New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill

I am certainly not going to delay the progress of this piece of legislation. In my view, it is perhaps one of the most sensible pieces of legislation we have had in this House, because it goes right to the heart of coordination and collaboration across primary sectors, and specifically here, of course, horticulture.

I have one question for Minister Nathan Guy: why not meat? He knows that, because there is such profound wisdom in having the kind of coordination across the meat industry that we are actually putting in place through the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill. It amends an Act that came into force when Labour was in Government in 1987 and brings it up to speed. It allows groups to have flexible marketing strategies in new markets. It allows this through Supplementary Order Paper 247, which the Opposition will support. I have to say the Primary Production Committee is normally right on the ball and very, very efficient, but clearly we had some dud instructions from the Minister—

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: Ha, ha!

—to the committee, which meant there was an omission, which the Minister will no doubt explain, where we have to include the ability to take a levy in the primary legislation and not just allow for regulations that would then set it. I am sure that everyone in the industry will be happier with that legislative guideline for what is, effectively, a tax. That levy will enable the Horticulture Export Authority to get on and do its job. It takes a very small amount from the product groups, I have to say, and oversees a growing volume of exports across a number of some of our big sectors, but some small ones as well. It does things like updating penalties for offences under the Act and clarifies the requirements of product groups that want to get into or out of the group—all sensible things.

The select committee has studied this piece of legislation, and we thought it through very thoroughly, except for this last-minute glitch, which the Minister is amending through his Supplementary Order Paper. Labour supports this legislation and always has done. We put it in place in 1987. We support its ongoing principles, and we think this Government should be applying this across other sectors—particularly in meat and wool—where we would have far better export outcomes for the whole of New Zealand.

Can I acknowledge the previous speaker’s contribution. The Hon Damien O’Connor is someone who knows a lot about horticulture, from his own electorate, and is someone who thinks that the meat industry needs to be rationalised and thinks this would be a great model. Of course, what he does not talk about is the importance of the Primary Growth Partnership initiatives, where the meat industry has come together on several programmes and is actually proving to be doing and achieving a lot in regard to collaboration.

But, importantly, coming back to this bill, the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill, can I thank the Primary Production Committee for the great work that it did under the leadership of the chair, Ian McKelvie. This is a very important bill and, as the previous speaker has already mentioned, the Horticulture Export Authority—or HEA, as it is well-known—has a proud history of around 29 years.

The framework works overall very well, and this will indeed allow it to be modernised. But before I take you through the bill, I think it is important to realise that the horticulture industry is in really good shape, with exports to around 100 countries. Indeed, when we look back to 1989, its export earnings were worth around $1 billion, and now we think about what it has grown to, which is around $3.5 billion, and the Ministry for Primary Industries is forecasting that by 2025 it will indeed be about $5 billion of exports.

The bill will update the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Act 1987 and make some of the key provisions in the Act more flexible and clearer for the industry. There are nine active product groups currently involved. The Act is critical for the horticulture sector. Most of the industries in the sector are indeed small, but with many producers and exporters it allows them to get involved and collaborate in the market opportunity of their products. This is indeed enabling legislation. Producers and exporters decide when to come into this framework, and once under the framework they decide on the overall marketing strategies for their export produce. Great standards are a key component of their marketing strategy.

Indeed, I do have Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 247 in my name on the Table here this evening. After consulting with the authority—and indeed I think there was some confusion by the authority when it came in to talk to the select committee about whether it should be fees or levies or both—the bill that we are debating this evening is focused on fees, and the authority now recognises the fact that it wants to indeed have the levy mechanism in the Act. So this SOP 247, under my name, which I believe will get widespread support from the Committee, will indeed enable the authority to collect levies from product groups, which it currently does under contract, but it will be in the legislation.

So I commend this bill and this SOP to the Committee and, once again, I thank the Primary Production Committee for the great work that it has done.

I also will not take very much of the Committee’s time on this. I would like to echo some of the sentiments and statements of my colleague Mr O’Connor with regard to, certainly, the model that the Horticulture Export Authority provides for possible rolling out to other sectors of the primary sector.

I do have a couple of questions around Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 247 from the Minister for Primary Industries, which he has partly addressed. We did discuss this at caucus this morning. Obviously, it was fairly short notice—the Minister was kind enough to give us a heads-up on this—and there were some concerns amongst New Zealand First members that this situation has come about. I do confess that I missed at least one meeting of the Primary Production Committee when this was being discussed—and this submission obviously slipped through then—so my apologies to the Committee for that. Had I been on my game and there for every meeting, obviously it would not have.

The Minister has explained that the Government did publicly consult on enabling the authority to collect both fees and levies, and there was no opposition to this proposal. However, the reference to levies was removed during the drafting of the bill at the request of the authority due to a misunderstanding, and this technical SOP rectifies this. This, obviously, we take on spec from the Minister. I have no reason to believe that anything else occurred, but some members of our caucus would like some further clarification of that if the Minister would be good enough to provide it. Perhaps not even that—if the Minister wants to take the chair again to point me in the direction of where that could be found, that would be helpful. The one thing that we do not want to be doing is supporting a measure that does not actually have the support of industry itself. But, as I say again, we take it on spec that the authority does speak for its members, and we recognise that the sector groups that are part of the authority are there voluntarily. Presumably they would have made some noise had they had some objection to it.

I do have to say that for it to have got through the officials, through the ministry, and through the select committee with this omission in place is rather sloppy. Obviously, we point the finger at Government for that and will undertake to ensure that when New Zealand First is leading the Government these sorts of errors will not happen. If the Minister in the chair, Nathan Guy, could point me in the direction of some supporting information or give me some more assurance that, in fact, this is what the industry itself is asking for, because, as I understand it—as the Minister explained it—the collection of levies is something that happens between the authority and its member groups anyway, but it happens on an individualised basis. This SOP will empower the legislation to say that the authority can do that across the board. If industry is happy with that, then we are happy with that—but we would like to have that confirmed. Otherwise, we support the rest of the bill, as we have from the start.

Obviously, we have a lot of skin in the game as far as ”New Zealand Inc.” is concerned, and, like other parties in the House, we understand the importance of “New Zealand Inc.” working together, single-desk marketing, large cooperatives—those sorts of approaches. This is a halfway measure toward that, which, as Mr O’Connor points out, could be applied to the meat industry and, perhaps, other sectors. So, confirmation on the SOP aside, we continue to support the bill, and I look forward to hearing more from the Minister on that. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. This will be a relatively short call on the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill, which the Green Party is supporting. We would also, like the previous speaker, Richard Prosser, welcome a bit more explanation from the Minister for Primary Industries about why this Supplementary Order Paper 247 is arising at this stage—whether it was the result of a genuine misunderstanding in the Primary Production Committee—but it looks reasonable at first glance.

The Green Party is supporting this bill because, like many others, we recognise the huge potential for increasing the value of our horticultural crops by doing more around marketing. I was fortunate enough to be on the Speaker’s delegation to China recently, and in Yunnan we visited a Dutch horticulturalist company that had huge glasshouses growing millions of orchids each year for on-growing both in China and Europe, and in New Zealand. The Dutch director of this company happened to be in Kunming at the time, and he said in his presentation that his dream for his company was to “do a Zespri” and develop a brand that was as appreciated by consumers around the world as Zespri. Zespri is obviously recognised here as being a major success story because of that decision back in 1997 by New Zealand growers to unite the export and marketing of kiwifruit under one brand and develop the success of that brand through a lot of innovation, a lot of research, and a lot of development, but with a single-desk marketing approach.

That is why this bill is a good one, because it is a major step to making available for our fruit and vegetable sector, and for more groups within that sector, the ability to do much more sophisticated marketing strategies to ensure that, through the licensing system that the Horticulture Export Authority manages and oversees, there are controls and standards around produce that is exported that work to actually protect the reputation of our horticultural products overseas. We have seen a major growth in horticultural produce and its value in the export sector in the last few years.

It is surprising, given the Government’s Business Growth Agenda and the goal of doubling the value of primary sector exports, that the Government has not moved faster with this bill—that it has taken 5 years, and for the last 5 years the Horticulture Export Authority has had annual reports where it has asked about the progress on the bill and called for it to be passed. It is surprising that the Government has not given it a greater priority, but it is a useful step, with this multi-tiered marketing system that it will implement, with the increase in the offence provisions if you do not export under a licence, and with the greater sharing of information between the authority and the Ministry of Primary Industries and Customs. I will not hold up the progress of the bill any longer—the Green Party supports the bill.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 247 in the name of the Hon Nathan Guy be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the New Zealand Horticulture Export Authority Amendment Bill with amendment, and no progress on the Children, Young Persons, and their Families (Advocacy, Workforce, and Age Settings) Amendment Bill.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.