McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): I'm once again living proof that if you hang around here long enough you go round the full circle. But I just want to comment before I get into the real facts of this bill on the Minister of Agriculture who made a very eloquent speech from the other side of the House. I remember him on the last two iterations of this bill standing about where I am haranguing the useless Government the terrible cooperative and the fact that Westland Milk Products was the hero of New Zealand's dairy industry. Well we know where Westland's gone! But none the less I just wanted to say before I start that I am a cooperative supporter and I think that Fonterra has served New Zealand extraordinarily well. I don't however think that this legislation has at all times served either New Zealand or Fonterra extraordinarily well and some of the changes that were made to this bill in the course of the reintroduction of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 3) will in fact improve a lot of those things for Fonterra and for the industry as a whole. It's a kind of unique situation we've been in because we've had a piece of legislation that probably in my lifetime was the second-most contentious piece of farmer politics that dominated the rural scene. The most contentious of those was the wool acquisition debate of the late 1960s and most people in this House won't remember that. If that debate had succeeded of course we would have had a wool industry that we could have perhaps talked about with a bit more pride today. Of course I heard the Minister just not long ago come to the select committee and say that he couldn't make the wool industry any worse. Well in fact he's halved the price of wool since he's been the Minister. I don't think that's necessarily his fault but that's what's happened to the price of wool. I think this is probably the third iteration of this piece of legislation that I've seen come into this House and the situation's changed dramatically in that time in that Fonterra at the time—and Mark Patterson made this point—was something like 96 percent of the dairy industry. The dairy industry of course at that time was a third the size it is now. Now you can argue whether that's good bad or indifferent for New Zealand but it sure does produce an awful lot of income for New Zealand: some $20 billion annually which is hugely important to New Zealand's wellbeing and in fact to our employment as well. It is a very big industry. Some of that growth in the industry has been caused by the terms of the original Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) and I don't necessarily think that was—some of those terms at the time might have been made with the best intentions but in fact the result they created was not in the best interests of New Zealand or the dairy farmers or the dairy industry—or Fonterra for that matter. But that's one of the great challenges that we face in this place because the moment we interfere in business through legislation we put distortions into the market place that almost always create problems that in some cases become insurmountable. Not very long ago we had the Racing Industry Bill go through this House. This House has been interfering in that industry for some years now without success and I think it's a great lesson to us that we should be very careful before we interfere in what effectively is—I wouldn't say it's a free market because it's not but it's certainly a market-driven situation. That creates a whole lot of problems.I think that this bill does fix some of the challenges that I think we've had with Fonterra and with DIRA for some time. It does enable some parts of the industry to get on with their business without political interference in them. I want to comment on a couple of other issues which are particularly relevant to my electorate and one is the milk given to Goodman Fielder who operate in my part of the world from a factory adjacent to the Longburn dairy factory which of course was stolen from Tui by Kiwi we always think in the Manawatū. As an old Tui shareholder we felt we got ripped off by the Taranaki but that's not unusual.Barbara Kuriger: Oh never!IAN McKELVIE: I think so Barbara! I think so. We got ripped off by the Taranaki. At the time it was quite a bitter debate actually and in fact this whole debate leading up to the formation of DIRA in 2001 was quite a bitter debate in many ways—not bitter I wouldn't say in that form but there were certainly some dominant characters who led those debates in those days. It does create some interesting issues. Another point I wanted to make about the dairy industry and in fact farming in New Zealand in general is that we have some extraordinarily innovative companies that have been driven by the sector and they'll continue to be driven providing we have a healthy industry. The provision of DIRA is critical to that healthy industry. One or two of them are based in Palmerston North in fact and of course the Gallagher Group who are the doyen of electric fence manufacturers—and security system manufacturers petrol pumps and many other things—are based out of Hamilton but also have a large base in Marton in the Rangitīkei electorate. Levno the modern company—he'd like me thinking it's modern—that does the milk measuring and milk meters and things like that comes all the way out of Foxton—in fact Nathan Guy's electorate at the moment although I'd like to claim it at times. And of course the Allflex tags were born and bred in Palmerston North taken over by a French company. I guess New Zealand First wouldn't like this much but many of our companies have gone that way and of course the agricultural sector does have a whole lot of those kind of companies that are very innovative create world-leading products and produce stuff that the world wants. Of course Fonterra is one of those because I think we're around 3 or 4 percent of world milk production but we're something like 90 percent of the world export—or 90 percent of our milk is exported in one form or another. So we create products in New Zealand. Fonterra's been absolutely the leader in this field because they have a base again in the Rangitīkei electorate through their science and research centre on the Massey University side of the Manawatū river where many of their world-leading products have been created. So whatever we think of our industry and however we devise legislation to ensure that it's equitable and fair for everyone it's very important that we have these very strong entities like Fonterra because they enable New Zealand—and their competitors actually—to produce products that are absolutely the best in the world. If we didn't have Fonterra sitting there I doubt the competition would exist in New Zealand to ensure there are other companies. There are some very good ones: Tātua Synlait Open Country Dairy to mention three. There are many more who are doing a great job for the New Zealand farming industry and they're doing that job as a result of this piece of legislation that was initially introduced to create exactly that. So I think in some ways the initial legislation has created an environment that we absolutely wanted to create in New Zealand and that was what was envisaged by those people who designed the legislation initially. However it has also created some distortions and those are some issues that we as a Parliament and as a country and as farmers have had to deal with and had to deal with at some cost to the industry as well. We'll have to continue to deal with that as we go along. I was not part of the Primary Production Committee and as I said you go the full circle in this place. I was part of the select committee that dealt with the last two iterations of this bill but not this one and I have listened to the Minister on numerous occasions espousing all sorts of views on farming. It's amazing how once you become the Minister you get captured by the system and you do what you're told and I'm most impressed to think someone from the West Coast would end up having to do what they're told. He seems to have got there. I won't take any more time of the House but I do think this bill does achieve a lot of what the industry has been asking for. My two dairy farming colleagues not quite with the same vehemence that Shane Ardern would have shown at some stage in this House—almost; Bennett's nearly as bad as him—have explained the intricacies of this bill as did the Minister and certainly Mark Patterson did as well. So I commend the bill to the House and wish it luck as it goes through.