van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Madam Speaker. As a former dairy farmer as well it's a privilege to rise and take a call on the final reading of the Dairy Industry Restructuring (Fonterra Capital Restructuring) Amendment Bill. And we've got to this point now under urgency unfortunately—not the best way to be passing legislation in this House but Government can't miss the opportunity to push things through without appropriate checks and balances but hey here we are.So look we have gone through a reasonable process at select committee. Again it was very truncated because this needs to be in place for Fonterra but that shouldn't be the excuse because of course the Government could have delivered it to the House in the first place sooner than they did. But ultimately we are now at this final reading where we have made some changes through that select committee process which I think hopefully will have addressed some of the concerns that were raised at select committee. And I do just want to touch on that because actually there were some quite divergent views between what Fonterra wanted with the initial proposal they put forward and the Government again loving the opportunity to put sticky fingers all over everything and appoint more control or more people to have oversight—did so beyond what Fonterra had envisaged. But hearing from some of the other submitters in terms of competitors they thought those additional checks and balances were a minimum and so therefore I guess on the balance of it you have parties at both extremes ultimately landing in the middle where no one's happy—is probably about the right balance and so ultimately I think on that perspective it's not too bad.I did raise some of the concerns around the risk of additional compliance and bureaucracy and therefore cost through the committee stage that we just heard prior to this as well because again that's a concern for an industry—for any industry—at the moment when we are facing such high cost pressures across the board. Anything that might add additional cost into that—and this will add more cost into the industry not a massive amount but there will be some more cost because the Commerce Commission has to be able to resource their ability to get up to speed on making their determinations around the appropriateness of the price panel's decisions and the likes; some other changes in here that will add cost. But in the scheme of things I think we need to be mindful in the first instance that Fonterra came forward with this on the premise—well off the back of a strong vote of support from their shareholders. I believe it was 85.2 percent support from their shareholders who voted on that and so that shows of course a very strong desire for change. There was some debate around whether indeed it needed to come through Parliament to make those changes to the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act or indeed whether they could just carry out those capital changes themselves. We got to this point and we have made those changes. And I do just want to pick up on a couple of the points the Minister raised as well because I think that flexibility of shareholding is a good element that adapts to the changing needs within the industry. But I share a concern that he raised as well around what that might shape up like over time particularly if we see as we are likely to those new entrants who are scraping to get into their first farm. They can just buy enough cows they can just buy the minimum shares and away they go with a block of dirt that has potential. And so that is often the scenario for first-farm buyers. They don't have a lot of fat in the system and so they will be buying that minimum shareholding. And so on that basis you could see most of the young farmers coming in with that just one-third shareholding rather than the full shareholding they might previously have worked towards. But as the Minister mentioned at the other end exiting shareholders or farmers who have sold who are looking still for a return on their investment in whatever area they choose to invest may well choose to stay in Fonterra because that's something they know and so therefore have more confidence around investing in that space and can retain a much higher shareholding or number of shares. And so of course that will be interesting to see how that plays out over time. We've seen a number of changes and the Minister mentioned trading amongst farmers; that's over a decade ago I think 2011 thereabouts that came in. And we saw some concerns around how that played out as well whether that was being potentially led by the shareholders fund or by the Fonterra investment fund—so how that played out where their priorities were. This is a constant challenge with a massive entity like Fonterra but it is our biggest company and we do need to make sure that we are giving it the tools to do what it needs to do to operate well on behalf of all those suppliers and indeed the wider food and fibre sector and New Zealand more broadly. Because it is a massive contributor to our economy and at a time like we're facing now with those cost of living pressures with a recession now forecast on the horizon as well we need our food and fibre sector to stand up as strongly as possible. Of course some additional workforce would help with that. A bit less compliance and red tape would help with that as well. A number of factors around the environmental standards and a bit more certainty in those areas which are outside the scope of this bill but are worth mentioning because there are significant challenges still in the food and fibre space. But we do support this bill passing through now its final stage enabling Fonterra to have some of the flexibility they wanted with some additional checks and balances in place to help appease their competitors. And I don't know that we'll ever get away from some of those conversations or concerns that have been raised in the past around the transparency of that milk price panel. But ultimately I think on balance we have a good piece of legislation and so I commend it today.