Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2)

I want to make a contribution today that I think is very important in the Chamber. I want to talk just on the schedule. The Primary Production Committee worked hard on this to get it right, and I think it is a fair point that I am about to make. The director-general or chief executive of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry technically allocates the export licences. We need to be mindful that the New Zealand dairy industry is primarily based on pasture-fed diet, and primarily our animals are outdoors all year round. We all know that climatic changes occur. In parts of New Zealand we can have a drought, and we are currently experiencing a mini-drought on the East Coast of the North Island. If we think back, in recent times we have had floods, we have had snowstorms, and we have had weather bombs throughout the country.

The significant point I want to make to the Committee is that the select committee worked hard and has come up with the provision in schedule 5B that allows those seeking an export licence to have their historical data analysed out to three seasons. The point I am making is that if we have a weather bomb, and farmers are constrained, as we know can be the case, that flows through to the heifer replacements—that is, the young cows that are going to come into the herd. It needs to be broad in its approach, so that we looking at not just one season or two seasons, but we are taking that data analysis out to three seasons, which I think is very, very important. I acknowledge the hard work, under David Carter’s leadership, of those members on the select committee who do own a set of gumboots, and who have come through a grassroots upbringing, like some of us in the National Party, who were well aware of the point that this is very, very important.

I turn to those members on the other side of the Chamber who were on the select committee and who have not come through that process. I am not sure whether there is one farmer left in the Labour caucus who would even be aware of that point. So this is a significant point in this bill that will mean it is fair, right across the board, that when the director-general or the chief executive of the ministry is technically allocating quota, he or she can look back across those three seasons of data.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill reported with amendment.

Report adopted.

Third Reading