Financial Review Debate — Ministry for Primary Industries

A little over 2 weeks ago we had a very revealing document tabled in this House that says more about the Government’s management of primary industries than anything else. It came from the Auditor-General, which is probably the organisation with the most credibility across this nation, and that document was very revealing. Of course, it stated the obvious—that our country is more dependent on biosecurity than any other developed country. It stated: “it is my view that MPI is under-prepared for potential incursions from some high-risk organisms.” The response of the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Primary Industries, was that since the year 2000, funding for biosecurity has doubled. And do you know what? That is the truth. What he failed to say was that all of that funding occurred under a Labour Government and that the first thing that the National Government did on coming in was to slash $2 million from front-line biosecurity services.

I will quote part 3 of the document: “The Ministry has lacked a strategic approach to capability. This includes workforce planning and, with some exceptions, its approach to information and information technology. Both of these areas represent serious risks for the Ministry.” Well, they are greater risks for the country, particularly when you go over the page, where you read, again: “The lack of realistic business planning also affected the preparation of new response plans … Insufficient resources have meant that many of the plans have not been completed or tested to ensure that they are fit for purpose.” Each and every day we are under huge threat from biosecurity incursions that could cripple this economy.

Yesterday the Minister’s department fought the pork industry to allow pork imports from countries that have PRRS—porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome—a disease that costs the US industry $600 million every year. The ministry fought the pork industry to lower the import health standards to allow pork that might satisfy a few supermarkets and a few pork industry traders. It is simply not good enough that the National Government slashes funding for biosecurity and allows and oversees a ministry that is ill-prepared for these. It states in the report that we are ill-prepared for an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, let alone the increased risk from things like porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome.

It is a shocking indictment on a National Government that claims to be the representative party of the primary producers that it has stood by and ignored the realities of this report, which we have known about for some time. It has been slashing funding for biosecurity, and for the Minister to get up and say that funding has doubled since 2000 but fail to say that almost every one of those dollars occurred under a Labour-led Government—not National—is an insult to the good people who run biosecurity services up and down this country. They know full well the risks that we incur from visitors, from imports, and from everyday trade, let alone the determination by the Ministry for Primary Industries to allow in pork under reduced import health standards and to allow Australian honey with the diseases that might come from that.

We have facing us every day an example of the failure of a ministry that gave us reassurance time and time again that it was world class through Psa. We have a kiwifruit industry that has been devastated by Psa and by a Government department that failed and was incapable of assessing the risks. The Auditor-General has said quite clearly that unless something is done to increase the resources—it is stated here in the report—there are insufficient resources to carry out the planning necessary. The Government must put more funding into biosecurity. It must raise the bar because of the increased levels of visitation by people from countries like China or you name it. We have, every day, coming into this country palm kernel expeller, or PKE, which is needed for cows. That is understandable, as we have droughts and we have shortages of feed. But the ministry is in no way prepared to assess and prepare for the risks that might come through foot-and-mouth disease.

It is an opportunity for me to respond to the member Damien O’Connor, who has just resumed his seat, because I think that Mr O’Connor wants to play politics with what is a very serious issue. Actually, I challenge Mr O’Connor as to whether he has actually read the whole report or just read the executive summary. If Mr O’Connor has read the whole report, he will realise that the Auditor-General actually said that we have got a pretty good system, and there are seven recommendations that I and the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries have said we will take on board. What Mr O’Connor fails to recognise—what he fails to recognise—is that we do have a world-class biosecurity system.

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: No, we don’t.

Yes, we do. The Auditor-General was sitting in the room when we ran the foot-and-mouth exercise called Exercise Taurus last year, and as a result of that exercise we are adopting a lot of the learnings from that, unlike when that member was last in Government. When that member was last in Government, it is worthwhile noting that it ran a simulation on foot-and-mouth. What was interesting was that those recommendations just sat on the shelf. The 2005 recommendations under Labour from running a foot-and-mouth disease exercise were not even adopted. They were not even adopted. How dare that member come down into this Chamber and say that we are sitting on our hands? Because that is not true. We will take these recommendations. We will take them seriously. I say to the member that this is my No. 1 priority—biosecurity. How dare that member come in here and say that we are not prepared?

I want to raise another issue with him, and that is about capability. Last year the Ministry for Primary Industries employed an extra 45 new quarantine inspectors, 11 more were recruited in January this year, seven detector dog handlers were recruited as well, and there are a further four—11 new detector dogs have graduated as well. We take our biosecurity and our border control extremely seriously.

Importantly, what I want to say is that right now the country is under a pretty severe state of drought, and it is good that it has rained. It is fantastic. What it will do, this rainfall, is a couple of things. One, it will lift the spirits of rural communities. The second thing is that we will get pasture growing as well, which is hugely important. We do not have a shortage of rainfall in this country. We have a storage issue. We need to store rain in the winter months and utilise it in the summer months. It is good for our economic growth. It is good for our environment. It is pretty simple. But when you look at Labour, I am pretty sure it is opposed. Here is a question for Damien O’Connor.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): No, no.

Does Damien O’Connor support irrigation schemes or not?

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: You answer the questions, Minister.

He cannot answer it. Damien O’Connor is silent because here is what his finance spokesman, David Parker, said recently: “its ill-considered subsidies that are coming from the taxpayer dollar to irrigation schemes,”. That is what Labour thinks. So right now the country is pretty much under a drought—although let us hope it is breaking—and Labour is not prepared to help rural, regional communities invest in irrigation schemes, unlike this Government. We have said: “Here is $80 million to kick-start some of these regional irrigation schemes.” We would like to see that go to $400 million. We believe we can increase the productivity and look after the environment better with these regional irrigation schemes. There are about 400,000 hectares where we can lift our productivity and improve the water quality of our freshwater rivers, yet Labour is not prepared to back rural New Zealand—shameful.

What we are also debating right now out in our communities is a generational change in water and fresh water, and also the Resource Management Act as well. This is the once-in-a-generation water reform that we are having pretty good dialogue about across New Zealand at the moment. I wish to acknowledge the Land and Water Forum, which has worked hard on this issue over the last 4 years. It has done fantastic work and we need to acknowledge that. The biggest issue that we are talking about up and down New Zealand in terms of fresh water and storage is to do with water quality and water quantity. We are getting very, very good feedback.

Overall, water is just one part of growing our economic development. We have a very ambitious target of increasing our exports from 30 percent to 40 percent of GDP by 2025. The primary industry, of course, we all know plays a huge part—72 percent of merchandise exports. We are a nation of around 4.5 million people, and we feed about 40 million people around the world. We export to 160 markets. We are recognised here in New Zealand as a bit of a world leader in innovation and food safety standards. Indeed, recently I have just been over to Latin America with the Prime Minister and a business delegation of about 25. It becomes very apparent that we are world leading in our food safety standards. We carefully manage the impacts of our production on the environment. We have a real emphasis on animal welfare as well and looking after our animals. And we have a world-class biosecurity system.

If you think about where we have come from since the 1980s, when we had those big reforms—and that is what happens when we get on the world stage; they want to learn from us what happened in the 1980s and how we adjusted—the important point is that now we are exporting the same amount of lamb meat as we did in the 1980s, but from about half the number of sheep. When you get on the world stage, they look down on little old New Zealand and think that we are fantastic with our innovation, our technology, and lifting our productivity. That is why this Government has invested in the Primary Growth Partnership. That is the Government investing side by side with industry. It has been hugely successful. There are 13 projects up and running as we speak, and $650 million invested in collaboration with the Government and the industry. That has been extremely worthwhile.

We think about the Latin American trip. What became hugely important to me when I got into places like Colombia, where most of the countries have a huge amount of land that is undeveloped, is that they are very keen to foster joint ventures and partnerships with New Zealand, because they realise that we have this wealth of experience in innovation and technology. That is going to be the future. We already have a very close working relationship with Chile. Chile is pretty much a cousin of New Zealand. You think about Colombia, when President Santos stands up and says they want to see a free-trade agreement with New Zealand. That is absolutely fantastic because of the huge potential for New Zealand in Latin America, particularly in Colombia. What we have also signalled that we are keen to invest in in Colombia is $4 million, with some aid money, to get this technology and expertise to work with their farmers closely. The signal that I have got from Colombia is 150 of their farmers are keen to come down to New Zealand. We can showcase all of the good work that we do in our primary industries.

In conclusion, New Zealand is extremely well placed on the world stage. It was a very successful trip to Latin America, with some deliverables to come from those 25-odd business groups that travelled with us. They had something like 138 meetings, and about 42 now have concrete leads that they can follow up to continue to work on joint ventures and partnerships with these countries of Latin America.

I am very ambitious for the primary industries. We have got a world-class biosecurity system, we will adopt the recommendations from the Auditor-General, and we will continue to make improvements. This Government is backing rural New Zealand. This Government cares about rural New Zealand. Labour does not care, because it does not back irrigation projects. The Greens do not care, because they do not believe that irrigation projects are sustainable. Rural New Zealand knows that the Greens and Labour, coming together with New Zealand First, will mean a capital gains tax and an enlarged emissions trading scheme that will cripple business. This National Government, supported by ACT and United Future, supports rural communities. The other side of the Chamber, I am embarrassed to say, does not.

I am pleased to rise to take a call on behalf of New Zealand First. It is always a delight to follow the Hon Damien O’Connor and to echo many of his sentiments during this Committee of the whole House stage. Looking at my notes, I see I have made mention of the Committee of the “whole Hose” rather than of the “whole House”, and I think this typo is rather apt given that a hose is turned on at the tap. And opening the taps is what this Government appears hell-bent on doing when it comes to biosecurity risks facing New Zealand and its apparent willingness to allow them access.

This Government—this National-led administration—by its own admission accepts and acknowledges that the agricultural sector is the cornerstone of New Zealand’s economy. Three dollars out of every four that this country earns in foreign exchange come ultimately from things that we grow and things that we harvest—farming, fishing, forestry, the sheep farms, the beef farms, the vineyards, the orchards, the market gardeners, the agriculture industry, mussel farming, salmon, and plantation forests. We have trees for Africa in this country, and we harvest and replant them for timber and particle boards, pulp and paper, and even logs.

Then there is the jewel in the crown: the dairy industry. New Zealand’s dairy farmers are the best in the world and their cows really are cash cows. One dollar in every four of this country’s export earnings—fully one-third of the $3 mentioned earlier—is generated by hard-working and under-appreciated dairy cockies. One-third of all cross-border trade in dairy products globally emanates from New Zealand, as does $3 out of every $4 that this country has to spend on cars, and aeroplanes, and televisions, and medicines, and X-ray machines, and medical isotopes, and magnetic resonance imaging scanners, and computers, and cell phones, and microphones like this one, and all the other things that we have to import from overseas because we cannot or do not make them here. Three out of every four of the dollars we have to spend on those things comes from agriculture, and one of those dollars—one-third of agriculture’s contribution—comes from dairy, the much-maligned dairy sector, the sector that gets called dirty.

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The 4 hours for the financial review debate have expired.

Clauses 1 to 9 and schedules 1 to 5