Allan KiritapuKIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): Madam Speaker first of all I know it's a little late but I want to acknowledge your ascension to the bench as this is the first time I have had the privilege and delight to appear before you if I will so tēnā koe.Secondly just before I turn to the substantive matter at hand I too want to reiterate the Minister's comments and commend the service and contribution that the honourable member for Ōtaki Nathan Guy has made to rural and provincial communities for the duration of his time in this House but also I know for the immeasurable amount of energy and effort and confidence that was provided by yourself whilst you were at the helm of the ministry. So thank you for your service and your time.Turning to the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill (No 2) that is for consideration before this House I guess while this bill is so important for our considerations it has been highlighted by the biosecurity outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis. M. bovis has had incredibly detrimental impacts for provincial and regional communities widestanding. If anything though we can take away from the outbreak that it's an opportunity to reflect on areas where we can—and indeed must—do better and National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) was and has been the subject of a number of reviews. During the process of those reviews many shortcomings were highlighted which this bill here seeks to amend.So I think that one thing that we can be assured of on both sides of the House is that we are in agreement that the farming industry and the farming sector—they provide the backbone for many of our provincial economies. Now when you get an outbreak like M. bovis in a small community it has incredibly detrimental impacts on the wellbeing of the entire community. Now NAIT had been in place since 2012 and I think it's useful probably just to look back on where NAIT in its inception came from.I think it was the Hon Jim Anderton—if I'm correct Minister O'Connor—that was really forceful in pushing through the original proposal for NAIT. I think even under the fifth Labour Government in about 2008 there was a proposal to try and put $10 million into establishing the NAIT scheme but unfortunately we couldn't get support from the other side of the House at that time. They weren't into it and there was strong opposition from a number of groups that I'm proud to say now are very supportive—from the commentary I've seen at least—of what we're trying to do now. So I want to acknowledge the journey that we've been on with groups like Federated Farmers and the like to ensure that the method by which we can trace livestock is one that is secure and it will stand the test of time.So like I said we've had an opportunity now to reflect on some of the shortcomings and we've had a number of reports that highlighted some of those and Operational Solutions for Primary Industries New Zealand (OSPRI) and the like have been the subject of a number of critiques and reviews. I think if we look to the objectives of that National Animal Identification and Tracing Act 2012 the question which was before the Minister was whether or not the NAIT system that we had now under the 2012 Act could deliver on the objectives as set out in section 3. A couple of those: rapid and accurate tracing of individual or groups of … animals from birth to death or live export". Well the review showed that that actually was really tricky."Provides information on the current location and movement history of individual or groups of NAIT animals". Well what we were seeing and what the reviews highlighted is that there actually had been a really low uptake. In one of the most recent reports I read around about only 30 to 40 percent of livestock in 2017 had in fact complied with the provisions of the NAIT Act. So the voluntary system—or the lack of regulation sorry is a better way of saying—and the lack of investment into the system to ensure that where there were breaches that those were actually picked up and that they were prosecuted and followed all the way through—that was an area of the system that hadn't been working well. When the Act was introduced in 2012 we wanted biosecurity management to be improved. Well arguably that has been improved to an extent but it could be a lot better.I just want to flick back to the non-compliance of the Act. For livestock farm-to-farm I think that there was around about 30 to 40 percent compliance rate and a lot less for sales from farm-to-farm of calves. I recall having the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) come before us when we were undertaking the OSPRI review and one of the things that they spoke to was just the lack of information access to data and the ability to act quickly when things were showing that they were broken down. Actually we were right in the middle of a—the campaign was just gearing up. It was in July 2017 when we had that first notification down there in South Canterbury. I think it was only about a week or two later the second.Now our Government is pursuing complete eradication and there has been a vast amount of investment that has been spent on targeting. To date $250 million has gone into fighting Mycoplasma bovis and alongside Dairy New Zealand and Beef and Lamb New Zealand it is estimated that amongst these three parties to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis it's going to cost around $890 million. This is a large investment. It's a large investment for both the communities for the industry for the sector and for this Government. Now had we had the ability to ensure that the NAIT scheme was operating as it could have been and as it should have been perhaps we might have been able to tackle the cause and identify and locate the cause of that outbreak sooner quicker. That is the hope amongst many others that the reforms in this bill seek to achieve.So the primary focus of the amendments—and these again were alluded to in both the MPI report and the OSPRI review—is to improve the traceability of the animals. We've heard a little bit about that today and we've just heard from the Minister of Agriculture there. Ensuring that each NAIT number relates to a specific land parcel improves our ability to track from where to where.I think my remarks touched on this earlier: it's OK having a rule but if you can't enforce that rule it makes things challenging. So what we're doing or the intention behind the fee regime—there's a number of fee increases here and that's to insist to incentivise to drive compliance with the purposes of this bill. So for a relatively minor breach something like a failure to tag the fee increase is going from $150 to $400. However for things that are really serious where there's a serious infringement the consequences are set to increase and increase significantly.For an individual who undertakes or commits a serious infringement the fee that we propose is to go from a $10000 maximum infringement penalty to a $100000 maximum infringement penalty. For a corporation that breaches their obligations for a serious infringement the bill will take it from $20000 to $200000. Now those sums may sound a lot but what they do do is it brings into alignment with the rest of the biosecurity laws that we have. So this is an interesting first phase and I'm pleased to speak in favour at this first reading and am looking forward to working alongside my colleagues as this bill progresses through select committee. Tēnā koe."