Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. First up I would like to congratulate the list MP for Hamilton East Jamie Strange because we've got a lot of people on the opposite side of the House to us—calling themselves Government"—who sit on the Primary Production Committee and have not attempted to even make the length of call that the list MP for Hamilton East has made. Actually it's probably an indictment on the Minister Damien O'Connor that the Minister actually made an even shorter speech than the other three members from the Primary Production Committee that are here.I just want to ask a question also—and also Stuart Smith mentioned before that the Hon Eugenie Sage has at least made the attempt to take a call. We won't agree with everything that she has said but at least she made the effort to take a call. I would like to ask a question of the Hon Eugenie Sage. When we talk about search and surveillance—and I know that the Green Party have been against search and surveillance in the past—it just seems to be totally different when it's about farmers. The reality is that most farmers' offices are their homes. They are where their families are. I just think that to up these powers and we've heard tonight about having more powers than the police to go into these houses—why do we have to do it in this way? If they can actually enter the house and ask for information and then if they need to find out more it takes 24 hours to get a warrant why can we not just bide out that time and wait and get a warrant if there's something that then is deemed to be urgent enough to get a warrant? Now Kieran McAnulty did speak when he had his chance to during the first reading and I just want to correct something that Kieran McAnulty said in the House tonight. He got up and he gave the Minister a lot of credit for taking the politics out of the M. bovis situation. I agree that the politics needed to be taken out of the M. bovis situation because we were playing with farmers' lives and there were a lot of health issues out there. There was a lot of stress and we needed to get that out of this situation and I have to say that the clarity of actually now having a project of phased eradication has given a lot of certainty to it.But I was calling out to the member Kieran McAnulty while he was making his speech. I'm not sure whether he heard but I told him to go back and check my Twitter message and my Twitter conversation with the Hon Damien O'Connor from 12 May this year. It was while we were all down at the dairy industry awards and I know that because the Minister upset me with something that he said on one of the television programmes—I think it was The Nation—on that morning. We exchanged some emails and we exchanged some tweets and one of the things I put on here was to the Hon Damien O'Connor: "Farmers are too important to be kicked around like footballs! They are worried they don't know about 1 June cow movements. Everyone's pointing the finger and no one can confirm anything. It's a joke!"Now the Minister will be able to verify that tweet because it went to his account. So we had an exchange on Twitter and actually that night we shook hands and we decided that the farmers would come first. So there was quite a process in taking the politics out of this and the statement that Mr McAnulty made that the Minister started the process and then it took two weeks for the Opposition to catch up is just nonsense.Hon Member: That's right—dead right.BARBARA KURIGER: So yeah I'll accept an apology around that one.Now M. bovis as I've said has been devastating and I will acknowledge that Hamish Walker and Lawrence Yule and Andrew Falloon are members on our side of the House who have been really instrumental in supporting their farmers up until this point in time. It's only more recently that I've had sadly the opportunity to support a farmer that's in my electorate that's unfortunately contracted M. bovis in the herd of cows that they have. I can tell you it's devastating—it's absolutely devastating. Farmers love their cows and this is hurting. I think that what is happening with this piece of legislation is absolutely just another sting in this whole process and I'm really disappointed.The industry knows what it has to do. The industry is already taking steps. Yes it could have been better and that was something that the Minister and I discussed via messages and words at the time. Yes it could have been better and yes we need to make it better but why do we have to keep doing it to people? Why can't we work with people? Why can't we take them on a journey? There are a lot of questions that we on this side of the House will be asking the Minister when we get through into the committee stage.I think it's really important that we take people on a journey because it's one thing for the Green Party not to believe in search and surveillance until it comes to an issue where it involves farmers—well I just have some news for the Green Party. It is that farmers are people too and the rural support trusts have been out there—I've got people that are working until midnight. They're taking calls. They're on 24-hour calls supporting farmers to the end.The Minister has also admitted tonight—and we'll all say that this was bigger than all of us—that mistakes have been made and mistakes do get made. I think that it's really important that we stop and think about each other as people. We listened to the Speech from the Throne and it talked about how we're going to be a kinder and a more caring society. Well where is the kinder more caring society in this? Yes we want to clean up M. bovis—every one of us wants to clean up M. bovis—but you're not going to do it by sending out search and surveillance officers.Everyone's looking over their shoulder—absolutely looking over their shoulder—and I'm going to mention the Hon Michael Woodhouse. When he was the Minister who was dealing with WorkSafe I can remember a day when everyone was looking over their shoulder waiting for WorkSafe to come up the drive. Michael Woodhouse as the Minister had enough strength to stand up and say at that time "We are going to engage we are going to educate and then we are going to enforce." and guess what? In my first year as a member of Parliament I heard a lot of things about WorkSafe and people were freaked out. Guess what? I can go out there now and I'm not hearing very much about WorkSafe at all because they are engaging and they are educating to the point where those people who were going out and selling health and safety services as a business are no longer doing that because WorkSafe's actually stepping in and offering to fit that bill and offering to help people with their health and safety.I think that the Ministry for Primary Industries could take a leaf out of their book. I have seen collecting collecting and collecting of information. People get this information and at the end they try to add it all up and I can tell you that sometimes one and one does not even make two. I can tell you that 90 percent of the information that is collected in some instances actually turns out to be irrelevant to the point of what those officers were collecting it for. So I ask the Minister: what difference will a day make?If the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) people go and have to ask for information and if they feel that there's more reason to go and collect that information then they can go and get a warrant. They can go and get help. There is no need for these people to be walking in or—worse still—to be invited into someone else's house for a cup of tea and for that farmer to end up having search and surveillance going on where they happen to go and collect up a whole lot of things and in a worst-case scenario they don't even leave a list often of what they've collected up.So I really think that this is overkill. I actually think the industry knows what's going on. The Rt Hon David Carter mentioned the lifestyle farmers before. Well actually the lifestyle farmers are starting from square one because most of them don't even have any experience of NAIT. So you can imagine it's going to give equal powers for both but what's going to happen when someone goes into a lifestyle block? Those people are not going to have any idea. So please Minister take some calls and explain to us why this is necessary."