National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill is a case where the Government is using M. bovis to really push through an agenda which will mean that farmers and other agricultural producers are now subject to search and surveillance rules that no other industry or group of people are, and that is what this Government is doing in this bill.

In the interests of our regions, it is my pleasure to absolutely commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill deserves some full calls this afternoon. It’s a very important bill, and I believe it needs further scrutiny. In the ideal world this bill would have gone to a select committee and it wouldn’t have been debated over the last 24 hours in urgency. That is hugely disappointing to the National Party.

We know the importance of making sure that National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) works as it was designed, but we have fundamental concerns about the due process of this particular bill, and we’re disappointed that Damien O’Connor didn’t choose to take up our offer of sending it to a truncated select committee process in the recess. We could have turned this bill around and been having this debate in the next session. But, indeed, the Minister of Agriculture was a bit hoodwinked by his officials, and sensed that this is a technical bill, it’s not new policy—well, we don’t believe that for one minute.

We do have grave concerns about the further expansion of these warrantless powers, and we feel that that’s a significant encroachment on privacy and into farmers’ livelihoods. We haven’t been given clear examples as to why this suddenly needs to be passed through in urgency—that indeed would have helped the debate, I’m sure, over the last 24 hours. Because of the concern that we had, we proposed five amendments. I think it’s worthwhile me taking a wee while now to traverse those amendments, because they were well thought through and we thought that some of them should have been passed.

The first one was that a NAIT officer should have reasonable cause to go on to a property, and I can see Ron Mark nodding. So why on earth New Zealand First didn’t support that one, I’m not quite sure. Then it came to one I thought was really well designed and thought through by Amy Adams, who has—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The purpose of the third reading is to debate the bill as accepted by the committee of the whole House, not to relitigate individual parts of that debate that were not accepted by the committee.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I’ve been in this House 13 years. First readings, second readings, and, in particular, third readings are very wide ranging. The Speaker shouldn’t be constraining speeches in the Parliament this afternoon, in my view, when we haven’t had due process. I think it’s very worthy for people that have been listening to the debate over the last 24 hours, that may be in their cowsheds now listening to this debate—that they should understand the importance of it. I think it’s on my responsibility to fully canvass the areas that have been debated right through this process. This is a bill that is being debated in urgency in all stages.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I thank the member for his contribution to my ruling. The member can mention in passing those issues that were raised during the committee stage, but the third reading is a debate on the bill as accepted by the committee. So he can mention it in passing, but going through every single part of the committee stage is not in order.

Just mentioning the second part in passing, the amendment that was proposed by Amy Adams talked about the need for a warrant for the ability to seize any property. That will now be a warrantless provision. Talking just in passing about the third amendment that was proposed by the Hon David Bennett, that was discussing an amendment to do with natural disasters and, indeed, incursions, where the Minister would have to come into the House. In passing, the other one which I thought was really important was proposed by the Rt Hon David Carter, which, basically, said “This bill should lapse when the next bill”—because we know there’s another NAIT bill coming into the House. This bill could be picked up and go to select committee to follow due process.

The fifth amendment—just in passing—was proposed by myself and accepted, and the reason that that’s worth mentioning is because the whole House supported a review of this amendment, particularly around my new clause 8A. So that is an important point because it means that the Minister has to report back to the House after 12 months. When this bill is passed through and has got its Royal assent, he will be given three months when he has to report back to the House. We want to understand how wide ranging these warrantless powers will be.

I also want to mention to you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and to the House this afternoon that we know how important M. bovis is. We know of, and we back, the phased eradication plan. We all know that the NAIT system needs to be turbocharged. What we heard this morning from NAIT and the Operational Solutions for Primary Industries officials in our select committee was that the overall software and the overall system is going to need some investment in the future, and that will be in the near future because some of these regulations that have been passed this afternoon will mean they will be enacted in the next couple of weeks.

What we also heard in the debate over the last 24 hours—and I’ve alluded to it—is that there’s going to be another piece of legislation, and that’s likely to be before the end of the year. We on this side of the House think that it would have made logical sense to have combined both of these bills and sent them off to a select committee to have allowed Federated Farmers, Dairy New Zealand, Beef and Lamb, Fonterra—and the list goes on—potentially trucking operators, stock and station agents, and farmers, importantly, to come along and submit. We were denied that.

It also would have meant that we would have had officials in front of the select committee. We could have then interrogated them, to understand why they think that this is just a technical, inconsequential bill. We don’t believe that, but we were denied that opportunity.

I can’t understand why both the bill that we are discussing today and the one that’s in the pipeline didn’t go to a select committee. We have got a live example where the president of Federated Farmers was so concerned that she picked up the phone or sent the Minister a text message and said, “I need to meet with your officials.” We were so concerned that I went to the Minister and said, “We need to meet with your officials.” We couldn’t get all of the answers. We haven’t been able to get all of the answers through this all-stage process in the House. That’s why it would have made logical sense to have sent it to a select committee so that everyone could have had their say, and we could have had our concerns allayed.

Also, I want to put on record—and I want to look at Minister Damien O’Connor now—that he implied in the committee of the whole House a couple of hours ago that, as Minister, I had sat on the NAIT review report for 12 months. I say to him that that is a complete crock. That is not factual at all. If he wants to take that comment out of this House, he should go and stand on the steps of Parliament and say it. Why doesn’t he ring up Sir Henry van der Heyden—who has a lot of credibility across the House—who oversaw the whole of the review and ask him if it was delayed, and he will tell that Minister that, indeed, it wasn’t.

What is also important to realise is that the review concluded with 38 recommendations. Fifteen of them are going to be done by the Ministry for Primary Industries, and we are debating some of them now, but what’s really interesting is these search and surveillance powers and the warrantless powers to do with photographing evidence, videoing, and copying documents—they are nowhere in the review recommendations.

The Minister has had 10 months in the job. Admittedly, he got the review in about March or April, from memory, so from that period of time—May, June, July, August—he’s had, potentially, 4½ months to get a bill into the House without it needing to go through all stages, and it could have gone to a select committee to have due process and scrutiny. I can’t understand why the Minister hasn’t followed that process. We have now had some sureties from the Minister that the next NAIT bill is going to go through due process—hallelujah! That means there’ll be a first reading and then off it will go to a select committee. We welcome that. That’s the way you get good legislation. That’s the way that people can submit.

What’s been really interesting in this debate—and it covers the Search and Surveillance Act of 2012—is that all of the coalition parties in 2012 voted against it. Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens were all against that Act, and now—

💬 Hon Member: Infringement of civil liberties, they argued.

That’s right—I remember the speeches. Yep, there’s a real intrusion, civil liberties, people’s privacy—all that stuff. Now, they’re, effectively, wanting to insert those provisions so that a NAIT officer can turn up unannounced and without cause and can seize property. We have real concerns about it, but, ultimately, we think, because of the response that we’re in, we need to support it. But we do that with some concern and caution.

It falls on me to summarise the New Zealand First support for this National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill (NAIT). These are, essentially, technical amendments to the NAIT Act, and they are designed to assist in our response to the M. bovis biosecurity incursion, and what a significant event that has been for our primary sector.

This does bring the NAIT Act into line with the Search and Surveillance Act. This is the irony of what we hear from the other side of the House: it was their bill—the bill that they are now railing against—the provisions in that were brought in by the previous National Government. It was clear through the select committee reports from the time of the NAIT legislation of 2012 that it was always envisaged that the intent of that was that the Search and Surveillance Act and the NAIT Act should be aligned. So there are no surprises in this. This is a tidy-up to make sure that those provisions are actually fit for purpose as they were intended. Unfortunately, we’ve had to test these out in real time in the real world.

Now, I would just pull back a little bit from this, because I do take the speech, from the earlier reading, from Barbara Kuriger, who did mention that we have gone to some lengths to take the politics out of this particular event because it is so serious, not only for the country but particularly for the farmers involved. We recognised, I think, across the House that squabbling in this Parliament was doing no favours to our farmers on the ground. They wanted to see united government behind a serious eradication campaign, and this is what we have had up to this point. I think it’s done us some credit in recent times, but we have seen a retreat from that position through some of this debate, and I think that’s a little bit unfortunate.

As the previous speaker, the Hon Nathan Guy, has mentioned and the Hon Damien O’Connor alluded to, there will be a further root-and-branch review of this Act over time. This is the time that we can go back through a select committee process. Also, the Biosecurity Act is up for review and improvement. There will be quite a lot of opportunity for us to go through that process, but we do not have time at the moment. I think the reason for that is because we’re at the stage of the spring milk testing. Now, for those of you who may be at home listening or watching or in the House that may not be aware of the significance of that, this is the period of time when this particular disease is going to be at its most identifiable. It’s when stock are under pressure—they’re either heavily pregnant or have just calved. This is a very difficult disease to detect. The testing mechanisms that we have are only up to about 60 percent effective. So we have to take this period, the spring milk test period, to take that opportunity when it is going to be at its most visible. There is a nationwide testing programme. So we need the NAIT officials to have every tool in the toolbox that they require and we can provide for them at this point.

So this is a matter of urgency, and this is why we’re in this position today. There are the checks and balances to go back and have a look at this a bit later on. I do actually respect the Opposition. It is their role to hold the Government to account in this, and I do respect that they have done that, but certainly from a New Zealand First perspective, we are totally confident in the Minister of Agriculture and the provisions that he has put up. And why is this? I mean, this is an incredibly important issue for New Zealand. We’ve got the teachers out there yesterday striking, looking for more pay, and with good reason. The sector that we’re trying to protect here is—and it’s not only the dairy cattle; it’s beef cattle and deer through these NAIT provisions—circa $20 billion worth of revenue for this country. This is a big deal. We must get this right. We must have all the tools at our disposal to respond.

I will commend the Minister for his leadership, because even though we have sought to take the politics out of this, if we did peel that back a little bit just for a second, it has been a pretty shambolic set-up that he has inherited. We saw this morning before the select committee the Operational Solutions for Primary Industries and NAIT Ltd representatives, particularly CEO Michelle Edge, give us an exercise in denial. That select committee did attempt to hold her to account and did ask some hard questions, but the question I would ask as a new member is: this is now a six-year-old piece of legislation; why have those questions not been asked earlier? There has been a review started. It took for ever to come out, as the Minister alluded to, so why have those questions not been asked earlier?

The other thing that I do need to put on record, and I’ve done so before, but the response from the Government—even though we know that our on-the-ground response hasn’t been where it’s needed to be, and this has caused some distress for many farmers involved, at no point—at no point—have we been lacking in resources from the Government. The $886 million pulled together both by Government funding and by industry aligned with that funding as well, and contributing as it should—we have not hesitated. We have not pulled back from resourcing this to the absolute maximum that we have been asked. The reason we have done this was because the option of doing nothing was not there. The option of doing nothing was going to cost us far more than doing something. So we have had firm leadership from the Minister, and I think he has been commended from across the House in that, and New Zealand First certainly are totally behind his leadership in this.

The other side of that is—and we heard this morning in the select committee—Michelle Edge tried to tell us that, you know, maybe it wasn’t so bad; other countries had brought similar sorts of programmes in and it had taken them a while to bed down. Well, that is not good enough for us. We pride ourselves in leading the world in agriculture and pastoral agriculture and horticulture, and we do not accept that on this side of the House, that that is a good enough answer. That is why we have to take measures like we are doing today. So it is restoring our leadership position, restoring the confidence, actually, of our farmers.

I know, as a farmer, I am more confident as a result of these changes. I think there has been some scaremongering going on that there’s going to be Storm Troopers driving about and coming on to farms willy-nilly. Well, that is just not going to be the case, and I think, as a farmer who—touch wood—has not been affected directly by this particular outbreak to this point, I’m pleased that we’re getting our response lined up so that we can protect those of us that have not yet had the misfortune, and hopefully never have the misfortune, of being in contact with this disease.

So this is a measure that we’ve needed to take and we have taken. I once again commend the Minister. I hope that the National Party will come on board and support this, because they have come in behind the phased eradication, and I don’t think we want to see too much more scaremongering from that side of the House in this particular issue. So, with that, I will confirm New Zealand First’s support for this bill and commend it to the House. Thank you.

First of all, I want to thank Stuart Smith. He was due to take the next call, and I asked whether I could go first because I wanted to respond to the speech that’s just been given by the New Zealand First member Mark Patterson. In my mind, he summed up the issue very well. He gave the best speech that’s been given by any Government member, proving to me that he understands the situation. The point he made was that he feels a bit sorry for the situation that the Hon Damien O’Connor has inherited with National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT). I agree with Mark Patterson. It is a bit of a mess.

We did have the opportunity of having NAIT before the select committee for 30 minutes this morning, and the answers given, by the chief executive particularly, left me with no more assurance that NAIT was working correctly. The real issue for me, and why I wanted to be at that select committee presentation this morning, was that New Zealand is about to make history with, potentially, eradicating bovine TB from this country. Who is in charge of that process but Operational Solutions for Primary Industries New Zealand (OSPRI)—the same organisation who’s actually in charge of NAIT. And I think what we’ve learnt as we’ve gone through this debate over the last, effectively, 24 hours, is that NAIT hasn’t been run well by an organisation called OSPRI. And I think there’s a lot more work for this Parliament, and particularly members of the Primary Production Committee, to do to satisfy itself that the NAIT system within OSPRI is working well.

So I commend the words of Mark Patterson, and I can assure him, though I’m not a member of the Primary Production Committee, that I have spoken to my colleagues who are members of the Primary Production Committee. They share my concern about the potential breakdown of the progress we’re making around TBfree New Zealand, and I think that select committee has a significant amount to do, and to do quickly, particularly in light of the fact that we’ve now got a new chair of OSPRI. The previous one ran away as soon as the challenges appeared. We’ve got a chief executive of OSPRI who’s about to run away as the challenges have appeared, and I implore that select committee to take the opportunity and accept the invitation that was accepted by Barry Harris, the new acting chair, to get them back before that select committee before Michelle Edge leaves and, apparently, departs to go to Australia. I implore the select committee to do it.

But that’s not the only shambles we’re dealing with. It’s the shambles of the way this legislation has been handled. What a shambolic position for the Leader of the House to be in, to come begging to the National Opposition at about 12.45 this afternoon, asking it to do a deal so that urgency could be concluded by 1 o’clock. No deal. We’re here to test the Government. We were doing our job—and then, the way that urgency was broken.

The Government has every right to break urgency if it decides it’s got another legislative agenda to get through—every right to do so—and I’ve seen many Ministers and Leaders of the House come in and do so. Never have I seen a cowardly way—the way it was done today—where a piece of paper was given to the presiding officer at the time, who, at 30 seconds to 1, rose before the House to inform the House that urgency was broken. What a shambles. What a shambles, Mr Hipkins. It’s not the only time that he’s lost control. I wasn’t here for the vote for the Speaker, but they tell me that was the most exciting vote of all time. Mr Hipkins has got to learn to run the House properly. I know he’s a relatively inexperienced member, but the shambles of the last 24 hours in this House will be noted by upstairs as the right honourable Prime Minister considers her reshuffle. It will be noticed, Mr Hipkins.

I want to move now to the issue of the NAIT legislation itself. And, as I said in the House, it will be with a heavy heart that I finally vote for the third reading. And I say that genuinely, because I am worried—the way this bill has been rushed through without due process—about the powers that have been given to our Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) NAIT officers. I accept, particularly the way it was put by Mark Patterson, that this legislation needs amending. It’s not about fixing drafting errors. And I know that that’s the reason the Greens said they were supporting it. Eugenie Sage took a call, and I see Gareth Hughes nodding his head. They had been led to believe the only thing we were doing with this legislation was fixing drafting errors. Well, that’s what the officials tried to tell us, as well. But we have a bit more experience.

We delved into the issue. The big issue here is aligning the NAIT legislation of 2012 with the search and surveillance legislation of 2012, giving extraordinary powers—they can’t be described as anything else—to a NAIT officer. So now, when this legislation is passed, MPI can come on to my farm unannounced and they can then seize whatever they like—all my vehicles, all my records, all my computers, all my bank statements. They can seize that without giving any reason. The police don’t have that power. When the search and surveillance legislation was debated in the House, the Greens talked about a complete breach of human rights, a breach of civil liberties, and yet they’ve supported this today, giving an MPI officer more power than the police.

What that means is that if the police suspect they are investigating, perhaps, a drug importation—a drug dealership—they have to go to the courts and they’ve got to get a warrant. That’s the way it should be. So what the Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government is doing is saying a drug dealer gets more rights than I get because I’m a farmer. How right is that?

Look at the body language on the other side of the House. We used to care about civil liberties. The only one who’s lifted his head is William Sio, who’s laughing about it. He thinks it’s fun that an MPI officer should have the right on Monday morning to come up my drive, on to my farm, with his new powers, and, without even engaging in conversation, take my computers, take my vehicles, take whatever he or she wants—

💬 Hon AUPITO William Sio: It’s an exaggeration.

—because that’s the power—sorry?

💬 Hon AUPITO William Sio: That’s an exaggeration.

It’s not an exaggeration; that’s the point we’ve been making. For the last 24 hours, we’ve been saying it’s not an exaggeration. The police have to go and get a warrant. This is about search powers being given to MPI officers without them having to get a warrant. So Mr Sio, I say to you, it’s not an exaggeration. I heard Mark Patterson say, “Oh, well, I accept they’ll have those powers; they’ll never use them.” Mark my words: before too long there’ll be a case of a crying farmer on TV ONE or TV3 claiming that the jackboots have arrived on their farm and they’ve been treated unreasonably.

Can I conclude by making comments around the politics of Mycoplasma bovis. We on this side pledged our support to the eradication of Mycoplasma bovis. We on this side of the House offered to take the politics out of the situation. I’m aware that our leader, Simon Bridges, personally phoned the Prime Minister and said, “We don’t want politics in this. We want a whole-of-Government approach to the opportunity of ridding this country of Mycoplasma bovis.” And what this debate over the last 24 hours has done is actually brought politics back into that response. It didn’t have to be like that.

If the Leader of the House could only have organised the agenda of this House, he could have introduced this last Tuesday. We could have had 24 hours at the select committee, being Wednesday, and we could be back in the House at this stage, meeting exactly the same timetable. That’s proper process. And it’s that sort of arrogance from this Government that has brought, unfortunately, politics back into the response. I now pledge that we’ll do our best to work with the Government, but don’t spring this sort of process on us again.

Well, National can choose to take the low farm road, but we’ll choose to take the high farm road. We won’t get bogged down by petty politics, exaggeration, scaremongering, and grandstanding. Most of that last contribution was about politics and parliamentary procedure, not the issues. The issue is we are caught unprepared for biosecurity incursions. The best thing you can say about National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) is that it didn’t happen in a time of foot-and-mouth, because, had foot-and-mouth hit, it would have been catastrophic for New Zealand and we would have been unprepared. So let’s not focus on the low road; let’s focus on what we are doing to fix it.

Now, this legislation fixes the mess that National created. It’s a technical amendment to make sure that our Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) officials have the exact same powers and functions as they have for fisheries, as they have for wine, as they have under the Waste Minimisation Act, and it’s the grandstanding and the scaremongering that’s going to send our farming communities the wrong message, because they should actually be working with MPI to protect New Zealand, to protect our economy.

Now, I want to make a quick comment. The use of urgency is entirely justified. We’re fixing a mess that means the people that protect our country don’t have the skills, the powers, and the functions to be able to do it. We are talking about slaughtering tens of thousands of cattle—hundreds of millions of dollars. If this isn’t a use for urgency, I don’t know what is.

So I’m going to take a very short call, because I want to see this legislation pass. I want to see our MPI officials have the powers they have under the Search and Surveillance Act. We weren’t fans of this legislation passing at the time, but we don’t think that our MPI officials should be hamstrung and not be able to use it. Currently, under National’s own NAIT legislation, MPI officials have the ability to have an unwarranted search of a property—it’s called doing their job. It’s about their regular compliance work. But National left them unprepared. They hamstrung them, because they could go do that regular compliance and then if they saw offending they couldn’t then take a photograph of it, and this is why we have the mess.

So look, all I can say is thank gosh it didn’t happen in a time of foot-and-mouth. Hopefully we can learn the lessons. Now, let’s get out of the gutter and actually focus on fixing stuff.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Well, I have to actually address what Gareth has just talked about. It’s ironic that he thinks it’s quite OK for National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) officers to go into a farmhouse and to take photos and search and seize without a warrant. Yet the GCSB or the New Zealand SIS going into his home, doing the same thing, would be required to go to the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and put a report in place to show it was justified. That is not the case here. The irony is just unbelievable that the Greens, who have the so-called moral high ground, heading into their own conference this weekend—they’ll be embarrassed. They’ll be totally embarrassed by this performance on this particular bill.

Look, this whole bill has been brought in under the veil of Mycoplasma bovis so that it won’t be examined too closely. Look, we all have great feelings of sympathy and empathy for those people that are affected with Mycoplasma bovis, those people who are losing their herds that they’ve long struggled over, some of them they know them by name, and seeing them go off to the freezing works must be terribly distressing. The stress it’s caused in families we’ve heard about through the debate.

That is not the issue here. We’re talking about a law; a bill that’s going to have a long consequence in New Zealand. What I’m concerned about is how is history going to judge us, the people who put this bill through? Because we know one thing for certain: when we make laws, mistakes get made. One way to try and minimise that is to go through good processes. One of those is a select committee process, where you call in those people—call for submissions. You usually get interested people, people that are involved in that particular sector, and they’ll come in and say, “Look, this won’t work for this reason. This is an overreach.”

What we know is that Government officials will overreach. They’ll push this to the limit. How far this goes, we don’t know, and I’m just very concerned about this, and I’m making this point in this speech because I don’t want to be judged harshly on this in the future without getting on the record that I warned you. I warned—not you, Mr Assistant Speaker, but I’m warning the House and the public that care to read this speech in the future. This has far-reaching consequences and we better be very damn careful about it.

I also take umbrage with this as a technical error that we’re fixing. It’s not a technical error. This isn’t a technical bill. I’ve seen a technical bill; this doesn’t come anywhere near it. I can’t believe that the Government would come up with something like this: with all the resources that they have at their disposal—that the Minister has with the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI)—that they could come with this flimsy document. I’ve seen far more technical member’s bills. In fact, we only have to look back a week or so when Dr Shane Reti got off on his own and came up with a quite complicated and complex bill on medicinal cannabis, and he didn’t have the resources of MPI to do that; he did it all himself. He travelled to the United States, did all the investigation, and yet we have this.

Now, we don’t dispute that changes need to be made—they absolutely do—but the far-reaching warrantless powers of search and seizure are something that we should all be very, very concerned about. I did raise this in speeches in the committee of the whole House stage, about the instance where animals are grazed on properties that aren’t farmers’. So, for example, an orchard or a vineyard, and those animals being moved from one place to another place, to a different vineyard—from one vineyard to another, one orchard to another.

You could argue, if you chose to, that cattle aren’t really grazed on vineyards at this stage, but at some stage I’m sure sheep will in fact be included under NAIT. So we have to look out to the future. This bill isn’t just for today; it’s for the future, and I’m concerned about that because we could end up having the consequence from this bill that vineyards, orchards, and lifestyle blocks may no longer want to have animals grazing on their property because they don’t want to be exposed to the risk of having a warrantless entry and search and seizure of their property. So this isn’t pie-in-the-sky stuff; this is very real.

I can’t believe that the New Zealand First member Mark Patterson was sort of taking exception to the fact that we’re opposing this. We’re the Opposition. That’s our job to point out where we see flaws in things, rather than to just take the debate notes that come from the Minister’s office and just follow that line. We’re here to ask the hard questions and that’s what we’ll do. When we see something we like, we’ll agree with it. But going into urgency over this is just unbelievable and I can’t understand the Greens for a moment. I think that we always thought that they were joined at the hip to Labour; now we can actually see that. Now that’s fine. That may be what they want, but that’s not how they’ve advertised. What they’re delivering is not what it says on the tin at all. I just wonder if that will come up over the weekend at their conference. I’m wondering if I could register and go along. It might be quite interesting.

💬 Brett Hudson: I’m sure it will—that, and the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment bill. There’ll be a lot of talk about that.

Well, the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill is another thing altogether, of course.

We did have Operational Solutions for Primary Industries New Zealand (OSPRI) in this morning in the Primary Production Committee. OSPRI are very important in relation to this bill, because they actually administer the NAIT legislation. We weren’t satisfied, I have to say, with what came out in that select committee—we were quite concerned. I’ve certainly taken on board what the Rt Hon David Carter—who was an excellent Minister of Agriculture in his time, and who also asked some very searching and quite pertinent questions in that select committee, during the committee of the whole House stage, and through the stages of this bill.

He makes a very good point, and I think that the Primary Production Committee needs to reflect on that and look further into this, because we didn’t have a lot of time today. But it was very timely for us to actually have that, ahead of this urgency. We didn’t know that we would be having this when we invited them in, so it was unfortunate that it was a much shorter briefing that we could have perhaps hoped for.

But the system was set up. We’ve now got software in place to manage all the transactions that go through that system, but with the changes in the legislation, that’s going to ramp up the number of transactions that will have to be recorded through that system significantly. At the moment it is straining. It’s under strain. It’s struggling to keep up. So how we’re going to actually manage through this process when this legislation comes into force is unclear.

There’s several million dollars, we believe, to upgrade the system, and there will be a time delay, and often, as my colleague Mr Hudson will know, these things don’t always go to plan on time frames when you’re talking about expensive software. And it has to be done correctly, because this is really important—all these transactions that go through it.

Recording animal movements is not simple. People may be familiar with their pets, when they can put a little identity tag inside under the skin, and it’s there for life for the cat or the dog. We can’t do that with livestock animals, unfortunately, so they’re in a tag in the ear, and it’s just the nature of things that they come out. Having 100 percent accuracy with any kind of animal identification system is not going to be possible, with all the best will in the world. The best I believe we can hope for at this stage is in the very high 90 percent range for compliance with NAIT, but good efforts have to be made. The legislation is one thing; actual human behaviour is another, and managing the vagaries of animal behaviour as well goes into that.

I don’t want to actually conflate this issue with Mycoplasma bovis. We all have great sympathy and empathy for the people that are affected by that. We do need good tools to manage NAIT, and some of these adjustments are fair, but we are very concerned about the warrantless powers and the implications for those in the future. I have grave reservations about it. I’m very concerned that the consequences of this will not be known for many years in the future, and I think we should always move with great caution doing that. This is not a technical amendment; this is actually a complete change and an expansion of powers—ones that we should all be very careful about.

The Hon Kris Faafoi—five-minute call.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I think I’ve got a meeting soon—sorry. I’m not going to take a long call, but for those members of the public who may have stumbled upon Parliament TV and are wondering what’s going on right now, let me explain the context of what is happening. We are amending the National Animal Identification and Tracing Act, which was introduced by the previous Government in 2012. That Act was brought in to introduce a system so that if farmers wanted to move livestock from one farm to another, or within their farms if they managed them in a certain way, we would know where that stock would be and where certain stock may have moved over a certain amount of time. That is important given the context of M. bovis, which the previous speaker, Stuart Smith, said we were introducing this piece of legislation under the veil of.

If that piece of legislation and the implementation of the 2012 Act had been effective, the crisis that we faced with M. bovis and the management of it would’ve been much easier for the Government to deal with—and, potentially, the previous Government—if it had been effective. Unfortunately, it has not been effective, because the previous Government didn’t do a good job of introducing the legislation that we are amending or the enforcement of it, therefore requiring this piece of legislation to be introduced. It would’ve been much easier if the Government had done a good job back in 2012, but we are here amending this legislation in order for the current Government to continue its strong leadership in biosecurity to take this issue seriously.

One more point I would like to make with the previous speaker: he said that history will judge us as we pass this piece of legislation. Unfortunately for the previous Government, now the Opposition, New Zealand is already judging it because of its poor performance on biosecurity, which was enacted via the 2012 Act, necessitating this change here. History has already judged the previous Government. The agriculture sector has already judged the previous Government because it knows this piece of legislation is necessary to deal with a crisis that it left us.

Five-minute call—Hamish Walker.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for getting my correct name. It’s always nice—nice start. I just want to talk briefly about the previous speaker Kris Faafoi’s comments and just want to know when he was actually last on a farm. I have been meeting farmers affected by this awful, awful beast most weeks, and it’s actually quite emotional to recall some of what they’ve said to me. Some have said they don’t know if they’ll get through the day. Some have said they’re going to lose their farm after it being in the family for 90 or 100 years.

I have some serious concerns about this. This morning in select committee when we had the chief executive of Operational Solutions for Primary Industries New Zealand come in, we asked her about this system, and she said it’s going to take six to 12 months to implement. So if that’s the case, what’s the point of rushing this through urgency? If we can get it to select committee, we can panel beat it a bit and actually make a much better bill. We also asked how much this is going to cost to implement—several million dollars. Again, this is an expensive piece of work—why would you rush it through urgency? It just makes no sense at all.

What else doesn’t help is this Government continuing to talk down the farming sector. If we want to attract people to the industry, the last thing we should be doing is talking down to it. The media reports this offshore, which affects our markets. If we want to get top dollar for our farmers, the last thing we want to be doing is talking down to them.

I just want to talk about the search and surveillance rules, which are not quite dawn raids material but, I mean, they are going to be over the top. My concern is that I meet with these farmers most weeks, they come to me—and an MP’s office is a bit like the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff—and tell me their stories, and, more often than not, it’s their stories about the overzealous Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) officials who come on to their land, that they know—it’s their business, it’s their home—and tell them, basically, how to run things.

Some stories—I had one farmer come to me because he had an MPI official, and the farmer, being a very considerate bloke, got the MPI official in for a coffee and he said to this official, “My friend said X, Y, Z.”, and then the MPI official used that in evidence against him. I took it to the top of the organisation, and, luckily, that person, Geoff Gwyn, who has been doing a fantastic job—works long hours—got this case manager removed straight away. What’s concerning is that it takes an electorate MP to pass these concerns on.

Another concern—a comment made to a farmer. The first thing the MPI official said to this person: “Your 40-year farming history won’t count for anything.” How disrespectful is that—the first thing he hears from an MPI official? Another one—an MPI official said to this farmer’s kids: “I’m here because your parents have done something wrong.” I mean, what message is this sending? And then, all of a sudden, we’re giving these MPI officials more powers than the police.

If we actually just pause for a moment, and we send this to select committee, we can iron these things out, because it’s pretty sad that these people have to come to an electorate MP to get some sort of action. I had another farmer contact me on Tuesday this week from West Otago: “Hamish, I’ve had 17 different personnel from organisations like MPI on to my farm, and nearly every single one has told me something different.”

We all just need to take a breather, take our time, send this to select committee, get the best result possible, because I’m concerned that what’s actually happening on the ground is quite different to the—perception is reality at the end of the day. At the moment—there’s a good old saying, “A stitch in time saves nine”, or “The right hand needs to be talking to the left hand”. It’s just not happening at the moment.

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Any other metaphors?

You enjoyed that, though, didn’t you? Thank you, Dr Webb.

Lastly, I just want to pay tribute to all the amazing organisations out there that have been supporting our farmers. You are doing a tremendous job. This is too important for us not to get right for our farming sector and our country.

Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Well done to the Opposition. You’re not doing a bad job—that sort of faux outrage when you know that we need this bill. Thank you for supporting this bill, because you know you must.

Farmers want this bill; the farmers need this bill—that’s what we’re hearing. I’m surprised, I know member Carter—he’s going to be very happy to have me on to his farm, and he knows that when something’s going wrong on his farm, we absolutely need people to be able to get in there, find out what’s going wrong, without having to go and get a warrant. Two or three days can be very important here, because it is a crisis. This is urgent. We need to fix up this legislation, and that’s what we’re doing. This is a short bill, but it is a technical bill. It’s fixing up some much-needed gaps so that we can address the crisis that is immediately before us.

So, look, well done to the Opposition. You’re doing your job, but this bill must pass, it will pass, and thank you for your support for it. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m very pleased to round out the National Opposition’s contributions in this debate. My, what a debate it has been. For those that are listening, they might draw all sorts of conclusions about what this debate has been, but I want to start my contribution by saying what it’s not about.

This debate is not about any dissension about how vitally important it is to have a phased eradication of M. bovis. There is zero disagreement about that in this House. But make no mistake, this legislation that’s been changed under urgency with no public scrutiny—changes in the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill; NAIT, as we fondly know it—the changes in this legislation are not just constrained to the current situation we have with M. bovis. The ramifications and the reach of this legislation go far wider.

I think it’s very important to make sure that is on the record. Similar to my colleague Hamish Walker, who spoke before me, as an electorate MP with the first—not the first one but first two cases in the Waikato, which is, of course, the heart of dairy excellence in New Zealand, the cost on individuals and their families is enormous. This debate is not disputing that. Unfortunately, what this debate does do for those that are dealing with this crisis day to day is it provides a huge level of uncertainty about what can happen on their property.

The other side have accused the National Opposition of scaremongering. Let’s just clarify, because I think, in the time of crisis, people deserve honesty. People deserve that the people who represent them and those that are the Ministers in charge of a crisis are honest. To call this a technical bill is outrageous. To call this a minor correction for mistakes in an existing piece of legislation is outrageous. That is not honest. That is not upfront with the very people that are dealing with a crisis right now, right here, and I think that’s appalling.

So in terms of this crisis—and this House, under urgency, generally we do debate legislation that is related to a civil defence emergency; we’ve had special legislation for Canterbury earthquakes. The difference is that even with legislation that is dealing with an emergency or a crisis in this country, we have had the ability to provide scrutiny through a shortened select committee process.

Now, the other thing that is worth noting on this piece of legislation, because it relates very much to the use of urgency, is that this is a phased eradication. The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and the Minister for primary industries had a range of options available. The one selected wasn’t immediate eradication. If it’d been immediate eradication, our side could have understood the need for urgency for legislation with no scrutiny whatsoever, but it’s not. This is phased eradication. There was absolutely sufficient time—for people who are dealing with a crisis like this, it is absolutely their right and our responsibility as lawmakers to them to give them a voice.

We’ve had contributions from the urban MPs across the House, and while they might have some nice and interesting ideas, they have not faced this issue in their electorate. They have not faced the concerns of members of their electorates who are dealing with a crisis, who are now confronted with a piece of legislation they’ve had no opportunity to scrutinise. The other thing is this legislation is not just constrained to M. bovis. If it was, there could’ve been a sunset clause. There could’ve been constraints and restrictions around these particular changes in the legislation, but no, the Government didn’t want to listen at all to anyone.

What was absolutely staggering was watching the Green members’ faces when they realised—hello, hello, thanks to the Opposition’s work on this legislation under urgency, with very little notice—this was not just a technical bill. This is a substantial change and far-reaching in terms of the search and surveillance legislation. The Government members hate hearing it. It is absolutely unheard of for an MPI official to have greater powers than the New Zealand Police—absolutely outrageous. Again, the Green Party are always interesting, because every single piece of legislation that urgency was accorded for when they were in Opposition they opposed on principle—opposed. But they’ve gone—principles have walked out of the door as soon as the Greens could see that there was a sniff of power. But what they don’t do—what they don’t do—is look in the eyes of the very people that are affected by this.

It’s interesting, because one of the areas, although my colleagues asked detailed questions about it, was around the provision of moving animals from one property to another—one that was NAIT certified and the other one that wasn’t. I have dairy cows on my property right now, but they graze there; I don’t own them. The farmer who owns them is responsible for the NAIT records of the movement of those animals. So does that mean the MPI official can walk on to my property and carry out any kind of inspection they want? These were the sorts of questions that the Opposition was asking in detail in this House under urgency, because the Government would not give any member of the public the ability to contribute to make sure we made good law.

But did they answer? No. Were they interested? No. And, yes, it’s great to see that many of them are hanging their heads in shame as we debate this final third reading, when we debated the rest of it under urgency. Yes, look around. Tamati Coffey, you have a large rural constituency. I shall wait to hear what they want to say to that member when they realise exactly what their Government have done to the rural community. It doesn’t seem like that member’s interested, which is quite a pity, because at the end of the day, last time I checked, the rural communities were still the most significant contributor to our economy that then provides all of the things that New Zealanders want to see in terms of health and education. But no, no, that side of the House is quite willing to remove their rights, to ensure that a MPI official will have more rights on a rural property than the police do—more rights than the police do.

That side of the House would be absolutely in uproar if this was an urban issue. If it was something about officials being able to go on to urban properties—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: In South Auckland.

—in South Auckland, in west Auckland, in Northland—you name it—in Porirua, there would be an outrage, but, unfortunately, the Government hasn’t considered the wide-ranging impacts of this legislation. They had the opportunity to constrain it, to focus it so that it was just limited. They had the opportunity. This side of the House was willing to give them the opportunity for public submissions, even truncated—half a day. Half a day would’ve been better than nothing, because this House often then has to deal with legislation because the implications haven’t been thought through, and I join my colleagues on this side of the House to say this legislation will be back. This legislation will be back because that side of the House sold farmers a lemon, saying it was a technical bill, and we all know it’s not. This is not just a technical bill. It’s an outrage and it’s dishonest to suggest it is. This has far-reaching implications for farmers, and I’m disappointed in the Government.

I’m just so confused by the faux outrage that is coming from the other side of the House, because you’d think that that speech by Louise Upston was a speech from somebody that was going to absolutely vote against this particular bill. But I hear that, actually, they’re going to be voting in favour of this particular bill. So while she stands there and talks about how disinterested I am and makes accusations at me, that particular member is on our side because we’re all going across the line together on this particular bill.

So for all those people that are listening, and if they’re watching out there, know that this is a good bill, and for that reason the Opposition, despite being the Opposition, are actually backing us on this one, so I would like to thank the Minister for the great job that he’s gone and done on it, and the officials. This particular bill has been talked about at every angle that you could possibly think of today, so I’ve got nothing left to say. I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a third time.