Harawira Hone: Dairy Industry Restructuring (Raw Milk Pricing Methods) Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Harawira Hone: Dairy Industry Restructuring (Raw Milk Pricing Methods) Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 30 March 2010. Volume:661;Page:10148. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. I will say three things before I start. First of all I congratulate David Tua on winning his fight last night. 
Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 
: Yahoo! 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: He is a close relation of my mate Sam over there and he is a relation of mine as well because he is from up north—a long way up north but still up north. Secondly I record my deep and abiding criticism of my colleague the scoundrel Te Ururoa Flavell for abandoning the House last night and abandoning his responsibilities to the Maori Party so that he could go to watch the fight. 
Finally however I thank him very much for leaving me this most exciting speech on the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Raw Milk Pricing Methods) Bill. This bill to allow milk to be allocated through an auction process sounds technical but it also allows us to acknowledge the opportunity for Maori in the primary sector. Maori dairy farmers own an estimated 100 million shares in Fonterra with some of the major players in the sector being large Maori incorporations directly accountable to their people so Maori skill acquisition research and innovation within this sector will be essential to gaining added value for existing Maori assets and for interests in agriculture horticulture forestry and aquaculture. 
I understand that this bill is basically an exercise in restructuring contracts by having auctions putting the onus on buyers to set the new price range for contracts and helping all players to get a snapshot of potential new prices that are set by the market itself which will help in how the market sees and values itself and which will help determine consumer patterns. The stated intentions of the bill are to achieve a decent price for regulated raw milk as soon as possible to ensure that excess demand for regulated raw milk is managed efficiently and to remove uncertainty regarding the price of regulated raw milk. 
But it seems that even with one clear purpose there are still very strong and differing responses from across the sector. At one end we have Paraninihi ki Waitotara which supports the principle of the bill. Mind you Paraninihi ki Waitotara is a Fonterra supplier and has been subsidising Synlait and others to date for milk they take under the 2001 Dairy Industry Restructuring Act. At the other end is Green Valley Dairies which opposes the bill because it thinks the proposed auction system will simply create ambiguity in an already volatile raw milk market and Tatua Cooperative Dairy which said the bill should be abandoned or at least delayed until there is greater clarity about the likely outcomes. In the middle we have Open Country Dairy which does not think the bill will deliver on the expectations of the 2001 Act but which will comply with the new law because regulated milk is only a small part of its operation. 
On another level I think it is also worthy to note that one of the interesting features of the 2009 economic situation was that Maori dairy farmers thought they would be less likely to be affected by the forecast drop in milk payouts than non-Maori farmers. I recall Rino Tirikatene of Ngati Hine the chief executive officer of the Federation of Maori Authorities saying that it was because Maori farmers when gearing in debt ratios were more conservative than non-Maori with debt representing 10 to 15 percent of the value of the asset for Maori as opposed to 60 to 70 percent for non-Maori. That is something my colleague the scoundrel Te Ururoa Flavell spoke about last week during the debate on securities trustees. So instead of struggling to service debt Maori farmers are able to focus on feed strategies in order to stay afloat during tough times. Clearly being able to be self-sufficient and relatively undamaged by debt burden means that Maori farmers are less likely to be forced into mortgagee sales. That is a very strong feature of the Maori dairying sector that the whole New Zealand dairy sector would do well to emulate. 
Finally I would like to step outside the milking shed for a minute to look at the broader issue of the affordability of food and dairy products for ordinary Kiwis. Although the CPI suggests that essential food prices will fluctuate from time to time the trend is for ever-increasing prices regardless of options that may affect dairy farmers and their incomes. Statistics New Zealand states that food prices went up 2.1 percent in January alone with higher prices for groceries food fruit vegetables meat poultry and fish. This is an ideal opportunity therefore to promote the bill of my colleague Rahui Katene that calls for healthy food to be exempt from GST. In fact it seems as if it is poor people who are in danger of being priced out of the market. The research confirms the high rates of child poverty poor living conditions and poor health status of children in low-income families. We note that during the last 3 years food prices have gone up more than 20 percent; indeed increases in the cost of staples for a nutritious diet such as fruit vegetables and milk have been particularly high while real incomes have risen only very slightly. It is because of these massive changes that the Maori Party is supporting Rahui Katene’s call for GST to be removed from healthy foods to make them more affordable. 
Although we will support this bill we leave a challenge for this House: it can auction milk prices if it must but it should not auction the well-being of New Zealanders by failing to recognise the very real impact of our economic decisions on those who are most vulnerable in our society. Tena koe.