Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Speaker. That was a really interesting contribution from the last member Jo Luxton describing this as progress. I'm not so sure how staying the same as it is is going to be progress. But the interesting thing from my perspective is that there was a big attack from Jo Luxton on this side of the House for keeping Fonterra constrained and handcuffed and then went on and used the rest of her speech to give reasons why she thought that Fonterra should continue to be constrained in handcuffs.The other piece of the argument was around entry and exit. So if we go back to some of the conversations that we've had tonight about environmental issues. So just take it now if we have a farmer that's in the Mackenzie Country who's all of a sudden one day not happy with Fonterra and decides to exit Fonterra—well that's fine; bye-bye farm in the Mackenzie Country—and goes off to some other organisation who may pick up the milk. If that farmer then decides that they want to go back to Fonterra under this regime Fonterra has no grounds not to pick it up. It will be entered back into the company on the same terms and conditions as what it has left. So there you go. Some of the things that were just said in that last speech simply did not make any sense in my mind. Now I want to go back to the first speech because Minister O'Connor stated in his speech that Fonterra is the only dairy company with a national presence and he doesn't believe that the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) should expire. So I really challenge Minister O'Connor because is Minister O'Connor waiting for Fonterra not to be the only dairy company with a national presence in New Zealand because would that be enough in Minister O'Connor's mind to expire DIRA? What that would take us back to would be the two big companies that were in competition that we had in the first place. Is that what the Minister's asking for? Despite all the promises made of when the South Island gets to a certain level and when the North Island gets to a certain level—even though it was started under a National Government it was stamped under a previous Labour Government; those criteria that the farmers have met—the Minister's saying No no no. That's not good enough. Now we want to wait until this is not one dairy company with a national presence." So it did expire. The criteria did expire in the South Island Minister and your Government rushed through legislation to make sure that we could hold on to DIRA until you got to the point of doing this piece of legislation. One thing I did agree with the Minister—he said the domestic bit's not an issue. The domestic bit was never an issue. In fact most people in New Zealand and even now were quite happy to have domestic competition. It is not domestic competition in the milk market for our own local supply that is the issue; it is other companies coming into New Zealand setting up against Fonterra having to be supplied with milk from Fonterra to compete with Fonterra. Mr Yule actually said at one point in his speech: where else in the world would anything like that happen where you're actually supplying your competitors? So I think the time is up to release those shackles. I would challenge Mark Patterson who said New Zealand First does not want Fonterra sitting on stainless steel. Well currently Mr Patterson you know that Fonterra is sitting on stainless steel and under this regime if we don't unconstrain it—Mark Patterson: You actually listened to what I said.BARBARA KURIGER: We did listen to what you said Mr Patterson. We did hear you and actually we're very hopeful that when we get to the vote on this piece of legislation you might be voting in the direction that your speech indicated that you were supporting.I must admit one of the best speeches that I've actually heard tonight came from James Shaw because James—Rt Hon David Carter: I thought mine was better than that.BARBARA KURIGER: Sorry—sorry the Rt Hon David Carter. I'm probably referring to people on the other side of the House. Of course our MPs have all made fantastic speeches tonight. But you know James Shaw gets the piece that Fonterra is forced to take milk against its own wishes which then may add to conditions around environmental standards. That is one of the things that when you're forced to do something as a business that you don't want to do there is no way out of it. They've been forced to build extra stainless steel. They have grown in production and I must admit some of that hasn't been forced; some of that has been encouraged by Fonterra over the years. Not all of it has been forced at this point in time; some of it has been their own decision. But it has been a very production-led approach and it's absolutely correct what James Shaw was saying about the production-led and having a bulk of commodities and actually thinking more clearly without being constrained and without being forced about where Fonterra needs to be going in the future. There's a saying in our dairy industry—it actually says production is vanity and profit is sanity. Look we are all proud as dairy farmers to belong to a co-operative. We know that things haven't been going well in Fonterra over recent times—in fact they've been going pretty badly. It's time to actually pick this up. It's under new leadership. We haven't been impressed with where it's been going for the last little while but it is under new leadership. Here's an opportunity to pick it up. Here is an opportunity for this Government to unconstrain it to let it go to let it get involved in some of the value-add that it's been talking about without forcing it and forcing it to be uncompetitive. So when we went through the global financial crisis in 2008 when everything else was down this dairy industry was the thing that held this country up—it held this country up big time. It's really interesting because at that time people were very concerned about you know mental health depression and all of those sorts of things. The dairy industry actually came through that global financial crisis and held the rest of the country up very well. Well I would request that at this point in time the country actually holds its dairy industry in high regard because I would suggest that all the pressures that are coming down on this industry right now—they don't need to be constrained with DIRA on top of it. As my colleague Todd Muller has rightly been saying and I've known this for a long career in this dairy industry—that if the prices are right that if the interest rates are low that if the weather's doing the right thing which it currently is—[Bell rung]ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Perhaps back to the bill for the last two minutes or on to the bill for the last couple of minutes? Thank you. BARBARA KURIGER: —yeah we're on to the bill—that farmers will be happy. But right now the pressures that are coming down on farmers are huge and I believe that this bill is just going to be another one of those things that's going to put pressure down on farmers. The promise of where those shackles are going to be removed is being broken and it's time to get back to letting farmers take control of their own business. I do not believe that the Minister's idea of putting a person onto the Milk Price Panel is going to be of any value at all. Why would we put someone on the Milk Price Panel when the questions aren't even being asked about whether that person would be a deemed director of Fonterra? What are they going to be doing? I know in my time on the shareholders' council the milk price has been checked out it's been modelled it's been verified so many times and it's been peer-reviewed and it comes under all sorts of pressure and I can't see how someone from a Government department sitting on that milk price committee is going to make any difference. A year ago Government Ministers talked about smashing apart Fonterra but they have dialled back on their rhetoric. I was very concerned when I heard the Minister say tonight under this regime that Fonterra was the only national significant dairy industry company co-operative. I want to keep it that way the National Party wants to keep it that way and I can tell you that farmers absolutely want to keep it this way. We will not see it put in danger and for that reason we are opposing this reading of this legislation. Thank you Madam Speaker."