Grigg Nicola; O'Connor DamienNICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm pleased that the Minister has enlightened the Chamber that he's just returned from America because I have too. In the meetings that I had with farming producers—not Ministers not people who sit in cushy offices; actual farmers—they talk about the targets being imposed on some states across America and fear a food reduction of up to 40 percent Minister. So we've got to get real about these things.Can I also ask the Minister to enlighten himself in reading a very educative document—the National Party's first tranche of its agricultural policy—called Getting Back to Farming" because that's what we're all here for Minister: to represent a sector that just wants to farm; that just wants to produce food and create those $52 billion worth of exports that you have talked about and that your Government consequently taxes.But what I would actually like to start asking the Minister of this afternoon is farmer confidence. As the rural community spokesperson for the National Party and our associate agricultural spokesperson it sets cold fear in my heart when I start to see surveys from farming representatives and lobby groups that are the worst we have seen in decades—some might say since the 1980s crashes.A net 81 percent of farmer respondents—Federated Farmers' most recent survey—expect economic conditions to deteriorate in the next 12 months. Their top three concerns Minister are the climate change policy and the emissions trading scheme. We are talking about 5.4 percent of respondents expecting their production to decline over the next year and that their spending will increase—24 percent of them—over the next 12 months.So while the Minister wishes away this country's inflation and blames a war in the Ukraine the Minister needs to turn to his own Government's domestic spending and actually acknowledge that that is driving inflation in this country; that is driving the 20-odd percent of on-farm inflation.I asked the Minister in the Primary Production Committee recently and I wasn't satisfied with the answer so I ask it again: when the Prime Minister talked about his regulations bonfire and that too much too fast has been occurring under this Labour Government what has he looked at? What has he sought to review in the agricultural space because the National Party has identified hundreds of double-ups across regulations that yes also include local government but these are set by central government. What has he done to start to look for regulation reduction in the agricultural sector so that it does not harm on-farm productivity?Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): I'll start at the beginning where the member set off and that was saying to "Get Wellington out of farming; let farmers get on with it." That's a kind of a noble little rant again because when it comes to biosecurity the first thing the farming sector needs is for us to run a really robust biosecurity system checking on everything that's imported into the country. [Interruption] Excuse me excuse me. So do you think the farmers themselves can do that? The second thing is food safety—Nicola Grigg: Mr Chair can I ask the question?CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): No. The Minister has the floor.Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: —so we can produce lots of things on the farm but they need to meet a standard that meets our market requirements. So if the member wanted to deliver on her little rant it would be "Get out of our food safety systems. Get out of our food safety systems." because I hear that kind of rhetoric coming from people all the time: "Get out of our lives."Nicola Grigg: Yes!Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: Here we go again. So we'll take away all the biosecurity systems in the country.Nicola Grigg: I wasn't asking about that.Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR: Oh I see. You're very selective of where you should be able to. It's all very well to be selective. And then when it comes to things like adverse events where in the 1990s under the National Government there was no support—no support whatsoever—regardless of the events that occurred through this country. It was post-1980s; no subsidies no support.When we came into Government in 1999 a Labour Government said "It's not really sustainable; people in rural areas can't handle this burden on their own." So we intervened and we continue to do that. Hundreds of millions of dollars literally to Hawke's Bay Northland and we will continue to do that because we value and understand the importance.That's not getting out of our lives; that's supporting where necessary. And we will continue to do that through robust biosecurity systems through food safety systems that maintain our reputation because we might like to claim all the credit but the reputation we have internationally for our food safety is because of what our ancestors did: adhering to the expectations of the markets and imposing upon themselves the self-discipline to make sure that nothing went offshore that was unsafe. That's Government providing good guidance and regulations not getting out of our lives.If we can go on to animal welfare because that was kind of taken for granted—we're good animal farmers. Well the reality is with social media and the world we live in now one example of animal abuse can be around the world in the flash of an eye. Unfortunately—and we all accept there will be some odd occasions—without robust regulation without Government guiding the farming sector and every other sector of our economy we will be judged by the lowest common denominator. And that means that as food producers to the most discerning customers in the world we would not have a future. So we need good regulation.Where we make mistakes we're prepared to change them. The slope maps on the freshwater farm regulations—we've made the adjustments. We don't claim to be perfect and we will work with the industry body and organisations to make the adjustment necessary. But you cannot get Government out.Lastly I'll finish on the one intervention that we as a Labour Government are quite proud of—because the previous National Government said "Well we're not going to get in there."—which is the eradication of Mycoplasma bovis. We're proud of that intervention we're proud of committing hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars to help farmers so they can run efficient farming systems because if Mycoplasma bovis was here go and talk to a couple of farmers who were hit with it. We are lucky to have the systems we have in place now.We will always be prepared as a Labour Government to intervene where necessary. And if it's not perfect we'll make the adjustments to regulation. But it's a partnership model not some ideology that says "We should get on and do what we want and get Government out of our way." That's idiocy and ideology.CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Teanau Tuiono—you have four minutes and 16 seconds."