Financial Review Debate — Ministry for Primary Industries

I will take just a brief call. I refer members of the Committee to a Riddet Institute report that actually outlines in a very clear way the importance of the area of responsibility that the Hon Nathan Guy and his department, his super-department, the Ministry for Primary Industries, are responsible for, which is a very big part of our economy. And the fact that it is leaderless is putting our whole economy at risk. To use the Minister’s own words: “Biosecurity is my No. 1 priority.” Well, I appreciate that but we need more than words to carry it through.

In the year gone past in the biosecurity area the Minister for Primary Industries has let into New Zealand onion fly in garlic from China, palm kernel expeller has finally been identified as a high biosecurity risk, we have got Psa in kiwifruit, we have got Theileria running rampant through livestock in the North Island, and we have got pork importation where his department took the pork industry to court, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, so that we could insist on getting pork from Canada into this country, with huge risk. We have caught fruit fly and we have got peach scale on kiwifruit, and the Minister says that biosecurity is his No. 1 priority. If that is as good as it gets, he has failed miserably and the department has as well.

Food safety is another crucial area of the Ministry for Primary Industries. We have had dicyandiamide because of a failure of oversight. We have had meat stuck on the ports in China. We have had botulism because the Minister’s own Government department AsureQuality failed to give good advice to his ministry, the Ministry for Primary Industries, and then failed to give it to Fonterra—hundreds of millions of dollars of cost. And then with the meat exports from this country, again, we have got faecal contamination.

In every crucial area of our economy in the primary sector, oversight by the Ministry for Primary Industries is failing—absolutely failing. The Government’s response is that we will have Primary Growth Partnership funding—that is, a slush fund for its mates, where $350 million of taxpayer funding has been handed out for different projects. The key performance indicators and the response on those projects are so bad that the Office of the Auditor-General is currently investigating all the Primary Growth Partnership grants. There are three areas—one where the Government is throwing money at its mates; the other areas are biosecurity and food safety—where failure after failure is occurring and putting our economy at risk.

What has happened in trade, another area under the super-ministry? Well, the last good thing we had in trade was the responsibility of my good friend and colleague the Hon Phil Goff, and that was the free-trade agreement with China. If it was not for him and that deal, dare I say it, this economy would be on its knees.

So what has the National Government done? Well, it has tried to progress free-trade agreements in a couple of different areas. The Trans-Pacific Partnership has failed. It has stalled, and in spite of the Minister of Trade, the Hon Tim Groser, being overseas at this moment pulling back from a free-trade agreement with Russia, which is not a bad idea at the moment, I would suggest, he has shown no real progress in the area of trade.

So to come back to the area that we are talking about, the Ministry for Primary Industries is an absolute failure in every area of its core responsibilities. In biosecurity we are at serious risk, in food safety our reputation has slumped, and with the Primary Growth Partnership I think the report of the Auditor-General that will come out in about June, we think, will be incredibly revealing and will expose the links between the National Government, the National Party, and the people who have received funding from this slush fund. In the area of trade, where there has always been some hope that the Government is going to deliver for New Zealand, again, the Ministry for Primary Industries has failed. The results are cuts for funding in this Government’s first Budget, cuts to biosecurity, and merging a whole lot of responsibilities into one big super-department to the point where even the independent report on botulism said that the core responsibilities of the Ministry for Primary Industries are being compromised.

One could tear that last speech from Damien O’Connor apart with a chainsaw, but instead I will take it apart gradually. There has never been a time in New Zealand when the primary industries have performed better than they are doing now. One has only to look at the dairy sector, the wood sector, even the sheep meat sector—they are performing outstandingly well. This Government—

💬 Dr David Clark: They don’t like what’s going on at Invermay.

No, but, of course, what is going on in the Manawatū is very different. This Government has put much energy into the restructure of the Ministry for Primary Industries to enable food safety, the land-based productive sector, biosecurity, and fishing to operate in a—

Sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time for this debate has expired.

Report noted.

Clauses 1 to 10 and schedules 1 to 5 agreed to.

Bill reported without amendment.

Report adopted.