van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. Look this bill is a bit of an overreaction and we've heard some of the reasons for it; obviously coming originally from the tragedy of the sinking of the Gulf Livestock 1 which was a horrific accident and no one wants to see a repeat of that. But ultimately where we've got to with this piece of legislation is far above and beyond what we needed to see. Ultimately a number of changes could have been made to look at improving the specific animal welfare concerns. I would note that obviously in that instance—the sinking of that vessel—there was loss of all the livestock on board and of course the human loss of life as well which was terrible. But actually in most of these situations the animal welfare standards are good. The loss of animal life on vessels is minimal—very low; about 0.1 percent—and often animal condition improves over the course of the journey. So on that basis it's a little bit hard to understand exactly what the challenge is that we're trying to fix. Of course I'm very proud to be a part of the food and fibre sector in New Zealand and we have a fantastic history of continuing to innovate to evolve to adapt to improve our way of operating. I think if we look at how we farm now it's certainly a lot better than 10 20 50 years ago because those practices have continued to improve and I'm confident that will be the case going forward as well. On that basis when we look at the opportunity for improvement that's something that we continually test ourselves against: how could we do this better? What might be different if we were to adapt our practices? And part of that of course is led by the market expectations and that's as well it should be because if our customers in the many export markets that we have around the world are saying that they do or don't want a particular practice to occur then our opportunity is to respond to that to either capture additional sales into that market or to gain additional revenue by adhering to better practices than other competitors perhaps may do. These are just some of the natural mechanisms of how markets operate. We don't actually need the Government to come in with their heavy hand every time and tell us how best to do it. That just seems to be what we're seeing time and time again in this House and particularly over the last week or so with some of the bills that I've been speaking on: the DIRA bill last week the Deposit Takers Bill yesterday the Fisheries Amendment Bill are all examples as well as this bill now where the Government is imposing additional impositions in terms of cost in terms of control that is not necessarily required to actually achieve improved outcomes. They just don't have confidence that businesses or the market can actually evolve and adapt. I guess that's a difference that we have on this side of the House where we do trust those players to do the right thing to continually look for the opportunity to improve their business practice and to capture additional value off the back of that. Now we actually saw that through the regulatory impact statement for this Animal Welfare Amendment Bill suggesting that—from the Ministry for Primary Industries—one of the potential options was to just focus on enhancing those animal welfare standards. And that's certainly something that we have said we are quite open to. We are very much aware that there are continual areas where things can be improved and so that would be an avenue that we could do better on. The contrast here is that actually if we stop this altogether—as is being proposed here as will come into effect now—we're going to end up with an issue where we have a lot of additional stock in New Zealand and what happens to those? So the current bobby calf market is the issue that in my mind is a bigger one in the global context when you look at the consumer's expectations around sustainability around animal welfare their perception of those things and also wanting to have a good food experience when they're making their purchasing decisions. There could rightly be some concerns around what has been a traditional part of our dairy sector for many years but is getting increasing pressure to evolve as well. This bill exacerbates that issue by stopping the export opportunity. It means that there will be more animals sent on the bobby trucks instead and that seems counter-productive in terms of the New Zealand brand in the global context. And that is ultimately what we are looking at here as well is how do we enhance that brand? We are very much an export-oriented nation. We export some 95-odd percent of what we produce from a food and fibre perspective here in New Zealand. We need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to capture the most value for those products in the markets that we export to and indeed to create additional market opportunities where we can as well.Now it's a little bit like what we're seeing in the pork industry too where we already import 60-odd percent of our pork consumed in New Zealand and here we are with the Government looking to create even harsher restrictions on the pork sector which will lead to even more imported pork from countries that don't have the same animal welfare standards as us. And that again is just a simply perverse outcome and just shows that we aren't seeing a Government going to that next step of thinking around what are the unintended or even expected consequences of making some of these changes. It's not necessarily rocket science; some of these are pretty clear outcomes that we would expect if a change—such as has been put forward here or in the pork industry—is experienced then of course you're going to see some of those aspects coming through. Sadly there's a number of farmers in my Waikato electorate that have experienced significant economic gain from being able to partake in the export of live animals and often it's some of those younger farmers sharemilkers or farm owners. It's a little bit of an opportunity to capture some additional revenue when things might be a bit tough by looking at the export trade. Now depending on breed—it's not for every farmer of course but there are opportunities there and we've seen estimates of up to half a billion dollars' worth of contribution to our economy. Now every dollar we can get at the moment is going to help us. Times are tough for a lot of businesses and we continue to see these cost impositions; the cost of living crisis obviously but on-farm you look at things like fuel prices fertiliser prices energy prices the cost of labour if you can find labour all of these areas are really putting pressure on the bottom line of farmers. Thankfully we've had a very good pay-out announced by Fonterra last week. The dairy sector has been doing well but that is a pay-out level that is needed at the moment to sustain businesses with the massive costs that they are experiencing. So taking away the opportunity for another half a billion dollars' worth of revenue for our dairy sector is a disappointing outcome and it's one that we don't support unfortunately. Also I'm really disappointed with the way the process was managed in terms of the time for submitters and the I guess value placed on their thoughts and processes as well. We heard a wide range of different views in support and in opposition to this bill. Yet we saw Government again had an ideological view—didn't even listen to the Ministry for Primary Industries' view in the regulatory impact statement or any of the submitters and said This is just what we're doing and we're getting on with it." On that basis it just again reiterates the arrogance of a Government that refuses to listen to everyday New Zealanders and to really understand the issues that matter and to create better outcomes as a result. So look on that basis we don't support the bill. We would have loved to have seen some practical changes made to continually evolve looking for that constant improvement as we do in most areas of business and certainly in the food and fibre space we've continually strived for excellence. This would have been an opportunity to take that to the next level to really demonstrate that we are still connecting with our markets around the world but actually at the same time we are very aware of changing perceptions changing requirements and constantly looking to make our sector even better than it already is. We are at the cutting edge. We are world leaders in terms of animal welfare in terms of low emissions in terms of any number of metrics in our amazing food and fibre sector. This is a missed opportunity and unfortunately it's taking revenue out of our economy at a time when we need to be growing our economy increasing our productivity. When you look at some of the productivity stats we're well below the OECD average now for productivity. We used to be right at the top of that. So we're in a continual trend downwards and we're not seeing enough support certainly over the course of this Government looking at supporting business to get on and make things happen. So look we don't support this bill. It's unfortunately an overreaction to what was a terrible tragedy and on that basis we would have much rather seen changes. This is where we are now unfortunately from a Government that doesn't listen to the food and fibre sector and New Zealand will be worse off as a result."