National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill

I move, that the piece of legislation—the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill—we’re dealing with—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Would the member like the motion that the member needs to put? Just a moment.

Thank you—I apologise to the members. I move, That the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Thank you.

Madam Assistant Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to take the call on the second reading. I was hoping that the Minister of Agriculture and Minister for Biosecurity—would have responded to some of the questions and comments from this side of the House. It’s obvious and very clear to us that we’re going to have to wait until he’s in the chair at the committee of the whole House stage to answer a lot of these questions.

Let’s just recap on some of those questions. One is that we haven’t had a sense from any of the contributions from the Government benches this afternoon, and into the evening now, as to why urgency needs to be taken on this bill, 10 months on since the Government has been formed. What was also glaring was when the Minister spoke a few hours ago, he indicated to the House that indeed there is another National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) bill being cooked up. So we have got a NAIT bill in urgency this evening—it’s a bit like the Ginsu knives, isn’t it—but wait, there’s more. There’s more coming down the pipeline, so why would the Minister come into the House in urgency when we have another bill that’s being cooked up by his officials?

Surely it would make logical sense to combine those two bills and send them off to a select committee so that everyone can have their say. When I talk about “everyone”, I mean Federated Farmers, Dairy New Zealand, possibly Beef and Lamb New Zealand, Fonterra, and farmers that have been on the end of this response and indeed may have had first-hand experience of these NAIT officers coming on to their property and using their warrantless powers. So we haven’t got a sense from the Government benches this evening as to why urgency is needed. We can’t fathom—not even from Mark Patterson—why this couldn’t go to a select committee.

💬 Mark Patterson: I told you—listen.

You would have thought—beg your pardon?

💬 Mark Patterson: You could’ve listened.

I did listen. I think you got confused. You were talking about a select committee for the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, that New Zealand First, the Greens, and Labour all voted against. Now, they want to, effectively, get these two Acts to align, and Mr Patterson can’t give us a clear reason why it couldn’t go to a select committee.

What we also haven’t heard from the Minister, or anyone from the Government benches, is why this is not a recommendation of the NAIT review. There were 38 recommendations. We’ve heard from the Minister this evening that 15 of those are going to be dealt with by Government—that’s, obviously, on the second NAIT bill—and 23 of them are going to be dealt with by NAIT and Operational Solutions for Primary Industries, but when you look through the whole 38 recommendations, two of these particular aspects of this NAIT bill that we are debating in urgency this evening aren’t there. We haven’t had any examples from the Minister as to why suddenly this has become an urgent issue, when he’s been in the chair for 10 months. These are the unanswered questions.

He also stood up in the House and said that these provisions that he wants to insert into the warrantless powers go no further. Well, that is completely wrong. It was interesting to hear from Eugenie Sage, because the Greens were really opposed to the Search and Surveillance Bill when it went through the Parliament and became an Act in 2012 because of civil liberties and being seen to encroach on people’s personal lives and personal property. I listened intently to Eugenie Sage this evening, and the critical point in her contribution was “We are led to believe that this is a drafting error and it is a technical inconsequential tidy up that should have been done a long time ago.” But the reality is that when we look at this bill and when we sit down with the Minister’s officials this week, we realise that it’s more than just a technical bill, and, indeed, it is consequential.

So we have some concerns on this side of the House, and we would really have liked to have ironed these out in the select committee process. It’s not too late, is it, for the Minister to stand up and say, “I’ve spoken to my officials. We’ve had a bit of the huddle on the Government benches, and we realise that we should send this to a select committee.” It’s not too late. The Primary Production Committee—I’m going to ask David Bennett, the chair. Is the chair prepared to call the Primary Production Committee to meet in the recess?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order!

💬 Hon David Bennett: Yes. Yes.

Yes, Mr Bennett said that he is. So here we have an offer from this side of the House for the Primary Production Committee to indeed meet in the recess. We believe that we could turn this bill around in a truncated period over the recess and we’d be back into the House within two weeks to debate it. That offer, so far, has been turned down by the Minister.

Why would the Minister want to, effectively, not give New Zealanders and farmers an opportunity to submit on this bill? You would think it’s logical. They talk about being open and transparent. Why would the Minister not send it to a truncated select committee process?

So, in conclusion, we are cautiously supporting this National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill. There are aspects of it that we entirely agree with. Those two aspects are that when a farmer sells animals or moves animals to another farm, that farm must be NAIT-registered, and then, of course, there is the compliance and infringement aspect of that if that transaction doesn’t occur accurately in the way it should. But the search and surveillance extension of these warrantless powers has us on this side of the House really concerned.

We would have preferred to have heard from the Minister at his second reading speech just a moment ago, to stand up and answer these questions, but it’s clear we are going to have to wait until the Minister gets in the chair. I have a personal view that the Minister is only just coming to terms with what part of this bill actually does, and it’s going to mean that we are going to need to explore these very detailed and technical questions via the Minister to his officials either later this evening or, more likely, tomorrow morning.

I conclude where I started off: M. bovis is a very important issue. The NAIT system needs to change. The Minister has had 10 months to bring this bill to the Parliament. He’s decided to bring it through in urgency at the end of a four-week session, when we go into a two-week recess. There’s ample time for this bill to go to a select committee, even if that was truncated. There’s ample time for people who are interested in this bill—and that would generally be farmers, but it could be stock agents and it could be truckies who are involved in the whole NAIT supply system—to have their voices heard.

But the reason we have all of these unanswered questions is we have had just two sessions with the Minister’s officials—as my colleague the Rt Hon David Carter mentioned, one for about 35 minutes and one for about 20 minutes—and they couldn’t answer some of the specific details of this bill. It’s an important bill. We want to get it right. We, fundamentally, think that parts of it are really important and it should go through, but there are some aspects around the Search and Surveillance Act of 2012 that we have some concerns about.

This is an important bill, and I therefore commend it to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’d just like to, first of all, thank the Minister of Agriculture. I think that he’s done a pretty good job on M. bovis so far, and I think that the farming community recognise that. I do appreciate what he’s done in this space up to now, so I just want to record our thanks to the Minister.

I also want to put out a big thanks to the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). As somebody that had been a Minister in a junior role with them, I have a lot of faith in that organisation, and I think that they do a very good job in difficult circumstances. So to all those MPI staff out there and those that’ve been contracted to work with MPI, I’d like to pay our respects to them and say thank you very much for your good work, because their heart is—like everybody in the farming sector—to see that New Zealand prospers and succeeds on the international stage. So I think it’s important that we register our thanks to both the Minister and to MPI in what they’ve been doing in this area.

The National Party will support the bill at this stage of the debate. We do recognise that this is something that needs to happen, and is really based on the issue of M. bovis that we’ve seen come through our communities in the last nine to 12 months. It is an issue of recent occurrence that we need to act on in this Parliament. Whether we need to act through urgency is a question that raises more doubt, because, typically, urgency is for a circumstance that needs to be done with some immediacy, and there doesn’t appear to be the immediacy in this case as, in some way, you could say the horse has bolted.

But the fact of the matter is that we have this in front of us in this Parliament here tonight, and the fact of the matter is that the Government has the numbers to pass it through this Parliament, and they won’t listen to rational and reasonable debate, so we know that they’re going to do it. I would implore that the Minister actually take some time and look at some of the options around what could be done in the next five or six hours to try and make sure that we actually have a result that does achieve all the purposes.

So, on one side, you’ve got a Government that has a responsibility to look for rules and requirements to provide safety to our primary sector. On the other side, you have farmers that want to comply with the law but that also have got some personal property rights that they wish to retain as well. They could justifiably feel that this could be an intrusion on some of those personal property rights.

Now, this is not the most extensive bill you will see. To those that are listening, it is a matter of pages, this bill. In fact, you can have a look at it. It’s only about four or five pages, and the substantive clauses are really only clauses—they’re not in any major detail.

I would like the Minister to take some time to actually look at, possibly, an option around this bill. I know he’s busy at the moment, but the Minister may want to consider the option of an amendment to this bill. If I was the Minister, I would be looking at—when we go to clause 8—possibly having an amendment in clause 8 where he added an extra test. Now, it would not be very much difficulty for him to do that; in fact, it would only be a one-line test. He could add in something to the effect that “where the Minister deems in the national interest, these powers would apply”, rather than having the overall application of these powers in any National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) inquiry.

For example, if you’re a lifestyle block owner and you may have five cattle on your lifestyle block and you didn’t understand the NAIT rules, you hadn’t been aware of them, and you made a genuine mistake, potentially, the search and surveillance rules could come in and be very Draconian in that case. Now, there must be cases where the Minister needs to have that authority, and foot-and-mouth would be the ultimate case where you would expect that to be the case. Nobody in this House would deny the Government of the day to have full rules and security and strength in that case. M. bovis is getting pretty close to that position as well.

So I ask the Minister to consider, in clause 8, maybe just putting a slight amendment in there so that farmers have that security of their private property rights and the Government can still achieve its purpose, and that if there was an area of national interest and there was something that was very difficult that the Government needed to deal with with some urgency, they actually have the power to do that. So I’d ask the Minister to genuinely consider that.

If we went through a select committee process, that’s what would’ve come out of the select committee process. There would be a request from the committee that there would be an amendment to clause 8 to reflect a national interest test, and it would only be one line that the Minister would need to put in there. It does not take away from his powers in the M. bovis situation or the foot-and-mouth situation, but it does give farmers some comfort that they actually don’t have these huge and Draconian rules that would apply to them that don’t apply in normal situations in any other case.

So I think that this Parliament can come to a balance within the next four or five hours, and I would hope that the members of Parliament here look at that constructively, because we know that the Government of the day will push this through, but there is an option where we could actually do something within one line that would enable farmers to feel that there is security in their private property rights but also would give the Government the power to act in real cases when they needed to.

M. bovis has shown there is deficiency in the system. Now, nobody’s denying that. Nobody’s denying that we need to do something to tighten those rules up, and farmers need to acknowledge that and they need to act in a better way as well. Now, we’ve all been guilty of that as farmers. The rules have been a little bit lax and this was a big wake-up call for New Zealand, and it could’ve been worse. You can see the reason why the Minister is trying to do this, but in doing it the way they have done it, they have taken it to a wider degree. It is very simple to take that back a little bit, so that the Government does not lose the power to be able to act when it really needs to but that also enables private property owners to feel that they’ve been listened to in this Parliament—which would be a really big thing, and would gain them a lot of credit out there—and also to feel that they are not being walked over.

I do acknowledge the Minister, and I do think he’s done a good job. I think he can do a better job if he just actually looks at the heart of what he’s trying to achieve here tonight. The heart is to be able to intervene, when he needs to, to prevent a problem for the New Zealand industry. I don’t disregard that at all. But I do think that he can also retain those private property rights, ownership, and personal privacy issues by making a very simple one-line change, by bringing in a national test that if, in the Minister’s view, it is in the national interest that those Draconian powers come into play, then he can say to do that. If it’s an M. bovis or foot-and-mouth, you would not disagree with that. In other cases of just genuine NAIT non-compliance or not understanding, we’ve got to probably have a little bit more leeway for the ordinary person out there.

So there is a solution here tonight. I think the Minister knows he can do that, and it wouldn’t be hard for him to do that. It would be, I think, in the interests of this Parliament, that has shown a united approach around M. Bovis, to look at maybe having a united approach around something like that to, essentially, enable all the main participants to actually achieve the interest that they are seeking, and to show to the New Zealand public that this Parliament can work constructively and provide real solutions, even in the short time frame that may be put forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’ll just take a very short call in the second reading, but I would actually commend the previous speaker, David Bennett, on what was a fairly measured contribution and, I think, probably something I’m not terribly used to from him on matters in this House. No, I thought the commendation of the Minister’s performance, the recognition of the issue at hand—and it is a very serious issue we’re dealing with here. I think we just need to step back and take that into account. We can get carried away with the process, but it’s what we’re trying to achieve that is a really important thing here. This is to give our Ministry for Primary Industries the tools that they need to respond appropriately to this very, very important matter.

So we’ll look forward to—within the committee stage of this bill—going through the details. There are some genuine queries and questions being raised by the Opposition. I know the Minister has got the answers to all of that, and we’ll look forward to responding in a bit more substance through that process. But that would be my urgent urge: to step back and remember what we’re trying to achieve here. We’re trying to bolster this response to this very, very important biosecurity outbreak. So with that, I commend this bill, in the second reading, to the House.

For the worried farmers who have now tuned in and are listening to the debate in the House tonight, that was Mark Patterson, the New Zealand First member, who previously spent 15 years as a branch chair of the National Party in Lawrence and is now supporting the New Zealand First - Labour - Greens Government to pass legislation that should worry every farmer in New Zealand. Not only every farmer: there are 25,000-odd farmers, but no one’s yet mentioned all the lifestyle blocks around the city that run one or two cattle and that now will have these powers usurped on them, giving a National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) officer the right to come in with more powers than the police. That’s what’s happening with this legislation.

I’ve been in this House a while, and I’ve seen history tonight. I have never before seen a Minister responsible for legislation stand in the second reading and say these words: “I move, that the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill be now read a second time.” and then sit down. He added nothing else. He could have at least taken the opportunity to correct the clear mistake he made when he introduced the bill in the first reading, when he spoke in the first reading and said this legislation is not about increasing the powers of NAIT officers. That’s what the Hon Damien O’Connor said, and if he doesn’t know it’s wrong by now, he should, because I’ve seen him ducking in and out and talking to his officials.

The very reason National’s expressing concern about this legislation is not around the issue to reform NAIT and get it working right, and it’s not about getting cooperation to tackle Mycoplasma bovis; it’s about the extraordinary powers being given to NAIT officers, that I’m told are greater than the powers of a New Zealand Police officer. Damien O’Connor could have at least given a proper speech.

💬 Hon Damien O’Connor: Get another lawyer.

He says he’s not a lawyer—that’s the excuse. The Minister of Agriculture sits there and says he’s not a lawyer, and that’s the reason he didn’t take the call.

I’ve listened to most of this debate, and there’s a very clear solution here. It doesn’t have to be done in urgency. The Primary Production Committee chair and the National members of the select committee are willing to meet over the recess. What the Minister’s achieving is passing this legislation through this House, effectively, on 15 August. Why can’t we agree to pass it on 4 September? What difference does the fortnight make? The answer is very, very little. Mycoplasma bovis has been here for 12 months. The Minister’s been in charge of the challenge of Mycoplasma bovis—and I acknowledge it’s a challenge—for 10 months. What difference would two weeks make, so we can check out these huge powers that have been given to NAIT officers?

I’m not arguing for one minute that the NAIT legislation that was passed in 2012 is perfect. I am not arguing that NAIT has been well complied with by farmers, who have the first responsibility, but I’m saying to this House that not only should we improve the compliance and ask farmers to accept their responsibility but, then, this House should have a look at the layers of responsibility that need checking.

What about Operational Solutions for Primary Industries (OSPRI), the organisation now, effectively, led by industry that’s in charge of two strategies that are important—NAIT being one, and TBfree New Zealand being the other. We’ve got every chance of ridding this country of bovine tuberculosis, but the responsibility doesn’t rest initially with the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), and it doesn’t rest with the Minister of Agriculture or the Minister of primary industries; it rests with an organisation called OPSRI. Not only is that organisation in charge of the TB strategy but it’s actually the organisation that’s charged with the responsibility of compliance for NAIT. No one in the House tonight has mentioned that. Probably, some of the members on the other side of the House don’t know it, but that’s where I challenge this House to look at for compliance.

I want to refer to the fascinating speech from the Hon Eugenie Sage, who, when she spoke in the first reading, said, “We’re only here to correct a drafting era with the NAIT legislation.” Well, the officials actually tried that on us in the two meetings we had with MPI officials yesterday and today. That was their initial comment to us: “You’re only passing this legislation to correct a drafting error.” We teased it out, and this legislation’s not about fixing a drafting era in the original NAIT legislation. We interjected that to the Hon Eugenie Sage, and she left her seat after she’d spoken and went immediately to the Hon Damien O’Connor—not happy, I think, that she now realises she’s been misled. She has been misled.

There’s no response from the Minister, because this legislation is not about fixing drafting errors. This legislation is about an attempt to give extraordinary powers to NAIT officers—and extraordinary powers that we’re not having the opportunity to examine because the Hon Damien O’Connor and the Labour Government, supported by New Zealand First and supported by the Greens, won’t give it the opportunity of a select committee examination for two weeks.

Talking of the Greens’ support for this, a National member earlier mentioned a former Green member, Steffan Browning, who claimed that the search and surveillance legislation, which this Government’s attempting to now align with the NAIT legislation, was—and I quote—an “invasion of human rights”, and he looked forward to the day when it was repealed. Well, we’re not repealing it. What we’re seeing tonight is that every party who voted against this legislation is now supporting the extension of that legislation into the NAIT legislation.

I just want to comment on a couple of contributions we’ve had from our members on this side of the House, who are prepared to take their full calls. The first was from Hamish Walker. He’s been down there in the Clutha-Southland electorate. He knows the heartache that Mycoplasma bovis has caused to people. He spoke about the difficulty farmers have in addressing their own family and explaining why apparently healthy animals are being culled. That’s where we should be working cooperatively with the Government, and we’ve offered our cooperation. Lawrence Yule spoke with absolute heart about Jeremy and Sharon White, who have had their farm in the Hawke’s Bay completely destocked—absolutely devastated their lives, devastated their income, and devastated their farming operation—in an attempt to work cooperatively to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis.

The Government has taken a gutsy call: $880 million to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis. I support it. We’ve offered, as a National Opposition, complete support to the Government as it embarks on this programme, bearing in mind a significant part of the money is actually not Government money but industry money through Dairy New Zealand and Beef and Lamb. But where that support breaks down, Hon Damien O’Connor, is when you introduce Draconian legislation like this and you’re not even prepared to take a second reading speech to justify it. I think that’s appalling, and as we move to the committee stage shortly, I assure the Minister I’ve got a large number of questions to ask him which the officials couldn’t answer earlier today. I expect and hope that he’ll stand and take the calls and answer those questions to satisfy me.

Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you. I think the Opposition needs to work out whether they actually support strong action on Mycoplasma bovis or not, because we’re hearing flip-flop speeches from members of the Opposition which talk about why they’re going to support the bill but then are very critical of what is in the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill.

Now as I understand it—and I’m no lawyer either—the key parts of this bill are to remove the requirement that a search warrant under the original National Animal Identification and Tracing Act, or the principal Act, must be in a particular form to align the provisions in the principal Act which provide for warrantless inspections and searches with the relevant provisions in the Search and Surveillance Act, and to make it clear that animal movements from one farm to another place must be declared to National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT), to the tracing authority, even if it’s not a registered NAIT location, and to ensure that the offence provisions around this clearly cover the failure to declare movements of animals from one location to another. So these amendments are designed to ensure that the NAIT system, which was established under the former Government to have a whole-of-life tracing system from birth through until death, actually operates, because we’ve seen with Mycoplasma bovis—and it would be the same with something like foot-and-mouth—that actually being able to trace infected animals is critical to getting some control of the disease and eradicating it.

We need to have an effective regulatory system and an effective tracing system if we are to maintain the confidence of consumers overseas that the meat products we’re exporting and that the milk products we’re exporting are fit to eat. So an effective NAIT system is about safeguarding our reputation and brand overseas, which I would have thought the Opposition would be concerned about, and it is about ensuring that we can tackle Mycoplasma bovis effectively.

Now, I’m no lawyer, but I did go back and have a look at the principal Act, and in Part 4 of that Act it sets out, in over 30 pages, the details around search and inspection powers. There are quite specific provisions which constrain the way in which those powers should be exercised. I would caution the Opposition if it’s thinking of introducing Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) to put in some other threshold tests, because they potentially risk undermining the schema of the principal Act, which was carefully thought through at the time, and the safeguards which are in the principal Act around how those search powers are exercised.

There are certain purposes for which a consented search may be undertaken, for example. There are restrictions on the issue of a search warrant in schedule 2, clause 34—quite a few restrictions—and there are some tests in the principal Act that if an issuing officer, in terms of a search warrant, is going to issue that warrant, he or she’s got to be satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to suspect an offence against the Act has been or will be committed and to believe that the search will find evidence in respect of that offence. So there is a carefully thought through schema here to provide safeguards against the unreasonable exercise of search powers. The form and content of search warrants has got to be done in a particular way, and that clause goes on for a page and half with a lot of detail. So this bill is aimed at correcting some of the drafting errors with the comprehensive provisions in the principal Act.

There’s another clause—clause 40 in schedule 2—which sets out that every search power authorises the person exercising it to do certain things. The power of seizure, which Opposition members have talked about repeatedly, is to seize anything that may be lawfully seized. So there is a test in there that the seizure has to be of a thing that may be lawfully seized. So there is an ability to test the wrongful exercise of these powers in the High Court. There are also safeguards in schedule 2 that anything that is seized has got to be reported on, so that it is clear to the farm owner. There is a requirement if the farm owner is absent that the authorisation notice has to be left on the property. So in the principal Act, which, of course, did go to select committee, there was consideration of the submissions on the overall protections that apply to any searches and warrantless searches that are exercised.

So any SOPs that the National Opposition is likely to be presenting should consider the risk that that they will undermine the schema in the principal Act and potentially erode the safeguards that exist in the principal Act. There hasn’t been the opportunity to check all these in detail, but, having looked at schedule 2, it is quite comprehensive, and it does provide a number of safeguards. So I think the Opposition doth protest too much in claiming that this is a huge extension of powers, when in the principal Act there are strong safeguards against improper use of those powers. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’d just like to begin by addressing the member Eugenie Sage, who accused our members of flip-flopping. Being a member who spoke out stridently against Chinese-owned water bottling companies, the moment she became the Minister she very quickly approved one. So flip-flops might be something she may be quite good at judging, but she doesn’t seem to have a very principled position on that particular issue.

I really did enjoy the Hon David Bennett’s contribution. In fact, he even got some praise from the other side, which is quite an unusual thing for that particular member, but I don’t know why.

I would also like to acknowledge the Hon Nathan Guy and the Hon Damien O’Connor, both of whom have been in the unenviable position of having to be the Minister during a difficult biosecurity outbreak in New Zealand. I well remember meeting with the Hon Jim Anderton when he was the Minister of Agriculture when I had a former position with New Zealand Winegrowers, and we had a meeting about biosecurity issues. He told me at the time that it’s the worst job you could have—being the Minister for Biosecurity—because there’s no good news with biosecurity. No one ever reports it when something’s stopped. It’s only when something breaks out that the biosecurity Minister is in the news, and then everybody wants to attack him. There’s only downside and no upside. I remember that very well. You could say a lot of things about Jim Anderton but, actually, I quite enjoyed some of our meetings. That was a very good one, and I remember it quite vividly.

So I do acknowledge the difficult job that those two gentlemen have had in, firstly, Minister Guy and, now, Minister O’Connor. I know he’s doing his best. However, we do have some issues with this bill.

I would also like to acknowledge the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and Roger Smith, the director of biosecurity, and the work that they’ve been doing. They are doing their best. It’s a huge test to ramp up. They have all of the exercises that they’ve put in place to try and model these sorts of outbreaks and how they might manage them, but nothing tests it like the actual event and then to ramp their staff up and get them out there to work in very challenging conditions.

I thought before about Hamish Walker’s contribution and the very difficult pain and situation that those families who are having their animals killed are going through. I thought there was quite a lack of generosity from Stuart Nash to actually attack Hamish Walker, who gave a very good contribution. He wasn’t saying it shouldn’t happen; he was just acknowledging the difficult position that those families are in. It must be heart-wrenching for them to see their animals going off to the freezing works when they’re often in what appears to be quite good health. We know that they’re not. They are infected or, potentially, the risk is too high to keep them, so it is the right thing to do, but it must be very difficult for them to do that.

However, there are some things that could be done better. I know, certainly, from some close family members who have had some animals tested—they haven’t had any found to have M. bovis at this stage, but to wait eight weeks after a test, and longer, and not have any response. All they want to know is are they infected or aren’t they, and is it clear or undetermined—just some information. I acknowledge that they’re very busy, and I understand that they’re being stretched, but communication goes a long way. I think MPI would do well to remember that, but I do acknowledge that they are doing their best.

As has been pointed out, there’s been a review undertaken with 38 recommendations—38 recommendations—but not one of them was around extending the search and surveillance powers. However, this is now suddenly the main driver for this bill, and I find that difficult to understand. We have asked the questions. The Minister had the opportunity to answer some of those questions when he stood up for his second reading speech and elected not to address them. He will be taking his place in the chair tomorrow, we hope, when we get on to the committee of the whole House. I for one will be looking forward to hearing some of those questions being answered, because we deserve answers. New Zealand deserves answers, and so do the farmers of New Zealand. Yes, we are taking this incredibly seriously and we want to get the best-possible tools for MPI to manage this process. However, we have very serious questions about the enhanced search and surveillance provisions that are in this bill.

We do also, now, hear from the Minister’s speech that there is another bill. We have to really question why those two bills weren’t pulled together and put through. We would’ve agreed to a truncated process. It could’ve been: gone through first reading today, met during the recess, and then gone through to the rest of the processes. We could’ve done this months ago. We’ve had months and months of National Government bills that were on our Order Paper, which we’ve been debating in this House for months. Now we’ve got these bills that are being rushed through without going through the proper process.

We’ve had a wonderful example of a great process. There’s been a medicinal cannabis bill—a very flawed one—in the House, and Dr Shane Reti took it upon himself to go out, research a bill, and put one in the ballot himself. He didn’t have the benefit of MPI sitting behind him with all those bevy of officials to do the work; he did it himself. How long did it take him? Two weeks. He got up off his backside, went around the world, spoke to the right people, came up with a framework, and has a bill drafted, and it’s more complicated and far-reaching, as well, than this bill we’re debating tonight. When MPI have all those resources, they could have done the work. They didn’t, and I find that very disappointing. I’ve congratulated MPI—you give people praise where they deserve it—but they deserve criticism as well, and this is simply not good enough.

So I think that it would be quite helpful for the Minister to reflect on that. When he gets a chance tomorrow morning, he should be, I suspect, having a very serious talk with his officials and asking them why they couldn’t do what Dr Shane Reti did on his own in two weeks, on his own resources, and put together a more comprehensive bill than we are debating tonight—more well-thought-out, a greater platform framework and principle of the bill, and then all of the clauses in it are be far better thought out than this bill tonight. I think, quite frankly, the farmers of New Zealand deserve better than that.

So I think that when we look at the Opposition—well, what are the Government parties now—who took great umbrage at the search and surveillance legislation, they are now, with great delight, all of a sudden throwing those principles out the window and just going on and doing what they are told because somebody has decided this is the right thing to do, when they haven’t really done the work. Principles are only really measured when they are put to the test, and when they’ve been put to the test, they’ve been found sadly wanting on this.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The level of chatter is slowly rising. I think the member’s done a great job, but his own colleagues could actually help him a bit.

Well, thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. Yes, I thought they were murmuring great praise of the speech in support. So I think that’s quite—I’m taking it as a compliment anyway.

💬 Matt Doocey: I would too, Stewy.

Yes, indeed. But I hope the other members on the other side of the House take the rest of the night and tomorrow to reflect on what they’ve said today, because I think it hasn’t reflected well on a lot of them, and I think they’re better than that.

Eugenie Sage, while I started out criticising you, the work that you’ve done and the research to come back here and make a sound argument—I might not agree with it, but at least you’ve made it. My colleague David Bennett, sitting on my right—his suggestion of putting a national interest test into clause 8, I think, is a very sound one, and that would improve this bill dramatically. It would go right to the heart of what Eugenie Sage was talking about and actually add a lot more to it and make us much more comfortable with the bill than we are now.

I call Jamie Strange. This is a split call—five minutes, with a bell at one minute.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to contribute this debate. I would like to acknowledge the Minister Damien O’Connor—a very good Tasman gentleman—for bringing this bill to the House.

I’m going to take a short but substantial call. This bill is simply tidying up an issue around stock movements. I commend this bill to the House.

I’m happy to speak in this second reading after that substantial contribution from the last member, Jamie Strange. Actually, it’s important on our side, because Mycoplasma bovis is serious, it’s terrible, and it’s had devastating effects on farming families in New Zealand, on much-loved farming businesses, on much-loved animals, and on mental and other welfare of hard-working Kiwis. I don’t like it in this House, at half past 9 at night, when we actually have really short calls that make no contribution to anything, to simply rush this legislation through.

I come back to the point I made in the first reading, which is that the DNA evidence shows that Mycoplasma bovis was probably introduced in New Zealand in December 2015—around that time. That’s what they’ve mapped it back to. So it’s been in New Zealand a long time, and, sure, we found some issues in the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) tagging system when it was first picked up in clinical signs in the middle of last year. But here we are, late at night, trying to rush something through under urgency.

I actually want to congratulate the contribution from the Hon David Bennett, because what he sought to do was actually clarify the powers and provision of search and seizure in the national interest. I think that all Kiwis would expect that in the interests of the national interest, at certain times there do need to be some specific provisions. I’ll be looking forward to that amendment being properly debated in the committee stage of this.

We are not going to beat Mycoplasma bovis or, in fact, foot-and-mouth, if it ever got here, or, in fact, any other biosecurity risk, unless we have the farmers working with us. The farmers have the most to lose. Sure, it’s cost $880 million, and a significant contribution is actually coming from the farming families, but actually the farmers are the best placed to help resolve this.

I liken this to what, actually, Inland Revenue used to be like, where most people thought they were a compliance agency, they were hard to deal with, you couldn’t get hold of them—all those types of things. Now, a lot of stuff is online and they’re way more user-friendly. I think the real risk with this legislation, as it’s placed before this House, is that the Ministry for Primary Industries will be set up and known as a whole lot of people wandering around with clipboards, deciding that they can walk into your dairy shed, into your woolshed, into your stockyards, and if you’re invited—sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. If they’re invited into somebody’s house, they can actually take their clipboard in, take photos, and do a whole lot of things.

I don’t believe the farming industry bodies that are supporting this approach—and Federated Farmers of New Zealand, in particular—actually understand this particular provision of this bill. I’m mindful that the Hon David Bennett, as the chairman of the Primary Production Committee, offered to reconvene the meeting next week during the recess—during the recess. I’m not on that select committee, but I would be happy to come back to Wellington and sub in as part of that select committee, because I believe the farmers I represent are not going to take it too lightly that somehow somebody can wander into their house, their woolshed, their stockyards, or their dairy shed and seize and search a whole lot of material without their knowledge.

Now, I have listened to the Hon Eugenie Sage going through a whole lot of things that are in the NAIT legislation, but actually we haven’t been satisfied on this side of the House, despite two meetings with Ministers’ officials, that this part of the legislation is as it said. The Hon Eugenie Sage said she sought assurances. Well, the National members have sought assurances from the Minister and his officials and we’re not satisfied with what’s been given.

It is still not too late for the Minister, the Hon Damien O’Connor, to actually take this to a select committee, and for the select committee to convene next week and get to the bottom of—and find all the information required on—the search and seizure provisions.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise to reiterate my support for this bill. Can I congratulate the Minister, Damien O’Connor, for his leadership in this matter. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. First up, I would like to congratulate the list MP for Hamilton East, Jamie Strange, because we’ve got a lot of people on the opposite side of the House to us—calling themselves “Government”—who sit on the Primary Production Committee and have not attempted to even make the length of call that the list MP for Hamilton East has made. Actually, it’s probably an indictment on the Minister, Damien O’Connor, that the Minister actually made an even shorter speech than the other three members from the Primary Production Committee that are here.

I just want to ask a question also—and also Stuart Smith mentioned before that the Hon Eugenie Sage has at least made the attempt to take a call. We won’t agree with everything that she has said, but at least she made the effort to take a call. I would like to ask a question of the Hon Eugenie Sage. When we talk about search and surveillance—and I know that the Green Party have been against search and surveillance in the past—it just seems to be totally different when it’s about farmers. The reality is that most farmers’ offices are their homes. They are where their families are. I just think that to up these powers, and we’ve heard tonight about having more powers than the police to go into these houses—why do we have to do it in this way? If they can actually enter the house and ask for information, and then if they need to find out more it takes 24 hours to get a warrant, why can we not just bide out that time and wait, and get a warrant if there’s something that then is deemed to be urgent enough to get a warrant?

Now, Kieran McAnulty did speak when he had his chance to during the first reading, and I just want to correct something that Kieran McAnulty said in the House tonight. He got up and he gave the Minister a lot of credit for taking the politics out of the M. bovis situation. I agree that the politics needed to be taken out of the M. bovis situation, because we were playing with farmers’ lives and there were a lot of health issues out there. There was a lot of stress, and we needed to get that out of this situation, and I have to say that the clarity of actually now having a project of phased eradication has given a lot of certainty to it.

But I was calling out to the member Kieran McAnulty while he was making his speech. I’m not sure whether he heard, but I told him to go back and check my Twitter message and my Twitter conversation with the Hon Damien O’Connor from 12 May this year. It was while we were all down at the dairy industry awards, and I know that because the Minister upset me with something that he said on one of the television programmes—I think it was The Nation—on that morning. We exchanged some emails and we exchanged some tweets, and one of the things I put on here was to the Hon Damien O’Connor: “Farmers are too important to be kicked around like footballs! They are worried, they don’t know about 1 June cow movements. Everyone’s pointing the finger and no one can confirm anything. It’s a joke!”

Now the Minister will be able to verify that tweet because it went to his account. So we had an exchange on Twitter, and, actually, that night we shook hands and we decided that the farmers would come first. So there was quite a process in taking the politics out of this, and the statement that Mr McAnulty made that the Minister started the process and then it took two weeks for the Opposition to catch up is just nonsense.

💬 Hon Member: That’s right—dead right.

So yeah, I’ll accept an apology around that one.

Now, M. bovis, as I’ve said, has been devastating, and I will acknowledge that Hamish Walker and Lawrence Yule and Andrew Falloon are members on our side of the House who have been really instrumental in supporting their farmers up until this point in time. It’s only more recently that I’ve had, sadly, the opportunity to support a farmer that’s in my electorate that’s, unfortunately, contracted M. bovis in the herd of cows that they have. I can tell you, it’s devastating—it’s absolutely devastating. Farmers love their cows, and this is hurting. I think that what is happening with this piece of legislation is absolutely just another sting in this whole process, and I’m really disappointed.

The industry knows what it has to do. The industry is already taking steps. Yes, it could have been better, and that was something that the Minister and I discussed via messages and words at the time. Yes, it could have been better, and yes, we need to make it better, but why do we have to keep doing it to people? Why can’t we work with people? Why can’t we take them on a journey? There are a lot of questions that we, on this side of the House, will be asking the Minister when we get through into the committee stage.

I think it’s really important that we take people on a journey, because it’s one thing for the Green Party not to believe in search and surveillance until it comes to an issue where it involves farmers—well, I just have some news for the Green Party. It is that farmers are people too, and the rural support trusts have been out there—I’ve got people that are working until midnight. They’re taking calls. They’re on 24-hour calls, supporting farmers to the end.

The Minister has also admitted tonight—and we’ll all say that this was bigger than all of us—that mistakes have been made and mistakes do get made. I think that it’s really important that we stop and think about each other as people. We listened to the Speech from the Throne and it talked about how we’re going to be a kinder and a more caring society. Well, where is the kinder, more caring society in this? Yes, we want to clean up M. bovis—every one of us wants to clean up M. bovis—but you’re not going to do it by sending out search and surveillance officers.

Everyone’s looking over their shoulder—absolutely looking over their shoulder—and I’m going to mention the Hon Michael Woodhouse. When he was the Minister who was dealing with WorkSafe, I can remember a day when everyone was looking over their shoulder, waiting for WorkSafe to come up the drive. Michael Woodhouse, as the Minister, had enough strength to stand up and say at that time “We are going to engage, we are going to educate, and then we are going to enforce.”, and guess what? In my first year as a member of Parliament, I heard a lot of things about WorkSafe, and people were freaked out. Guess what? I can go out there now and I’m not hearing very much about WorkSafe at all, because they are engaging and they are educating to the point where those people who were going out and selling health and safety services as a business are no longer doing that because WorkSafe’s actually stepping in and offering to fit that bill and offering to help people with their health and safety.

I think that the Ministry for Primary Industries could take a leaf out of their book. I have seen collecting, collecting, and collecting of information. People get this information and, at the end, they try to add it all up and I can tell you that sometimes one and one does not even make two. I can tell you that 90 percent of the information that is collected in some instances actually turns out to be irrelevant to the point of what those officers were collecting it for. So I ask the Minister: what difference will a day make?

If the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) people go and have to ask for information, and if they feel that there’s more reason to go and collect that information, then they can go and get a warrant. They can go and get help. There is no need for these people to be walking in or—worse still—to be invited into someone else’s house for a cup of tea, and for that farmer to end up having search and surveillance going on where they happen to go and collect up a whole lot of things and, in a worst-case scenario, they don’t even leave a list, often, of what they’ve collected up.

So I really think that this is overkill. I actually think the industry knows what’s going on. The Rt Hon David Carter mentioned the lifestyle farmers before. Well, actually, the lifestyle farmers are starting from square one, because most of them don’t even have any experience of NAIT. So you can imagine it’s going to give equal powers for both, but what’s going to happen when someone goes into a lifestyle block? Those people are not going to have any idea. So, please, Minister, take some calls and explain to us why this is necessary.

Ahiahi mārie Te Mana Whakawā.

[Good afternoon, Madam Deputy Speaker.]

It is an absolute privilege to take the last call in the second reading of the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill. I want to take this opportunity to extend my thanks to all the people in the industry. As someone who enjoys a quality steak, I want to take this opportunity to say thank you very much for your contribution. Leadership is about caring for people, and I want to thank the industry for their caring for people and, of course, to extend my thanks to the Hon Minister Damien O’Connor for his leadership in this case.

There are four words that stand out for me in this policy statement and the words are “food safety” and “quality assurance”, and that’s the leadership that this Minister is leading. I commend this bill to the House. Malo.

Bill read a second time.

In Committee