the reason why farmers do take on additional debt is the upgrades they have been making. I just want to highlight a couple of areas of concern around new section 49 and new section 50 inserted by clause 4. It's around the confidentiality of mediation sessions and disclosure of information. It's all very well in theory having these sorts of strict rules about disclosure and who's going to find out about it but my experience with M. bovis is that if a farmer does have M. bovis at the moment they're protected by law to basically protect them and to ensure farmers come out at the first possible opportunity. All it takes in a small rural community is one possibly two phone calls and it's pretty easy to pick up gossip. So those are three clauses I'd like to work through at the select committee stage. Just my last comment is it's great I think that nearly every person on the Primary Production Committee has risen and spoken to the bill. I'm not too sure why this is going to the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. It would be great if it could come through the Primary Production Committee. I am a new member so I'm not too sure of the procedures so that's my last remark. Just quickly I just want to acknowledge all the farmers in Southland who have had a pretty tough few months with the droughts and with M. bovis and just one wish for me is: how about we take the political crap out of M. bovis? Let's get on with it let's give these farmers a chance and let's get this country going especially for farmers.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Mark Patterson—5 minutes in response."