Annual Review Debate — Primary industries

The question now is that the reports of committees relevant to primary industries—primary industries, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, horticulture, biosecurity, and food safety—be noted.

I move that the reports be noted. I guess it is a privilege for me as the chairman of the Primary Production Committee to get an opportunity to speak in this debate. The last year has been extremely busy for the Primary Production Committee, with some very big pieces of legislation passing through its hands: the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, it very nearly got to the post with the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill, and, of course, the Food Bill, which is a very important piece of legislation and one that backs the whole of the New Zealand economy, really, as a significant part of our income comes from our ability to deal with food and our exports of it.

Also during the year we have had significant discussion around the Primary Growth Partnership and the Sustainable Farming Fund input that the Ministry for Primary Industries has. The Primary Growth Partnership, in my view, is a very big part of this Government’s effort—the very ambitious plan of this Government—to improve our lot as a nation. If it is possible to hurry up science, the Primary Growth Partnership is certainly a method of attempting to speed the progress of science. It costs the country a significant amount of money, and I am sure in due course we will get a significant repayment from that.

The agricultural sector, of course, has had a great deal of success in the last couple of years, with new jobs, new revenue, and new opportunities being created. That is in no small way due to the efforts of the Ministry for Primary Industries and the amount of resource it puts into this country. It has a very large budget and a huge staff. The kiwifruit industry is projecting more than 2,000 permanent jobs being created in the next 4 years, 4,000 more seasonal jobs in the next 4 years, and a shift from $1.4 billion worth of income to $2.2 billion worth of income by 2019. That is just one example of the way that this sector is diversifying under the current Government and the current Minister. I think it is an extraordinary result.

We talk about diversifying our economy. Although milk has dominated both our biosecurity and our country’s economy in the last few years, we are certainly diversifying agriculture under the current plans, and doing it very well. The wine industry is in a similar space, projected to grow by 7.6 percent next year.

I want to touch on the forestry industry, which, of course, is one that comes in for a lot of discussion. We have a significant investment in that industry through the likes of Scion and the work it is doing in science around the growing of trees and doing it quicker and more efficiently. We are also putting a significant investment into the development of better processing facilities in New Zealand. That is one that is pretty challenging, because as log prices move to where they were a few weeks ago, it has much the same impact as it does with whole carcasses if you look at the sheep meat industry. It is very easy to export a whole carcass or a whole log, if that is where the money is. That is what has been happening, to some extent, in New Zealand in recent times.

The real success stories in the last year or two have been around the sheep meat and beef industries—I guess the old, old industries of New Zealand. Both of them have had significant increases in prices, and very fortuitous for the country it is too when you look at the environmental challenge we have around the country and the fact that we need to keep our agricultural sector as diversified as we can. The more diversified we keep it, the better we are able to at least be compatible with our environment and make it work for us, so I think that is pretty important.

I want to touch very quickly on the horse industry and the Minister’s recent inquiry announcement. By my estimate—and it is certainly only my estimate, and I had a little bit to do with the horse industry in earlier days—it is liable to produce a significant increase in income to New Zealand as a result of this inquiry. That is what, I guess, the Government is all about, and certainly what the ministry will be looking at as a result of this inquiry.

The dairy industry, as I said earlier, is struggling a little at the moment, and that is the way the world markets are. I think we will be looking at some significant pick-up there in due course, but it is just the way I guess we have always been in agriculture, and it is one of the challenges we face as farmers.

I want to touch on biosecurity. We have seen this with the reaction to the fruit fly in Auckland. That is, I think, a classic example of a biosecurity system that is working extremely well. We have seen, I guess, the industry partnerships also assisting that whole system to work extremely well. Thank you.

It is great to see the Minister for Primary Industries in the Chamber here. What the industry is saying is: “We never see him when we need him.” I would like to build off the speech of the last speaker, Ian McKelvie. He said that the Primary Growth Partnership was a very ambitious programme for the National Government, and indeed it was, but now it is very embarrassing—a bit like the Prime Minister, I guess. It is very embarrassing because the Office of the Auditor-General said that in spite of programmes being over halfway through their length, there has been no economic benefit identified so far from $350 million given by the National Government to its mates for the Primary Growth Partnership. I will not dwell on that.

The industry is crying out for leadership from the Minister and the National Government, and it is not getting it. We have got fruit flies flying around in west Auckland and an industry asking for one thing, and one thing only: bring back 100 percent X-ray baggage screening. When we had that in place we had no fruit flies. Minister, step up to the mark, get the funding, and reimplement 100 percent X-ray screening of baggage. We had a botulism scare because this Government’s oversight and systems did not have testing that could guarantee botulism was not present in the milk powder it tested. That muck-up—that is the politest thing I can say—is costing this Government hundreds of millions of dollars. The Minister did not step up and the Government had not funded a proper system of food testing, which we need in this country. The meat industry members have gone out there, spoken to farmers, come up with a report, and said that they need some help to consolidate their industry. Where is the Minister? Or where is the Minister’s assistant, the Associate Minister? They are nowhere to be seen. All the industry asked for was some leadership to get in there and show the way forward and assist with that collaboration.

One issue that is very rarely spoken of is tuberculosis funding—the funding of pest control in this country to prevent major outbreaks of tuberculosis. That disease is potentially a huge hurdle to our export of primary industry products in this country. The Government has, in its last Budget, slashed funding from $30 million down to $7 million, and then gone out to the industry and said that it is going to have to front up. Well, there are no answers to that. I say to the Minister that if he has got some in this upcoming Budget, please identify them now, because the industry is in disarray trying to work out how it will do this. At a time when we have an overvalued dollar because we have got speculators out there wheeling and dealing in the dollar, our primary sectors are being squeezed.

The member before me spoke of the forestry industry. Never before have we seen so many logs go out of this country in raw form, leaving opportunities for this country at the ports. It is an outrageous indictment on the National Government’s oversight of primary industries that we are letting opportunities flood out of this country. In the meat industry we are cutting carcases into six pieces and sending them to China. The Chinese have been absolutely strategic in their investments into New Zealand, and they are getting further and further down the value chain. They will have, in a very short time, vertical integration through all the sectors because this Government and this Minister refuse to intervene and protect the interests of New Zealand farmers, of New Zealand Inc., and of New Zealand companies. We have got speculation under a National Government because the Prime Minister is a wheeler and dealer. The Minister for Primary Industries does not have the courage and the mana to stand up to him and say, on behalf of the farmers—

💬 Ian McKelvie: Farmers are traders, you know.

That member is a farmer; so is the Minister himself. They know full well what the farmers are thinking about what is happening at the moment, and they are increasingly concerned. In the dairy industry there is so much uncertainty. There is so much uncertainty that they do not know which way to jump next. They have been told that prices will lift, but indeed the indicators are otherwise. They have been told that we are in charge of that industry, and every day we see creep from Chinese investors and overseas investors into our dairy industry that ultimately will see us lose control of Fonterra, unless there is leadership from the Government. All I ask is that the Minister takes the opportunity, takes the responsibility, to stand up and show some leadership so that the sectors have some confidence.

Before I call the next member I am going to repeat the comment I made earlier, and it is that members must at some stage make a passing reference at least to the annual review or the report or the current operations of an agency. One of the three will do. But it would be good if that happened.

I am always pleased to follow on from my erstwhile colleague Mr O’Connor. I am going to echo some of Mr O’Connor’s thoughts, but I bring with me one or two bouquets along with the brickbats. Being as we are a constructive party of the Opposition, we recognise that the Government has made some advance moves in the field of primary industries—not as many as perhaps we would like, and not as many as perhaps we think it could have. It is an opportunity to take the Government to task as we look at the way it has allocated its funding over the past year and in the year to come, and where it places its priorities. It is no understatement to say that the primary sector is absolutely vital to New Zealand—to our economy, to our nation, to our way of life.

💬 Ian McKelvie: Good boy, Richard.

Thank you, Mr McKelvie. I do realise that we are all actually on much the same page here as the chairman of the Primary Production Committee, on which I am proud to serve. We have differences of opinion in terms of the best methodology that should be employed, obviously, and that is as it should be in an open and wide-ranging democracy such as we have here.

💬 Ian McKelvie: We’ve put the guns away.

Never put the guns away—never put the guns away, Ian.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Back to the debate, I think.

Thank you, Mr Chair, for that reminder.

As members here will know, New Zealand First is of course rapidly becoming the party of choice for people in the provinces. We are becoming the town and country party, as it were—something that perhaps the National Party used to be many years ago when people in the provinces, in the rural sector, and in the farming sector used to look to the National Party to represent their interests. But of course nowadays the National Party has become the party of Queen Street—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I am now going to stand up, and the member will sit down. I am going to remind him to come back to the debate. It is not a general political debate.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Because of that shift in its priorities, the Government has failed to adequately resource some of the most important things to the primary sector, in terms of its budgetary allocations.

💬 Ian McKelvie: The racing industry?

I am not going to talk about the racing industry, Mr McKelvie.

I want to look at two things in particular, and one of course is biosecurity. I know that Mr O’Connor has touched on this, and we have similar concerns. We want to see sufficient resourcing in the Budget put into biosecurity so that we do have 100 percent X-ray of all luggage. That is hand-held luggage, in-hold luggage, cargo, and mail. We would like to see the 0800 pest line staffed 24/7. As we discovered during the Queensland fruit fly incursion, it has not been. We want more staff at the ports as well. We know that there have been increases in boots on the ground in recent years, but it is also fair to state that some of those additional boots on the ground have been to replace staff who were taken away from the front line in the years preceding. We are not actually back to a net profitability situation as much as we could be, and really as much as we should be.

This is one of the bouquets. We are pleased that the Government has announced that there is going to be a review of biosecurity at the border. I think that behind the scenes the Government probably does recognise that when the move away from 100 percent screening was made it was a mistake. We know that since the green lane has been instituted and people are able to enter the country without any kind of inspection, something like 9 million people over the last 3 years have come through that channel.

We also know that this channel, according to the surveys afterwards, has proven to be the most reliable and the most effective in terms of voluntary compliance with biosecurity regulations. But we know that the target for the Ministry for Primary Industries was 98.5 percent, and we also know that at no airport in the country was that target achieved. There might have been achievements up around 95, 96, or 97 percent. But even had that 98.5 percent target been achieved, something like 135,000 people would have come through the green lane in the last 3 years, carrying something that they should not have been carrying. It would have been an item of fruit, a jar of honey, or an item of clothing that had been on a farm or in a forest in a country where foot-and-mouth disease is endemic. We know that at least 135,000 incursions have happened over that time, since 100 percent screening was abandoned. It is actually more than that—it is definitely more than that because we know that that 98.5 percent compliance was not achieved.

We do appreciate the fact that the Government has recognised that a review is needed, and that it will undertake a review. The Government will, we hope and believe, look at the money that is required in order to reinstitute 100 percent screening. We believe that the primary sector is so vital in terms of the sheer volume of money, the sheer percentage of the economy that is dependent on it, that we think and hope the Government will see sense and it will allocate the money and restore that 100 percent screening. It will be a great thing for the primary sector.

The other issue that I want to touch on briefly, and it is something that we have made mention of in recent weeks and months, is the OVERSEER nutrient budget management tool. OVERSEER is a piece of software that was developed in order to help farmers manage the nutrient inputs on to their farms, and from that calculate the amounts of leachate that were coming off at the other end. However, OVERSEER was never designed as a rule-setting tool, but in the absence of anything else it is being used for that. OVERSEER is a good system that can be made a lot better with the addition of just a very, very small input of money. In the grand scheme of things about $5 million or $6 million over the next few years, allocated by the Government, through its Budget, would provide sufficient resourcing for that management tool to be calibrated properly and brought up to standard for all farming models and for all soil types in New Zealand.

At the moment what we have got is a computer program that was not designed to be used as a rule-setting mechanism, which in the absence of anything else is being used as that rule-setting mechanism. The Government is allowing local authorities, regional councils, and local councils to use OVERSEER as the baseline for their monitoring systems. We believe, and we hope that the Government will accept it, that if the Government is going to allow local authorities to use a tool like this for that purpose, then the Government has a responsibility to make sure that that tool is fit for that purpose. We would like to see this Government, through its Budget, allocate sufficient funding to OVERSEER. As I say, only about another $5 million or $6 million, according to Federated Farmers, is all it will take to bring this tool up to speed.

Only this morning we heard about a farmer in Canterbury who is an award-winning farmer in terms of environmental performance, who has been told by Environment Canterbury that the nitrate leaching from his farm is over and above what he is allowed to put out. This farmer is an organic farmer. His nitrogen inputs to his farm are zero. So when you have a program that tells you that a farmer who puts no nitrogen on his farm has too much nitrogen coming off it, there is a problem—there is a problem. It is a problem that is easily solved with a small cash injection, and we would love to see the Government do that. Thank you.

It is great to be able to talk about the annual appropriation for the Ministry for Primary Industries for 2013-14. Can I acknowledge the Primary Production Committee chair, Ian McKelvie. Can I acknowledge the Minister for Food Safety, Jo Goodhew, who is also the Associate Minister for Primary Industries, and can I take a special moment to acknowledge all of the Primary Production Committee, who by and large do a lot of wonderful work across the whole of Parliament.

This is a great time to be in front and leading primary industries. I know that there is a challenge in the dairy industry—that is being well talked about right now—where we have a very volatile market, particularly when we look at what is happening with the four big global milk regions being awash with milk. We have product that is banned from going from the European Union into Russia, looking for a new home. We have China inventory stocks reducing and, hopefully, soon they will be re-entering the market. I was interested to see that Westland Cooperative Dairy has downscaled its payout for this season, and we are waiting to see what Fonterra does towards the end of May. Also, everyone is interested in looking into the next season and what that might bring.

I think we are going to be in a period of some volatility for some months to come, but we have been here before. The average price for milk solids has been $5.25 over 15 years. In about 2004, 2005, and 2006 it got down to a very low $4. So farmers are resilient. They have been here before. They will get through this. That is why the Government is investing in the Primary Growth Partnership. That is why we are working with industry right across the value chain—

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: No economic benefit.

—to lift performance inside the farm gate. Mr O’Connor always interjects. He hates the Primary Growth Partnership. He did not acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research report, an independent report, which says that by 2025 the Primary Growth Partnership could return $6.4 billion, and if you add on the aspirational stretch of targets it could be out to $11.1 billion. Also, what is interesting for Mr O’Connor is he does not want to acknowledge any of the benefits of the Primary Growth Partnership or what it is delivering already.

Close to Mr O’Connor’s electorate is the steeplands harvester. This is an amazing machine that was developed in Nelson and is now being sold offshore, and that is reducing health and safety events and fatalities in our forestry industry, working on steep land slopes and making a difference. Mr O’Conner does not want to acknowledge that. I was down very close to his local electorate the other day celebrating an investment that we have made in SPATnz for green mussels. This is going to make a significant difference for the seafood industry. Right now they have to go up into Northland and collect spat that has washed up on the shore. It is like the dairy industry whereby this is going to allow the industry to be able to select good breeding mussels indoors very close to Nelson.

We should be celebrating the Primary Growth Partnership, and yet Damien O’Connor and others stand up and say that the Government is not doing enough. Just the other day we announced $7.8 million for the Sustainable Farming Fund. There are 29 projects up and down the country working at the grassroots, making a difference in environmental management, and making a difference in supporting the dairy industry, the beef industry, and the horticulture industry. We are doing a lot and yet our opponents say that we are not doing enough. I cannot believe that. They do not stand up and acknowledge the investment that the Government is making with industry.

Also, when we refer back to the annual review of appropriations for primary industries, it was interesting that when I had my officials in front of the select committee, they spent a lot of time talking about biosecurity. Biosecurity is my No. 1 priority and will continue to be. It is interesting to have a look at the comments from the select committee when my officials were there. The committee was talking about how the Ministry for Primary Industries is investing more in biosecurity—a bigger budget than when National came into office. There are more people—130 front-line quarantine inspectors are working. Dog detector teams have gone from 26 to 40 in the last couple of years. As the Committee has seen and the New Zealand public have seen, the Ministry for Primary Industries can set up a very quick response when we do have an incursion like we have had in the case of the Queensland fruit fly in Grey Lynn. This has been a good response. We have put a lot of resource into this, and I acknowledge the people of Grey Lynn in Auckland and the people whose properties have intensive surveillance happening on them. I am very confident that we can eradicate the small, localised population in Grey Lynn. I am very confident. We have done it before with the Mediterranean fruit fly in 1994 and we will do it again now.

What I have also instigated in the last couple of weeks is a biosecurity strategy review looking out to 2025. Mr Prosser rightly acknowledged that and said it is timely to have a look at it. The reason it is timely to have a look is we have got Government industry agreements on board and four signatories. Some of those signatories are working with the Ministry for Primary Industries on preparedness and response, sitting around the response table, dealing with the Queensland fruit fly in Grey Lynn. We are also seeing an increase in passenger numbers. We are also seeing an increase in trade volumes. It is appropriate now that we do the review and we reach out to industry, we reach out to the New Zealand public, we reach out to the regional councils, we reach out to the universities, and we reach out to our international trading partners to make sure that we get a strategy that is going to look forward to 2025.

Also what has been very important to acknowledge in the last 12 months over this period is we have come through a couple of significant events, and they are droughts. We have had quite a significant one on the East Coast of the South Island. I was down talking to about 450 farmers in North Canterbury recently. Gosh, it has been dry down there. Nearly every farmer who came up and talked to me talked about the value of water storage and the value of storing water and utilising it in those summer months. In the Government’s view, we do not do enough in storing water. We only collect and store about 2 percent of the rain that falls in this country. The rest of it heads out to sea. It is not that we have a shortage of water in this country; it just does not rain at the right place and the right time. That is why we have set up the Irrigation Acceleration Fund. Twenty-eight million dollars has been invested in about 18 different projects in Canterbury, in Hawke’s Bay, in the Manawatū, in Northland, and in other areas to get investment ready to move up into the Crown Irrigation Investment fund.

We know also that water storage is hugely important for the environment. We know that it takes the pressure off groundwater aquifers. Just look at the Ōpua dam, which had to close down for a period of time this summer. We had Fish and Game out there collecting and rescuing fish species from nearby streams, rivers, and creeks that would have otherwise died, because they were dry. Where were they releasing these fish? Into the Ōpihi River, which is fed by the Ōpua dam. Also, we have water coming from the Ōpua dam into Timaru city. So we have social benefits from water storage, we have environmental benefits, and let us not forget about the economic benefits—500-odd jobs in that region have been created from the Ōpua water storage, and there are numerous other examples as well.

Another investment that the Government is making in the environment is dealing with animal emissions. It is great that we can acknowledge New Zealand scientists who have been working hard on trying to come up with technological advances in livestock that are going to reduce methane emissions. They just had a conference earlier this week in Palmerston North, where they are celebrating the success of non-toxic compounds, which they have been working on for a long time, changing methane emissions from livestock. Hopefully, in 5 years or beyond they might be at a point where they can commercialise this product. They have done a huge number of trials, and early indications from these trials are that they believe they can reduce methane emissions in livestock, particularly in sheep and cattle, from 30 percent as a minimum up to 90 percent.

The Government is making a significant investment in a Global Research Alliance, working closely with our New Zealand scientists and also the other 45 countries around the world that are partnering with us. So we should acknowledge the investment that the Government is making through the Primary Growth Partnership, through the Sustainable Farming Fund, through the Global Research Alliance, and through other areas where we are investing as well. Thank you.

I am pleased to be able to take a call on this issue, although I have not sat for much time on the Primary Production Committee. I want to talk about the annual review of Landcorp for 2013-14 and about its statement of intent, which also looks forward from 2013-14 to 2017.

There is an odd disconnect between the rhetoric in these documents, the rhetoric that it came to the select committee with, which my colleague Steffan Browning was part of, and what actually happens on the ground by Landcorp. Believe it or not, I was at the A and P show the other day in the Waikato talking about the statement of intent, which may not seem like something you would expect the public to be interested in. But I had a petition about Landcorp, and the public were very interested in the statement of intent. They live with the downstream effects of the statement of intent, which is the pollution of the Waikato River and the increasing contamination of the waterways downstream of Landcorp’s dairy conversions. And so there is, actually, a great deal of public interest in what Landcorp, which is the biggest farmer in this country, says it is going to do in the annual review in terms of the environment, in terms of downstream, and in terms of what it is modelling.

In the report to the House from the select committee about environmental sustainability, for the annual review of 2013-14, Landcorp asserts it is an “environmentally savvy farmer” and says it is serving the interests of both the environment and the industry. But when I took these quotes to the people who were signing my petition at this A and P show they were saying: “But why is it converting volcanic soil forestry into dairy farms that are going to increase the loading of nutrients to the point where farmers downstream will not be able to meet their own budgets?”. And so we have the unique situation of Federated Farmers Waikato and others saying that Landcorp—the leading Government agency around farming and the actual biggest farmer in the country—is failing the farmers downstream.

It was quite extraordinary to hear the people in the Waikato talking about their understanding of the statement of intent, which was that Landcorp intends to convert more and more land into dairying up on the volcanic plateau and that Federated Farmers there wanted a conversation on a moratorium. They have read the statement of intent and they know that anything between 17,000, which is Landcorp’s figure, and up to 70,000, which is some of the local’s figures, more dairy cows are going to be at the head of that catchment. And the Waikato River just cannot take too much more of this.

Landcorp, in its statement of intent, said that it is interested in community engagement by fronting up to concerns about the environmental impact of farming. This is not fronting up. This is the worst role model from a Government agency for good farming practice that we have seen in a very long time. I mean, we could talk about the commodity price, we could talk about reliance on selling milk powder to China, we could talk about all those vulnerabilities, but what is even worse is that we are selling out water quality not just for now but for many years to come.

If you know anything about how it works in the environment you know that the contamination of waterways in upper catchments takes years, years, and years to filter through. That is why Federated Farmers Waikato is saying: “Hang on, what about us downstream who are trying to balance the nutrient budget?”.

It is not acceptable to put these kinds of rhetorical devices about being environmentally savvy in a statement of intent while being the main culprit in the continuing destruction of long-term water quality in this country. There is a responsibility when we review Landcorp to actually make sure that it is doing role modelling best practice. This is worst practice. This is 60 percent of monitored rivers being no longer swimmable. This is a nutrient budget for Waikato farmers that will blow out, not because of their practices but because of the practices of the Government-owned Landcorp farms and Landcorp-managed farms in the Upper Waikato. The people are signing the petition because of this statement of intent. The intent to continue to destroy the environment for the sake of a monocultural and agricultural intensification in a catchment that simply just cannot take it is irresponsible on behalf of Landcorp.

If we look at Landcorp’s rhetoric, it has got this saying “leading the way”, which some poor person had to make up. “Leading the way” was something that some poor person in the department had to make up as a new phrase for what Landcorp is doing. It says its bottom lines are “volume, value, efficiency, people, and the environment”. Environment, of course, is the last one. It also says it has an aspiration, from 2013-14 to now, to go from 1.5 percent to 5 percent pastoral livestock, which is more than tripling the number of current pastoral livestock on Landcorp farms. So forget about climate change and forget about the fact that it is going to cut down the forests that would have mitigated some of that and turn them into dairy farms that no one wants.

Why are we doing this? Why are we cutting down forests and converting land to a polluting, greenhouse gas-emitting industry when our climate targets are a joke already and it is a Government department in its own statement of intent that is leading the way on this?

I went to a public meeting the other night at Lake Karapiro. There was a famous rower there, Mahe Drysdale. He said: “My lake is turning pink as a result of the corporate intent of Landcorp in this catchment. My lake is turning pink.” He may not have used the words “statement of intent” or “corporate”—maybe that was me hearing it—but he was very concerned about what was happening in the upper catchment. He was saying: “I’ve been rowing on this lake for many, many years and all I can see is degraded water quality and what’s happening upstream.” Unlike the farmers in the Lower Waikato who are actually trying to meet nutrient budgets and are trying to manage what is now acknowledged as a damaging approach to farming when there is no fencing, when there are nutrient loads that rivers cannot take, and when there are phosphorous nitrates and sediment—they are trying to modify and to meet those agreements—Landcorp is not. Mahe Drysdale can be assured that Landcorp will continue, according to these plans, to convert the Upper Waikato—and we will not even talk about the Manawatū, because that is still pretty much a disaster—into more pollution.

Instead of just talking about being awash with milk we are actually awash with cow urine, pollution, and a Government-owned enterprise that plans to do that more. It plans to do that more. I cannot even get sense out of Landcorp as to how many more cows it is going to put into that area, but one thing is for sure: we cannot keep adding to the nutrient load, which is what it plans to do in all of its documents. It is leading the way. It is leading us away from a solution. It is going to be a huge cost. It is going to cost us an enormous amount of money, because if you look at what the Government is already spending on Lake Taupō, Lake Rotorua, the Manawatū River, and Lake Wairarapa, these are multimillion-dollar clean-ups because of the long-term, bad agricultural intensification practices in the catchments. Now Landcorp is going to make that worse.

The Green Party believes that Landcorp should be saying, in its statements of intent and in these plans that go from 2013 and look ahead—it should be coming to the Primary Production Committee and saying: “We will role model best practice in the following ways. We will actually set up a farming system that is non-polluting—a farming system that, rather than being based on the permanent excessive growth model, is based on proper management of dairying and other industries that will not convert land that should stay in trees and that will protect the environment for the long term.”

Landcorp should be the leading agency that is doing that. But these documents, these reports, that I have here are all saying to us that Landcorp is way back in the 1950s and it is not supporting the farming sector let alone the water quality of this country. If a Government agency is incapable of planning for or modelling protection for water quality in these documents, everybody downstream is going to suffer. Everybody downstream is going to pay the price—they are, and they will.

When you get Federated Farmers, the Green Party, Olympic rowers, and community groups all saying the same things, these statements of intent need to be reviewed. They need to be taken apart. We need to tell Landcorp that it does not have a mandate to pollute this country. It does not have a mandate to contaminate water with its bad agricultural practices. This is a disgrace.

I rise to take this call not only as Minister for Food Safety but also as the Associate Minister for Primary Industries, with responsibility for forestry. I would like to acknowledge the Primary Production Committee chair, Ian McKelvie, and the other members of the committee. On reading the annual review report from this year, there are a number of things that I want to touch on in the course of my short address this evening.

The first of those is the 1080, threat and the second of those is going to be food safety in general, because members of the Opposition certainly need to hear a wee bit more about putting this in context. It is always quite amazing to me how memories of the Opposition members fade in terms of what was present at the time when they were the Government, so I want to talk a little bit about what our Government has been doing.

Let us start with 1080. It was a criminal threat, and we must always remember it was a criminal threat, to contaminate formula and other products. It was a heinous threat, and to the most vulnerable: the babies who would be drinking formula. The potential for harm—in fact, the potential death of babies—really struck at the heart of New Zealand. But, from the time that threat was received, the Ministry of Primary Industries worked alongside the New Zealand police, who were investigating this matter. The Ministry of Primary Industries brought into being a complete response. It had certainly learnt a lot from the whey protein concentrate 80 inquiry and the recommendations out of that, and was able to put up a response that meant it looked at the whole of the supply chain.

I will refute one of the statements that was made by a member of the Primary Production Committee—well, it appeared to be, through the report—that they were concerned about the fact that there would be compromises and divergent interests within the Ministry of Primary Industries in terms of dealing with an incident like that. Far from this—far from this—what the response to the 1080 threat showed was that the Ministry of Primary Industries had the interests and the safety of the consumer absolutely front and centre. It showed that the ministry was able to work right across the supply chain of those products in order to work with the sector, in order to work right from the farm gate where the milk was being collected all the way through to processing, through the retail chain, and then on to our export markets. It was able to prepare the whole of that supply chain for far better security so that we could be able to stand in front of the public of New Zealand and say that this product is now likely, because of the security on our supply chain, to be safer than it was before.

I want to move on to what we learnt from the whey protein concentrate 80 inquiry. It is very sad to think that the Opposition members think that all of the woes that were exposed by the various inquiries after the whey protein concentrate 80 incident were present only under the National Government. How short-sighted that is. We heard the former Associate Minister talk about the fact that this was all down to National. The member simply must be joking. There are things that have come out of the whey protein concentrate 80 inquiry. We now have a Food Safety Science and Research Centre, where the business plan is currently being constructed. We have a Food Safety and Assurance Advisory Council. We have had two traceability reports. We are rolling that out across not just dairy but also the rest of the food sector as well. You see, this country now understands how important traceability is, because of the false alarm over botulism and the inquiries that were happening subsequent to that.

So there is quite a lot of work under the food safety portfolio that I can tell you the Ministry of Primary Industries is turning itself to, alongside the fact that, unlike before the portfolio came under the Ministry of Primary Industries, we are now seeing increasing numbers of prosecutions for food that is not safe for our local New Zealanders to be consuming. What we require, in order to export what is $47 billion worth of food manufacturing receipts each year and $29.3 billion worth of food itself, is for the other countries that take our food to trust us, to see us as a reliable supplier of safe, high-quality food, and that depends on our reputation. I can tell this Committee that I believe our reputation is even better now than it was because of our transparency, because of the work we are doing, and because we share our knowledge as a nation around food safety processes with other countries that are developing countries.

💬 Steffan Browning: Mr Chair.

No, Mr Browning, you cannot have a call. Your calls have been exhausted on this debate and your spare calls have all been used.

💬 Steffan Browning: I think your numbers are wrong.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I beg your pardon?

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. With respect, I believe your numbers might not be right. I believe there is still a spare call.

The numbers I have show that Catherine Delahunty had one of the substantive calls and had the only floating call. She took two calls and, as I indicated at the beginning of the debate, the Greens had two. They were used tonight by Eugenie Sage and Catherine Delahunty. If the figures were incorrect there, the member might want to talk to Kevin Hague, James Shaw, and I am not sure who “DR” is who had the earlier calls.

I believe there is another one for Jan Logie to come that I could use.

There is a further call that can be held on the next theme, but the party has used all calls on this theme and all of the spare calls.

I am pleased to take a call in this appropriations debate. I want to talk about the primary industry forgotten by this Government, and that is the fishing industry and also its sister aquaculture industry. We have heard three calls from Government Ministers, 15 minutes of kōrero from the Ministers, and other than a passing reference to maybe some SPATnz research and some rescuing of some freshwater fish in some drying-up rivers down south we have had nothing from these Ministers and this Government on our fishing industry. Let me remind this Committee that the fishing industry is the seventh-largest commodity exporter in New Zealand and we have the fourth-largest exclusive economic zone in the world—15,000 kilometres of coastline. It is a very important industry. And not only that—it is important culturally and it is important socially. We all love to fish. And it is very important commercially. Basically, the lack of support for the fishing industry from this Government is evidenced by the contributions from these Ministers or the lack of support for the fishing industry.

If we delve into the annual review we can see that there is no leadership from the Minister, because we know that he has been disempowered by his Cabinet because of the disaster that occurred in the Snapper 1 fishery and the debate that roared from that fiasco. So we are not getting the leadership in the fishing industry, and if you look into the great department of the Ministry for Primary Industries, where is fishing in the Ministry for Primary Industries? It is an undersized, under-resourced little back office within the Ministry for Primary Industries, and that is what our great fishing industry has been turned into under this Government. If we look at the fishing industry, that industry is funded largely through cost recovery levies from the commercial operators. They pay their way and they would expect better services out of the Ministry for Primary Industries and from this Government.

As an example, let us look at the front-line fisheries officers. I mentioned earlier how vast our fishing resources are and how vast our fishing industry is, and yet we have barely over 100 full-time fisheries officers actually investigating and working across our fisheries, and that is across that vast fishing area. Coupled with that, there is just lack of resourcing all the way through the Ministry for Primary Industries, and the commercial sector has been underserved by this appalling Minister and the lack of leadership. He is not coming up with any of the goods. It is evidenced by this annual review. There is no mention whatsoever from the Minister about the seventh-largest commodity export industry in our country, the great fishing industry. We are not seeing the resourcing going into front-line officers. We are also not seeing those other proposals that the Government has talked about. Two weeks before the election we heard about these proposed recreational fishing parks. We are waiting to see the discussion paper. It was supposed to be released months ago, and yet we are still waiting.

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: Another broken promise.

Another broken promise. It occurred back in 2008, and now it is repeating itself. This is a Government that is absolutely disempowered. It is not delivering for the fishing industry. We are still waiting on these proposed fishing parks. But at the core of it we have a quota management system, and we will shortly, next year, be celebrating 30 years of our world-class, world-leading quota management system, which controls the take from all of our fish stocks to ensure sustainability. It is world-leading. It has been lauded internationally, and yet this Minister and this Government have been undermining, and have not been defending, our quota management system. Fisheries management goes to the heart of that. Where is the fisheries management advice that is coming through from the Ministry for Primary Industries? It is absolutely all about process. It does not want to tackle the big issues. Shame!

Well, it is great to have an opportunity to speak on the primary industries appropriation tonight, and I would like to start by talking about fishing, which seems to have been raised by the previous speaker, Rino Tirikatene. In fact, some really good news came out overnight. Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd’s subsidiary has just got the first business agreement with the Dubai Government, which is fantastic news. It comes from very good investment by the Ministry for Primary Industries into that area.

I would also like to talk about shellfish and the production technology company that has just been set up in Nelson, which the Minister touched on earlier. That is a Primary Growth Partnership in conjunction with Sanford, and I have had the pleasure of being out with Sanford and looking at the aquacultural industry in the Marlborough Sounds not so long ago. It was really interesting, only a few weeks ago, to talk about the opportunities that that particular project will bring to the industry. It is phenomenal. In the wild, there are 30 to 40 million eggs released by a female mussel, but only two of those mature through. The opportunity to do it in a controlled environment, with a controlled gene stock, really, is the opportunity here. At the moment the industry gets its spat from two sources. It is really just relying on the spat either washing up on shore in seaweed up in Northland or blundering on to racks in Golden Bay. It really is not reliable, and the source is not really top quality either. So this gives a real breeding programme opportunity. So it is a fantastic opportunity.

The other Primary Growth Partnership I want to talk about this evening is Precision Seafood Harvesting. That is a wonderful innovation that is driven by the Primary Growth Partnership. It has developed new fishing technology, which is going through the patent process as we speak. It gives an opportunity to be much more selective in what is caught in the net. Smaller fish escape from the net, fish are landed on the boat in much better condition, and it gives an opportunity to return bycatch over the side. Most fish are landed alive and are in much better condition, and that gives an opportunity to make a lot more money by selling high-quality fish through to our export markets. So it is a great result for the fishing industry.

Turning to biosecurity: one of the big issues, as far as biosecurity goes in the Kaikōura electorate, is Chilean needle grass. A group of people got together and it was one of their top issues. During the adjournment I had the pleasure of hosting the Minister for Primary Industries and the Prime Minister at Te Mania Angus in the Conway Flat area, and that had over 400 farmers there. They were concerned about such things as Chilean needle grass and how to double primary sector exports by 2025 whilst operating within the environmental constraints that they are operating under.

I note that my colleague was talking earlier about OVERSEER. The Ministry for Primary Industries have put a lot of money into OVERSEER. It is an iterative program, and it will take time. It would not matter how much money you threw at it today, tomorrow you would want to be putting some more in it, because it just develops over time. One of the problems we have is that the science and the regulators are having trouble keeping pace with change. But farmers on that day at Te Mania Angus were there to really discuss all those issues and to really drive home to the rest of New Zealand that, although the primary industries are the economic engines for the New Zealand economy, they are also guardians of the land. They care very deeply about the environment, and realise that their lifestyle and their income is dependent on a good environment and a good environmental result.

The other big announcement, which was, I think, briefly touched on by the Minister earlier, is the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas—

Reports noted.

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