Bennett David: Urgent Debates — Overseas Investment Rules—Sale of Crafar Farms 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bennett David: Urgent Debates — Overseas Investment Rules—Sale of Crafar Farms 
[Sitting date: 14 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4332. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) 
: 
 I want to take just a little bit of a different tack from what we have heard in this debate so far and just go through some basics of what farming actually involves. Farming is a capital business. You know people spend their whole life building up enough equity so that they can buy their own farm. They work hard in sharemilking. They do the long hours. They put that hard work in. And it is one of the most competitive businesses in New Zealand if not the most. It is probably the most competitive farming business in the world. New Zealand farmers pride themselves on their ability to farm efficiently and without Government subsidy to the highest levels in the world—the highest standards of the product produced and the highest levels of economic efficiency. They are the best and they are the best because they compete on an open market. They do not have a market that is dictated by the Government. The prices received for agricultural products are the prices in the world market. The prices that they pay for the inputs for the products that they produce are world market prices. You cannot distort that market in any way or you will lose the efficiency of the New Zealand agricultural system. 
This Parliament this country or the world cannot go out there and distort market prices. Nobody has that power. And yet the Opposition asks us to distort the market prices of land assuming for one moment that its theory of land acquisition would have any effect on market prices. That is not the case. You do not see the Chinese coming and offering extortionate amounts of money for that land. If it was a land grab and they have got $2 trillion like the Green Party says they would be offering a lot more money. That is not the case. If you make those limitations this Parliament will effectively hamstring New Zealand’s biggest industry because it will create a different economic advantage or disadvantage for them because the industry will not be operating in the manner that it is accustomed to and that has made it so strong. 
The other thing I want to talk about today is that when we look at the agricultural industry and especially the dairy industry we need to look at it in the context of the supply chain and it is not just about land. There is also the manufacturing side which is the level above land. I guess the great fear—and I think the only thing the Green Party could ever say that would have any relevance—is that if New Zealand product actually went into those Asian markets and had the New Zealand name on it the New Zealand brand but was not actually New Zealand milk or if it was a hybrid of New Zealand milk and other countries’ milk put together then you would be worried because our brand is so important. The possibility of losing that brand control through selling our manufacturing sites is probably the bigger risk for New Zealand than the sale of the land. 
 That land will produce milk. That milk will be manufactured into products in New Zealand. The Chinese are not talking about piping that milk to a boat at Tauranga Harbour and sending that over to China to process. They want to process it here just like any New Zealand farmer would do. The real danger for New Zealand farmers and the New Zealand brand is if we do not control that link from when we get a produced product in New Zealand to when it is sold on the shelves of Shanghai. That is the real danger and that is something that this Parliament should properly address in the future. 
That is contrary though to what the Labour Party has said. The Labour Party has said: “It’s OK to sell that part but we just do not want to sell the land part.” We have to properly address how we have that brand recognition and maintain control of that brand. We have heard from many speakers about how Labour has sold a lot of land in its time and that is true. Those members say that they have learnt from that but I think we need to be very careful about the real issues here. The real issue is that we have the best agricultural industry in the world and we should not distort that by making rules in this House that will not be effective in the first instance and secondly will distort that market. The second thing we need to be very careful about is making sure that we actually look at the real issues. The real issue is not who owns that piece of land; the real issue is the product and the branding of that which represents New Zealand when it goes into market because that is a real risk. So I think we need to take into account some real issues not some rhetoric. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.