Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a third time.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Indeed, it’s an honour and a responsibility, I suggest, to stand for the third reading of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2). This bill has been introduced to the House reasonably recently—a couple of days ago, in fact—and has passed through most of its stages under urgency because this Government has needed to pass legislation to ensure that the structure and the stability of the current dairy industry continues on beyond 31 May of this year. There was in the original legislation setting up Fonterra a trigger point that when more than 20 percent of the milk supply in the South Island or North Island was exceeded—that is, in the hands of others than Fonterra—then a review was deemed necessary, and without change, in fact, the structure of Fonterra and the legislation around it would then lapse.

The Government is passing this piece of legislation to ensure that the legislation, as it is at the moment, remains in place. The previous Government in the review that it conducted after 2015, when the trigger point was met, came up with a review outcome and a change of legislation. Unfortunately, it sat on that for some time and this incoming Government deemed that there was insufficient time to bring that piece of legislation into the House, have it considered properly through a select committee process, and be passed by the end of May. So we decided to pass this short piece of legislation—a technical amendment, effectively, to the primary Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) legislation—which says those trigger provisions would not be triggered, that the legislation will continue. But we committed to consider the issues raised in the review and as to the attempt by the previous Government to have them in legislation we said that we would look at these substantive issues through the review that will be undertaken over the next 12 months.

The dairy industry is New Zealand’s largest single export earner. It generated $14.6 billion in export revenue for the year ended June 2017, and that is expected to increase to $16.8 billion—a huge amount of money for any exporting sector—to the end of June 2018. Over 50,000 people are employed in the dairy industry. It’s arguably one of the single biggest contributors to rural and provincial New Zealand, supplemented by the tourism industry, which to some extent relies on, I guess, the reputation of our dairy industry. This Government is aware of challenges facing the dairy industry. They are numerous, from artificial milk and the growth of competitors in the export market to environmental pressures and, indeed, a challenge to the social licence for the dairy industry where an increasing number of people are saying that maybe they’ve got too big too quickly.

I think that there’s a very sensible approach to the dairy industry. When you ask people to submit on it, they will do so, I’m sure, over the next few months, and it will enable us to come up with changes that will be needed, I think, to bring Fonterra and its legislation into the new world. It’s almost 17 years on since the passage of the legislation, and I think we have a responsibility to look carefully at the dairy industry, to look carefully at the legislation governing Fonterra, and to look carefully at the future for the dairy industry. Our country will rely on it for a long time to come.

I acknowledge the support of all parties in the House that are supporting this through the House. There have been some legitimate questions raised by members on both sides of the House, and those—

💬 Hon Chris Hipkins: And answered.

—absolutely—questions will be addressed through the review process that will be conducted by the Government. So I just want to assure the House and the people of New Zealand and the dairy industry that the relatively quick passage of this legislation, which is just a technical roll-over, does in no way undermine this Government’s commitment to support the dairy industry and to support Fonterra in a form that will carry it and its farmers into the future and, indeed, to protect our environment and protect New Zealand and our communities. Thank you.

This bill today turns around the dairy industry and the nature of reforms that were taken many years ago, and in itself, as a bill, it promotes one of the three things that we were promoting in a bill prior to the election. But the real guts of what you’re seeing in this approach that you see from Minister Damien O’Connor here today is the review that’s coming down the line to the New Zealand dairy sector and New Zealand agriculture and horticulture in total.

Today, we have seen that democracy will be attacked on a number of fronts by this Government. Not only is question time now a farce in this House but the Government is deliberately attacking farmers. They are deliberately attacking them through a review that is wider than any context in which the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) was ever expected to cover, and this is the nature of what we will see from an oppressive Government that does not want to have people have their say.

Question time is not a place in this Parliament any more where parties can have a question and answer session. That has been taken away. That part of democracy has been stripped from New Zealanders in this Government. The next stage will be to strip away the ability for New Zealanders to actually come and submit. We saw this in the Government putting this through in urgency so that no submissions could be made, and when it got through the stages of urgency and where the committee stage had been passed, then it suddenly came back and put it through in the traditional format.

It is an abuse of the parliamentary process that we are seeing by this Government, and this is only month four. Over the next three years, there will be more oppressive attacks by that Government to take away the rights of New Zealanders to be heard, and that is a disgrace for our country.

All landowners should be worried about this bill, because not only are their rights to be heard already taken away in this Parliament but their right to use their land is now directly under threat, because we are going to have a group of politicians from Labour and the Green Party determine what is best for New Zealand’s biggest industry. They know better than generations of farmers—than those people that are employed in the industries to make managerial and structural decisions! They know better than all forms of local and regional government that we have in this country to work through those processes!

We are now going to be dictated to by a group of politicians that have no respect for New Zealanders. They take away your right to be heard in this House. This Parliament will become a farce under that Government, and this bill is a symptom of what they are doing. Mark my words, this is not a bill that will come and deliver the dairy industry regime that DIRA was actually supposed to do. This bill is a proxy for an attack on farmers and the right to use land, and that is what is going to happen, because environmental land use—the things that are said in the press release from the Minister were never in DIRA. They have never been part of DIRA, and now this bill, under the guise of night, will enable the Minister to have a review of all those things and more.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Rubbish.

Well, that is what the press release says. Those are the Minister’s exact words, and that is what all members of the Government have been saying for the last two days. It is not rubbish; it is what is happening. Ministers and members of the Government have confirmed that, and the Green members want to take it further. Labour members want to take it into labour relations. They want to take it into contracting of Fonterra. Those are not DIRA responsibilities.

This Parliament is not being effective. Not only is it taking away the ability to question at question time but now we have lost the ability to discuss with people that are affected by legislation and, thirdly, we are seeing legislation and reviews being taken that are much wider than any ambit for which they were ever intended. That is an attack on democracy. That is what this Government is about. They know they can’t win on the public opinion, so they are playing by a different set of rules, and that is a disgrace for this country going forward.

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I just was reflecting on the contribution of the member who’s just resumed his seat, the Hon David Bennett, and I believe that he was bringing into question the integrity of the ruling of the Speaker that was made earlier today, and I don’t think that’s appropriate. I’d like you to ask him to withdraw and apologise.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m sorry, I don’t understand the ruling that you are alleging he’s brought into question.

So the Speaker was challenged earlier by David Seymour in relation to the Speaker taking away his right to ask supplementary questions—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Oh, OK.

It was that ruling that David Bennett was referring to.

I think the member is taking a much narrower view of the views that have been expressed by the member. I have asked him to come back to the actual bill—well, I have indicated to him that I want him to come back to the bill—but I don’t accept that he has made the sort of allegation that would warrant a withdrawal and apology. I call the Hon David Bennett. He still has 4½ minutes left. No? He’s gone.

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a delight to take a call in support of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2), and, obviously, standing in support. After that last contribution, by David Bennett, you’d almost think that the sky is going to fall in.

I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge what my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor has done on behalf of particularly the Southland dairy farmers who were looking at the expiry of the regulative provisions in this particular Act.

I wanted in my contribution to talk about the process in which this new Labour - New Zealand First - Greens coalition Government took in response to this particular issue in this bill that we are addressing at the moment. I just want to share with the members that, clearly, this was a bill introduced by the former Government, and remind the House they had every opportunity to pass it, but, like we’ve heard in this debate over this bill, ran out of time.

We had a new Government announced at the end of October. My calculation is that on 18 December, which is nearly 6 weeks, Cabinet agreed to progress this bill under urgency. Why did they do that? Because of the fact that, come 28 February, Fonterra’s shareholding application periods closed. It would close on 28 February of this year. So it was Cabinet that decided to bring this bill into this House under urgency on 18 December, merely six weeks after forming the Government.

So here we are, under urgency. The honourable Minister Damien O’Connor brought the bill to this House and we debated it under urgency, purely because of the time pressures of 28 February on which Fonterra shareholders or farmers could put in applications, and that was looming if we didn’t make amendments to this bill. So I do want to acknowledge the quickness with which this Government addressed the issue that was at hand and the risk to those dairy farmers in the South Island. I just wanted to share that piece of information with the House.

The second, important part that this bill enables—and it shouldn’t be underestimated—is this opportunity to review the dairy industry. The Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) hasn’t been addressed for 17 years. I do want to respond to the former speaker, the Hon David Bennett’s comments around doom and gloom for dairy farmers around the country. It’s clear to me that there has been a significant shift amongst dairy farmers across the country—not just dairy famers; growers, sheep and beef farmers—and we have to now look at the way in which we practise both on the land and the utilisation of water if we are going to keep ahead in terms of international competitiveness for our products to market. It’s clear that there’s a movement that we cannot keep doing the same thing and get different results.

I want to acknowledge this bill enables the review that the Minister has outlined in his earlier contribution. I want to support all dairy farmers and acknowledge that they will all have a contribution in looking at the industry in a much more strategic way as we go forward into the nation.

I think this bill does address and puts aside the real priorities, particularly of the dairy farmers in the South Island, by removing the expiry provisions under the Act, but it also signals very clearly as we move forward as a Government that we need to take a more strategic view of the dairy industry across the board. From where I sit, I think dairy farmers will be pleased to be able to participate in that review so that we do get the right mix, and the system is right, and, like I said, maintains our competitive international advantage. To that end, I gladly commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s been an interesting week discussing this piece of legislation in the House. I will say that one really positive thing is that I’ve heard a lot of good commentary about the dairy industry this week, and it was really invigorating in the House here the other night with the debate. I am just a little bit bemused with the whole conversation around urgency. Yesterday, during the committee stage—13 Government speeches and two closure motions later—it finally got through the committee stage, so the sense of urgency all of a sudden started to go on and on and on.

A lot has been said during the course of this week, but I think there’s one thing that I’m really keen to find out around this piece of legislation. I know we’re making a timing change here, but I’m really concerned that the terms of reference become clear as soon as possible. I am rather confused. There’s already been a review done. This is a completely commercial piece of legislation. The Dairy Industry Restructuring Act was based around commercial realities and competition, and the question has been asked around what else is going to go into the terms of reference. I know that dairy farmers made a commitment to this piece of legislation, which was around some terms of commercial reality that they feel they’ve met.

So I would ask that as soon as possible, we get fair terms of reference. I would also suggest that the 105 submitters that came in and put submissions into the last review that was done, only two years ago, are probably going to be the same set of submitters. It seems to me a long-winded process to do this with some information that is already available. So I will ask this Government to be upfront with the industry and lay it out as soon as possible. Please, let’s not drag this on, so that the dairy farmers of New Zealand can get on with it. Thank you.

Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is my pleasure to stand and speak on behalf of New Zealand First on the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2). I speak today, for the first time on this bill, as my colleague Mark Patterson is unable to be here today, following a family tragedy. So I will take this call on his behalf. Thank you for your time here today in the House.

I’m not familiar so much with the dairy industry, other than my short time, as a 15-year-old, as a foster child on a dairy farm. I did spend some time in the herringbone milking shed, learning how to dodge as you run from one end of the shed to the other, in your pair of overalls, hopefully not getting—

💬 Rt Hon David Carter: Keeping a hat on.

And the hat, absolutely, with a wide brim as well. So that is a particular love I have from my childhood—those memories of those cold, freezing mornings in the cowshed, where I did actually learn how to milk by hand. I might not be the cavalry coming in from New Zealand First on this particular reading, but I perhaps am the dairy maid and so am able to speak on this with some hands-on experience, so to speak.

New Zealand First will support this bill, as we have all the way through the readings in the House. We support this bill because it will prevent the expiry in May 2018 of certain provisions in the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) that regulate the South Island’s dairy industry. When I looked at the purpose of this bill, it aims to prevent that expiry of the certain provisions in the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act 2001, which creates a process for periodic reviews of competition in the dairy industry, and to provide certainty for the dairy industry about the regulatory regime.

Certainty is one of the things that farmers don’t have a heck of a lot of. Certainty is something they would like more of, I am sure. They don’t have certainty in the weather. All seasons can blow across a day, especially when it’s haymaking season. Certainty in milksolid prices—they would obviously like to have more of those. So this bill will supply our dairy farmers, and particularly those in the South Island, with more certainty, and that is a very good thing.

This bill will give these farmers certainty around the regulatory environment they’re working in now, while making sure we don’t jump the gun and make rash changes to other legislation. We would like to ensure that our dairy industry continues to thrive. That is very important for us, and it is very important for our economy. So that our farmers too get a fair go, we need to take a strategic approach.

This is a very important issue for our primary sector. It’s important for our South Island dairy farmers. It’s important for all of our dairy farmers and their contribution to the primary industry, and how important that is for all of us. So I’d like to thank the Minister the Hon Damien O’Connor for bringing certainty to this sector. The dairy industry and Fonterra is a valuable institution, a valuable business, and it provides certainty that milk will get picked up from the gates as well.

I’d like to just make mention of my pāpā Manuera Tohu. In his younger days, as a young man, he had a job as a tanker driver, picking up the cream cans in Dargaville. He told a lot of stories to us about how much he enjoyed that job, getting those cans from the gates of the early-days dairy farmers in the 50s, and how often he may in fact have picked up a kid running to school, who’d had to milk the cows by hand, put out the cream cans, and get themselves 7 miles down the road, in bare feet, to school.

I’ve perhaps exhausted my family tales of my experience in the dairy industry, for now, and so thank you for allowing me to do so. I would just like to reiterate New Zealand First’s support of this bill. I thank the Minister and all the supporting partners of this Government. Kia ora koutou.

Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you. Can I acknowledge the contribution from Jenny Marcroft, on behalf of Mark Patterson. I know why he’s not here. His father was a wonderful man that I knew for 40 years. He was an extremely capable farmer. He was a breeder of Simmental stud cattle. He was a poet. He was a tremendous bagpiper. He made a huge contribution to the Leeston-Southbridge community and he will be greatly missed.

The Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) of course I fully support. I would, of course, also add that the critical process by which it’s been introduced into the House has been nothing short of shambolic. To put the House into urgency is a call the Leader of the House must make, and it should be done when it’s necessary to do so. To put the House into urgency after question time on Tuesday and then to break urgency that night, to bring it back the following day, and to have the Government filibustering its own legislation shows that the Government needs to concentrate on its own legislative programme.

I’ve been here for quite a few years and I don’t recall a time where we’ve seen a change of Government, and a Government coming in that should have had nine years to be ready to go, with a 100-day plan that required legislation, and find that we get into the situation as we did before Christmas and again yesterday, whereby the Government is filibustering its own legislation. It is nothing short of a shambles, and the Hon Chris Hipkins, as Leader of the House, should have a look at his own performance in that regard.

The Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) is totally necessary. I’ve listened a lot to the commentary around the review being held by the Government into the industry. It would be helpful if the terms of reference for that review could be made known as soon as possible so we could understand the extent to which the Government’s going to look at issues beyond normal dairy industry restructuring such as some of the environmental changes that may be pushed by a Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government.

This is a piece of legislation that was necessary to pass quickly—I fully accept that. But the fact that we went into urgency, came out of urgency, and then wasted most of yesterday having a Government filibustering its own legislation—it’s time this Government got its act together with a legislative programme, and stopped relying on the legislation on the Order Paper that was presented to it by the previous National-led Government.

Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) in the name of the Hon Damien O’Connor. It’s a real pleasure to be here in this third reading and to take part in this. This is a small piece of legislation, but, as the Hon Nathan Guy mentioned the other day, it is a very important piece of legislation. It is a significant piece of legislation. Why? Why that is is because it provides certainty and stability for our dairy-farming industry, both large-scale and small family-owned farms.

It amends the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) of 2001, and that originated to create Fonterra in its infancy, as Fonterra had 98 percent of the New Zealand milk production. Now, there was concern over the fact that they had such dominance in the market, and the cause for concern was that it could create barriers to new producers wanting to come into the industry. It could lock in current suppliers and pay high prices, also, to current suppliers. This isn’t healthy for industry, so DIRA, in 2001, created regulatory requirements of Fonterra through Subparts 5 and 5A of Part 2. Subpart 5 of Part 2 of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act ensured that activities of Fonterra are regulated, and thus promotes the efficient operation of dairy markets in New Zealand. Subpart 5A provides for the monitoring of Fonterra’s Farmgate Milk Price, and this is a way of managing Fonterra’s dominant position.

We know that dairying has continued to grow within the South Island, but if this legislation didn’t pass, we would be seeing the farmers in the North Island receive the protection of these regulations of this particular bill and the South Island dairy farmers would be missing out, which isn’t fair—in my view, anyway. There are quite a significant number of farms in the South Island, and, in particular, I just want to draw people’s attention to the fact that there are actually 3,219 total herds in the South Island—although not all of them would necessarily supply to Fonterra. But that actually equates to quite a high number, and of that number there are 595 owner-operators and sharemilkers in the electorate that I live in, alone. The electorate that I live in provides 18.17 percent of the total South Island herds. That’s a really substantial amount, and whilst they might not all supply Fonterra, my anticipation is that quite a lot of them would be supplying Fonterra. What this bill will do will be to provide certainty to those dairy farmers going forward.

What this bill will also do will ensure that dairy farmers still have the opportunity to supply Fonterra with milk but also the option to supply other independent processors a portion of their milk, too. It’ll also allow them to exit from Fonterra should they wish to do so, and to me that’s fair. That encourages competition within the industry, within the sector. So this bill, in my view, will certainly provide certainty to dairy farmers. I don’t believe that it is a pathway for all the scaremongering, all the conspiracy theories that we are hearing from the other side. So I think dairy farmers will be happy to see this legislation proceed, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s quite a privilege to be allowed to speak on something agricultural for a change. I have been in this House through the first review of this legislation, and consequently sat on a select committee that probably listened to nearly three months of significant submissions on that, and engaged quite a significant amount of expertise to get it through the process. This is a pretty complicated bill when you get back into it, because it sets a lot of benchmarks and standards that trigger various things happening. That’s why this bill’s got to the point, in the South Island, where it’s in fact brought the South Island trigger point of around 80 percent of the milk back to us.

To answer the last speaker’s, Jo Luxton’s, question about the percentage that Fonterra gets in the South Island, it’s pretty obvious, because this bill sets it out. So you know how much milk’s being collected by the other companies in the South Island because of the way this bill operates. I also wanted to very briefly comment on Jenny Marcroft’s comments. I thought she did very, very well as well, and I wanted to make the point that it’s a long time since most of us have made hay, but none the less—there are more modern ways of dealing with grass now than, perhaps, hay. People do still make hay, interestingly, but luckily I don’t have to still make hay.

As I said, I sat through the first iteration, or the first amendment, of this legislation. Like many pieces of legislation, when you put legislation in place to deal with business—business changes very quickly in this country, and none more so than the milk industry or than, in fact, dairy farming. So, consequently, the very good piece of legislation that was brought in in 2001 to initiate Fonterra and to get the milk industry, or the dairy industry, set on the path it is on now is constantly under stress at the moment, and, because of the very quickly changing market we’re in, it’s going to continue to be under stress. I, like a number of speakers before, will be very interested to see where they get to—where the Government gets to—with the review of this piece of legislation, because it will be critical. The interesting thing about the review is that by the time they’ve done the review and considered it, the industry will have changed to such an extent they’ll probably have to review it again, and that’s one of the challenges of this type of legislation.

I guess, from my perspective, I’m very keen to see this piece of legislation, frankly, expire and not be required in the industry at all. I don’t think we’re very far from that point, because it’s achieved what it set out to achieve, basically, which was to create competition in the industry. It’s created that competition. In fact, in some parts of the North Island that competition—and I don’t know about the South Island; it’s a little foreign to me. I don’t travel that often overseas! But the North Island and the Manawatū-Rangitīkei area, and Taranaki too, are changing dramatically, and almost daily now you see signs on the gates of dairy farms changing from one company to another. That’s, of course, what this set out to do.

So I think that whilst this small piece of legislation, which took some hours last night, during the committee stage, to get through—I think there’re two clauses in this bit of legislation they discussed for some three hours or two hours yesterday—but none the less, that’s been well covered. I think that having got through that, the review’s going to be very interesting, and where the Government gets to and where this House gets to in the future with this piece of legislation also will be extremely interesting, and, I think, challenging as well for the industry and for the sector, because probably it’s coming time when this piece of legislation may well need to be dramatically changed or done away with.

That’s probably all I need to say. I certainly support it for what it is, and look forward to its progress.

So this is a split call—five minutes with a bell at one minute, and I call Rino Tirikatene.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’m delighted to speak at the third reading of this bill. It’s a very welcome bill. Can I commend Minister Damien O’Connor for his leadership.

This is very important, because what we’re doing is cancelling the expiry of some key provisions in the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) legislation. I know it’s been well canvassed in many contributions that have been made through the various stages of this bill, but this is all about the continued evolution of our dairy industry. We want to see a competitive market within our dairy industry, but there’s still a ways to go yet before we get there, and that’s why we are passing this legislation. It is to ensure there’s a smooth passage and to ensure that the provisions that are currently in place will remain in place until the industry itself, in partnership with the Government, following this comprehensive review, can chart a way forward, so that we can actually look to the future of further deregulation, or whatever other changes are required to continue to support the growth of what is a very vital industry for our country. That’s all this legislation does.

It’s a very short piece of legislation, but it’s very important to the many, many farmers and emerging milk processors and Fonterras of the world that we have across the South Island. Had we not put this legislation through, it would throw the whole South Island dairy industry into disarray come 1 June. Therefore, it’s very important that we just leave the status quo as it is. All we’re doing is actually following the advice of the Commerce Commission that was triggered by these provisions, whereby the Commerce Commission said that there isn’t enough competition yet to remove the DIRA regulation. So we are cancelling the expiry, making sure that the status quo remains, and providing certainty to the whole of the South Island.

There are many players, as we’ve seen. Since 2001, with the passage of the DIRA legislation, we’ve seen the emergence of quite a few new entrants into the dairy processing sector. If you drive around—and Mr McKelvie is more than welcome to drive around with me, around the vast Te Wai Pounamu—we’ve got the Synlaits in Canterbury, we’ve got Open Country Dairy, we’ve got Oceania Dairy, we’ve got Westland Cooperative Dairy on the West Coast. There are a—

💬 Hon Louise Upston: Miraka.

Yeah, they’re not quite in the South yet, but there are very successful new emerging processors.

So it is a dynamic industry. There’s a lot happening. There is a lot of change that is occurring. There are a lot of threats. Whether it’s market-driven or whether it’s biosecurity risks, there are a lot of ongoing threats and challenges that the dairy industry is facing, and competition also is an area that requires close consideration. So we are allowing, through the passage of this legislation, for it to sit side by side with a comprehensive review that can provide the space for that to take place, whereby we will be fully consulting with all the concerned stakeholders to ensure that we can chart a very prosperous and productive way forward for our dairy industry.

So it’s an important piece of legislation, this is. I am very pleased that we’re able to provide that certainty to the whole of the South Island, and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

I call Andrew Falloon for the five-minute split call.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be taking my third call in as many days on the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2). I just wanted to touch on two aspects that came up during debate in previous stages. The first one is in respect of the environmental impact, and this is something that’s been canvassed by a number of speakers over recent days, and the first part of it is in relation to the review that is being kicked off as a result of the passage of this bill.

I hope that review touches on some of the many things that our farmers are doing to improve the environment around them. It’s things like riparian planting, substantial fencing of waterways, and changing feed to reduce carbon emissions. I also hope that it covers off on the economic impact, and I’ve spoken, previously, about the enormous impact that the dairy industry has in South Canterbury, particularly around Temuka, with the Clandeboye plant. Just recently, they’ve employed another 100 people as part of their third extension of their mozzarella plant, and now employ a thousand people in my electorate.

But I also wanted to mention the impact in mid-Canterbury, and I can’t go much better than quoting one of my local farmers, David Clark. He says, “I live in a district whose main town has virtually the lowest unemployment in New Zealand. We have a vibrant, multi-cultural community that offers a wide range of employment opportunities and a very high level of community facilities. … Ashburton is a town that has been transformed in the last 25 years; this is a town that has been transformed by the development of irrigation, both in arable and dairying land uses. … This is a town where professionals view their income earning potential as better than in large cities, a town that offers an unemployment rate equal to the lowest in the country.” That is the impact of the dairy industry in my region of mid- and South Canterbury. We on this side of the House support it, and we want to see it continue to grow. Thank you.

Kia ora, Madam Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. I guess in this call I really want to acknowledge the elephant in the room, or I guess you’d call it the cow in the paddock, which is the sacred cow of New Zealand, which is our dairy industry, which is the 10 million beef and dairy cattle we have across this country. I guess the elephant, or the cow, in the room is the effluent it produces. Did you know the 10 million beef and dairy cattle we have in this country are the equivalent of a population of 141 million people, of course putting that effluent out? And it’s not even treated to the same standard you’d expect for humans. So this is the issue that hasn’t been discussed much in the debate. As we talk about the dairy industry and the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act (DIRA) and what happens with Fonterra and South Island farmers, we haven’t talked about the environmental impact of all those cattle on the New Zealand environment.

When the Labour Party came to us about this amendment, we had some big concerns, because, basically, the original Dairy Industry Restructuring Act had created this gigantic machine where any farmer who wanted to farm dairy cattle to produce milk could be part of the Fonterra behemoth. Now, Fonterra, of course, is the second-largest dairy export company in the world. We know it’s responsible for 40 percent of our primary industry exports, one of our main export industries. We’ve created this gigantic machine, and any farmer that wants to bowl over wetland, forests, or existing arable crops can, and they’ve got an existing market.

So we had some major concerns with it, because, basically, this machine has been designed to despoil our environment, and that’s the exact result. That’s why in two-thirds of our rivers our kids risk getting sick if they put their heads under water: because there’s so much effluent and other nasties that go into our water. We want to restructure that machine so it can become a force for good—so that we can still have a prosperous, sustainable dairy industry, but it’s one that protects our environment; it’s one that actually grows more jobs; it’s one that actually earns more internationally, because we’re focusing on value instead of focusing on volume.

So we did have some concerns, and that’s why we’re glad the Labour Party, and in particular the Minister of Agriculture, Damien O’Connor, were really responsive to our concerns, which were: how do we get a more sustainable approach to automatic entry and exit provisions under the DIRA? How could we actually take advantage of the organics industry, which we know has been earning $2 extra per kilogram of milksolids? How do we focus on value, instead of volume? Look, we’re great at producing milk products around the world, but on a global standard of value we rank 18th in the world. So we are, I guess, mugs, because what we’re seeing is people making a profit on one side, but we’re seeing a massive environmental cost on the other, paid by all New Zealanders.

What we want to see in this review is the chance not to just have a slight tick over, which is what would have happened with National with the existing legislation. This entirely reasonable legislation simply extends the provisions that would have expired in May of this year to give us a year’s breathing space, to give us a year to get around that table and have a conversation, which is: how do we make our dairy industry a force for good, supporting those family farmers, cleaning up our rivers, growing exports, growing jobs? Look, we’ve got a massive problem when it comes to the fact that our dairy industry is also our largest coal consumer. It’s responsible, our agricultural sector, for half of our emissions. Other countries have their factories and smokestacks; we have dairy farms and coal-fired boilers in New Zealand. Let’s look at that. Let’s focus on innovation, getting us out of the bottom half of the developed world when it comes to our spending on research and development.

So this is why we’re supporting the legislation. We have to change this machine, which has been designed by this Parliament, to make sure it’s a force for good, so we don’t have this constant growth on a finite country. The way we’ve approached the dairy industry in New Zealand is as if we had wetlands for ever, and that’s why we’ve seen the greatest wetland destruction in more than 100 years in this country. We’ve seen the greatest decline in water quality standards in absolute generations—perhaps in our country’s history—from human causes.

Look, we’ve got massive problems, but such a massive opportunity to grow a low-carbon, value-added, innovative, smart, clean and green dairy industry. That’s our vision. We want to work with farmers. We want to work with their industry bodies. This review is a fantastic opportunity. The fact is that we’ve been able to work with the Government to get these very important issues, such as value, organics, and automatic pick-up, into the 12-month review. We look forward to engaging with it. We’ve got such a tremendous opportunity, and that’s why the Green Party is voting for it. Kia ora, Madam Assistant Speaker.

I rise to take a short call on the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2). I understand that, actually, this is a bill to deal with the South Island under a relatively urgent time frame, but I want to acknowledge the confusion that exists on the other side of the House. The Hon Meka Whaitiri said that it wasn’t possible to have this done because this had to be done by 28 February, which is actually not true. The date is 28 May that the provisions run out, and I question why we went into urgency. And then last night the party across the House from us, in Government, filibustered its own bill; yet the same party, with the agreement of the House, two days before Christmas could actually put through the Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Bill, run a select committee process, and travel the country to make that happen.

The big problem here is this Government seems to have a lackadaisical approach to how it engages with the public. You see, I think, actually, there is going to be a good review come out of this. But most dairy farmers—or, certainly, the industry body—would’ve liked the opportunity to actually talk to the select committee, even for a couple of days, about this piece of legislation.

We also saw it from this Government about foreign investment. There was originally a time frame for submissions closing on foreign investment in the middle of January, when everybody was away. So, actually, it is sort of inconsistent with this Government in how it deals with public input, and that’s my biggest concern. Because I think there will be a lot of input from the 105 people that submitted to this bill when it was considered previously.

We have no terms of reference, and I actually think the industry body and significant players in this industry would’ve benefited from some time before the select committee. It still could’ve got back here in time—by 28 May. And, in my short time in this House, I’ve seen no real reason why this bill was considered under urgency and then filibustered by the same party that asked for that permission. I actually think it’s an abuse of our time and this power. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I’d just like to start, on behalf of the Labour Party, by offering our sincere condolences to Mark Patterson, the New Zealand First MP who would’ve spoken on this bill as a member of the Primary Production Committee, whose father passed away last evening. We’d just like to offer those condolences in the House.

Unlike some speakers on this bill, I’d like to actually give this bill and this issue the respect that it deserves. We’ve heard from the previous speakers today criticising urgency, criticising the fact that the Labour Party actually wanted to talk about this bill last night. We took this issue seriously, unlike those on the other side of the House, who had the opportunity last night in the committee stage to discuss factors of this bill that they may have been concerned about, discuss the issues that they have talked about today—albeit briefly—directly with the Minister, and actually look at getting those specific questions answered. Did they? Did they a jot. They all sat down and did absolutely nothing, and now they sit there today and criticise us for filibustering. Nonsense. This is a Government that takes this issue seriously and wants to actually have a say. We want to discuss this bill. We want to make sure that the New Zealand public understands that this Government has this nation’s interest at heart, and actually has the primary industries’ interest at heart, and we’re not ashamed to stand up and talk about it.

So let’s actually look at why this bill is in place. This bill is in place for a very simple reason. It is to ensure the competition within the dairy industry—competition that is vital. It is a very short bill that will ensure this, but it is important none the less. Now, a point was made yesterday that the National Party, if you looked at its founding principles, believes in competitive markets, yet here they are today and yesterday making somewhat of a mockery of the process, refusing to talk about the key aspect of this bill, which is to preserve competition within the dairy industry. It is about the integrity, the structural stability, of the dairy industry beyond May 2018.

The threat to the industry, if we were to allow the expiration provisions to come into place in May, would’ve undermined the competition of the industry. This is a view that was put forward by the commission in regard to this in a very big report. They said that it would undermine the structural stability of the dairy industry. Now, we did have an opportunity—or almost had the opportunity, anyway—in this House to discuss this bill in March last year, when something very similar was put up for debate but then left to one side. So I do find it difficult to take the argument from the previous Government, which actually had the chance to put forward the bill, had the chance to put it forward to select committee, had the chance to actually give this issue the respect that it deserved—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: But what happened? What happened?

—but it didn’t happen. They left it to one side either because they wanted to avoid the discussion or because they fluffed about. What a bunch of fluffers.

The fact is that by doing so, we are now in a position where we had no choice but to actually get this done. And I was at an event last night, an event here in Parliament, attended by two groups from the Wairarapa and Hawke’s Bay regions—farm leaders, leaders in agribusiness—who wanted an opportunity with the Minister to discuss the future of primary industries in this country, and they were grateful to be able to have that opportunity. What a sad state, when they were—what—only 20 metres away from this debating Chamber, and in this House the National Party did not want to talk about it. And yet here we are with the chair of the Primary Production Committee, the Hon David Bennett, having the opportunity to put forward the Opposition’s argument—the very first speaker from the National Party today—and all he talked about was nonsense around a threat to democracy and the taking away, he accused this Government, of an opportunity for MPs to put forward their views. I come back to the point that last night they didn’t want to do that, and here they are not wanting to take their full calls today.

But this Government is proud to do it, particularly for an industry that is so important for this country, with 50,000 people employed in New Zealand in the dairy industry, and with regions like my own, Wairarapa—a considerable contribution to the local GDP and the communities that support the industry. Take Pahīatua, for example. With the dairy industry making, through Fonterra, a considerable investment in Pahīatua, it has ensured that that town and the surrounding areas will have a sustainable future in terms of employment for our young people, and that should be acknowledged. That in itself—even though this bill is relevant to the South Island—demonstrates why it’s so important that we do not take this lightly.

By bringing this bill into play and extending out the expiry provisions, what we are doing is giving the industry a bit of time so that it can work with us in the Labour-led Government and actually look at the industry as a whole. Now, reviewing things on a regular basis is a healthy process, and that is what this Government, through the Primary Production Committee, through the leadership of the Hon Damien O’Connor, has committed to the industry to do. It does face some challenges, be it through artificial milk or growth in competition overseas. The dairy industry, through the leadership of this Government, will be in good stead in only a year or two’s time, and so I am proud to stand here on behalf of the Labour Government and put forward our case for why this bill should be supported. We commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a third time.