National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill (No 2)

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is the second bill coming through from the Primary Production Committee tonight. There are two big issues that I want to focus on in this bill. One is to do with clarifying ownership of core data in the bill, and the second one is around the tagging of animals and the requirements on transporters that would be transporting those animals. They were the two big changes that came out of the select committee.

Now, first of all is the ownership of core data. So what happened in this bill is that we had a situation where there was a very amicable and well-addressed process of communication and discussion between the Minister and officials and the sector, and that had gone on for a number of months. To all intents and purposes everybody thought that that was progressing well. To give you some context, the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) legislation is something that will be an ongoing process of reform. Nobody’s ever said that it would be done in one go and would be perfect, and the M. bovis outbreak really showed some deficiencies in the system that needed to be changed. I congratulate the Minister for making those changes; they are, effectively, what were needed to beef up the system. Now, there’s still a lot more to be done in that system. I’m sure the Minister, in future iterations of this bill, will do more as well to do that.

But in that discussion that he had with the sector, not once did he raise the issue of taking ownership of the data. And then when the bill came before this House, suddenly there was a clause in there saying that the data would be now owned by the Government. Now, that might have been an attempt by the Minister to clarify the position, if you were very gracious. It may have been an attempt by the Minister to overstep his mark, which seems to be more likely. But whatever happened in between to make the Minister do that, the Minister has been found out. In select committee it become obvious that there were some issues around data and ownership of that data.

There are two things that should be considered. The first is that the database in which that data is held was sold to the industry bodies some years ago. When that database was sold the contract was, effectively, silent on the ownership of data. Now, the industry bodies necessarily expected that they would have ownership of the data, because they bought the database. The Minister argued for inclusion of this clause that the Government actually still owned the data in the past, in the present, and in the future. That was challenged by submitters in the select committee.

As a committee we got a legal opinion from Crown Law. That legal opinion, effectively, said that the Minister was out of line and that the Minister couldn’t own the data. And the reason would have been that simply, as soon as the database was sold, the Minister can’t reasonably legally say that he or the Government owns any future data going into that database. And so there was a major backdown by the Government parties where they had to take out that clause.

Now, if you look at the commentary of the bill, it will say that this means that it is silent on who has ownership of the data. Effectively, it is more than that. For the official record, the legal advice the Crown would have received in this situation would have been that they don’t have a strong case and that they can’t contest that ownership of data in the future. I believe that it goes beyond being silent; it actually shows a major backdown by the Government, and that reflects a failure of the Government to actually have the legal status to do what it was trying to do in this bill. So that’s the first big issue.

The second big issue in this bill is around the transporting companies. So this bill sought to transfer liability on to the transporting companies; basically, your trucking company that picked up the stock. They would then have a responsibility for any livestock that were not tagged appropriately. Now, as you can imagine, it’s very difficult for many of those transport operators to effectively work. They sometimes work in the darkness of night and early morning, and sometimes it’s very difficult to determine whether an animal is tagged or what degree of tagging there is on that animal.

So the transporting companies came to the select committee and sought refuge around that clause. It was a battle to get the Government parties to do that. They were reluctant. Members of the Government parties felt that it was a responsibility that could be sheeted home to the transport companies. It was only due to the strength of the National Party Opposition and the continual pushing that we did with officials that we actually got that change, which is a reasonable change. Now whenever anyone has to fill in the declaration forms around the animals that are leaving their property there will be a new section that will be included, basically giving an indemnity to the trucking companies that the farmer has tagged the animals appropriately. That’s what you would expect, as they are the farmer’s stock and not the responsibility of the trucking companies. But as I said, it was quite a difficult process to get the Government parties to look at that in a reasonable manner. It took them some time to understand what it actually meant. They were quite happy just to go along with a piece of legislation, even though it was going to be detrimental to many of those in the transport sector that shouldn’t have had that responsibility put on them in the first place.

So there were two wins in this bill for the Opposition, which is rare when you’re an Opposition in Parliament. Effectively, this now makes this a bill that’s worthy to be supported. Before it would have been a bill that would not have been worthy to have had support in this House, but because of the strength of the Opposition parties, we retained ownership of core data within the farming sector, not within the Government hands, and we made sure that the trucking companies weren’t unreasonably penalised by decisions that would have been made out of Wellington that weren’t practical and would have meant that those companies would have taken responsibility for something that was not in their ambit. So this is a definite win for the Opposition in this case. It’s a bill that we will support, and with the support of all the House I know it will go through. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m pleased to take a short call in this committee stage. I just want to address a couple of the points that Mr Bennett raised, particularly around the issue of the ownership of core data.

Unfortunately, time was against us as a committee to really fully explore that particular point. I don’t know Mr Bennett’s reading of the Crown Law opinion, but it definitely was unclear as to where the actual ownership of the data lay, whether it was with the companies or whether it was the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) organisation that owned the system or whether it actually was retained by the Crown when the Crown entered into the transaction with NAIT to divest itself of the NAIT system. So that was a moot point that we tossed around as a committee.

We know that there were very impassioned submissions from a wide variety of farmers in particular who were vehemently against the Crown declaring ownership of the data within the NAIT system. But in the end, I think we’ve come to a very good, sensible point in this bill. Rather than being able to really come to a definitive conclusion on it, the bill is remaining silent on that very point. But the Minister still, for all intents and purposes, has the power that was always intended with this legislation to request all or part of that data from the NAIT organisation at any point. So it is a moot point around the core data ownership, but the Minister still retains the ultimate power to request the NAIT information and, ultimately, also to be able to amend legislation and regulations that go to the operation of the system.

I liken the example around the ownership of the core data to the foreshore and seabed scenario for Māori, where the Crown may have asserted ownership over a domain of the common marine area which was vehemently opposed. So the subsequent act by this Parliament was to enact legislation which was to say that no one owned the common marine coastal area. That was specified in that piece of legislation, which is very similar to where we’ve ended up with this, albeit we are not specifying within the actual legislation itself that no one owns the core data. What we’re saying is that it’s silent, it’s not really needed for this particular piece of legislation, and, ultimately, we want to ensure that the Minister is able to perform all of the powers which are necessary. And we mustn’t forget that the overall purpose of this legislation is to ensure that the NAIT system can effectively and accurately trace all animals and their movements in the interests of protecting New Zealand’s biosecurity. That is the fundamental purpose of the legislation.

I want to acknowledge the members of the Primary Production Committee. We all had that overall purpose in mind. Sure, there might have been, you know, quibbling over some technical points, but ultimately we’ve come to a very good piece of legislation that we’ve reported back on. Likewise, I want to acknowledge the officials, who were very helpful and under quite a lot of pressure to be able to, obviously, meet the demands of our chair but also to make those necessary improvements which would ultimately gain the consensus of the committee for us to report the bill back within our required reporting time, and we managed to tick off all those boxes very successfully.

So, all up, the bill that we have now in the House at this committee stage is going to be a vast improvement on the operation of the NAIT system. We know that this legislation will go hand in hand with the operational side and together it will be good, ultimately, for our biosecurity system.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to rise and do a short call in support of the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill (No 2), or the NAIT bill (No. 2), as we call it. It is a pleasure to take over from the previous two speakers who, I think, have summed up how we have approached this as a select committee.

Clearly, biosecurity is absolutely critical for this country. It’s one of those issues that unite all the members of the Primary Production Committee. We have a whole lot of pressure in that space from brown marmorated stink bugs to swine flu to the chicken avian disease. Of course, we’ve got M. bovis, which is being worked on by the Ministry for Primary Industries as we speak. In the context of the latter challenge, certainly, issues were identified that needed to be improved with the NAIT system and this bill gives effect to that.

We have had a couple of speakers already highlighting the sort of key components of it. There are two areas that I’d like to specifically reinforce. Firstly, in Part 1, there are new powers for the Minister to appoint a person to attend meetings of the board. Obviously, that ultimately is the prerogative of the Minister and we are supporting this bill. But I do hope that that actually adds to the performance of the NAIT board as opposed to being a distraction. I’m sure the Minister would understand that sometimes appointments that are not formally fiduciary but are there as, sort of, to inspire the Minister—others have used that word, not me—can actually be a bit distracting. So I’ll be interested in the sorts of perspectives that the Minister will be expecting from that individual, should he appoint one when this legislation passes.

I’d like also the Minister to reflect on new section 9B in clause 7, “Minister may notify Government priorities and expectations”. We had quite a lot of debate to ensure that they were specific to NAIT functions and not something random, which is a potential. One feedback that we had from submitters was the fact that the changes that we have outlined in this legislation don’t deal with the operational interface challenges that exist within the NAIT system. These are beyond the realm, if you like, of the framework that this legislation is establishing.

I would be interested to know from the Minister: is that the sort of direction that he would be expecting to give the NAIT organisation—to look at the clunkiness of their system interface with farmers and opportunities for improvement? Because however well we think we collectively have designed this bill, if it is not simple and easy and effective and efficient for farmers to interface with it, we still have problems in terms of it not having the appropriate coverage of all the animals that we need it to cover. So I’d be interested specifically—a fair question, I think, to the Minister—around what are the sorts of priorities and expectations he would consider giving effect to with that new section 9B.

Moving to new section 23A in clause 10, the chair, Mr Bennett spoke, I think, very powerfully about the challenges that the original legislation posed for us as a committee with the ownership of core data. I think where we have landed makes sense, where, of course, the Minister can have access to it if it is critical, but the ownership issues remain as they are today and not further confused by a specific outline of it being Crown owned.

I think, in my final minute, that I just want to highlight the importance of where we landed again—I think Mr Bennett summed this up well—with respect to clarifying the obligations that sit on transport operators. The National Party pushed very strongly to get this in the wording—that it would make sense and would be practical. In fact, the chair was particularly robust in his contribution in this space and did it well.

New section 31A in clause 12, “Obligation on person who moves NAIT animals”: essentially, of course the obligation sits with the natural person in day-to-day charge of a NAIT animal (PICA). The transporter is a critical part of that. But essentially, as long as the transporter can see the declaration that has been filled out by the PICA, then that would suffice in terms of transport operator obligation. We think that’s a sensible landing, as we do this bill in total, and are happy to support it through to third reading tonight.

Madam Chair, thank you very much for the opportunity to make a contribution on what is a very important bill, the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill (No 2).

I was reflecting, sitting here, on the debate that we had on the number one bill last year that came in here under urgency, and Damien O’Connor had decided that he didn’t need to consult the Opposition at the time. He came in here, put the House into urgency, and we revolted and said, “Why didn’t you talk to us?”, and he realised at the time perhaps he should have. What happened in the end was it was a very robust debate. We ended up having briefings from his officials, trying to understand these warrantless search powers. Indeed, in the end we decided to support the number one bill because of M. bovis.

I’m a bit interested—I see the Minister’s officials are there—in whether he could, indeed, refer to them to give us a bit of an overview on how those changes have been progressing. Because the concern that we had at the time with the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) No. 1 bill, was that these Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) officers could, indeed, turn up without a warrant, and in examples that were given, take farmers’ hard drives. I’m going to make some comments about the No. 2 bill in a moment. But it would be useful, since we are talking about the NAIT No. 2 bill, to reflect on the one that, indeed, was passed in this House last year.

Now, this No. 2 bill is very interesting because we support the changes, and, in fact, the select committee, under the leadership of David Bennett, made some very good changes with the support of Government members. What I do want to spend a couple of moments talking about is the ownership of the data, and I know previous speakers have raised that. Reading the commentary from the select committee, there was a lot of discussion about who owns the data. It looks as though legal opinions were sought and there was some confusion, and so it looks as though it’s been laid to rest. I’d like the Minister to clarify that perhaps no one in particular owns that data but the Minister can request it on behalf of the ministry at any given particular time.

I’m pleased to see that transport operators aren’t going to be liable for an animal that is not tagged that the PICA, the person in charge of animals, the farmer, is going to be the person that is liable for a tag for an animal that is picked up off a farm and not carrying a tag. The reason I think that that is pragmatic is you need to reflect that a lot of these transport operators turn up to load the farmer’s stock out of their yards at 10 p.m. in the night, as Hamish Walker’s given an example. It might be 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. in the morning, no lights on the yards. How on earth can they determine whether every individual animal has a tag. I think that it’s right that that ownership, the liability of that issue, sits with the person in charge of those animals.

The other one that I would be really keen to hear from the Minister on, because this sort of snuck in late in the piece, is the ministerial direction that the Minister of the day can give to NAIT. It’s about the Minister’s priorities and expectations. I would hate to think that a Minister of the day could direct NAIT officers as to what they should be doing and how it lines up with Government priorities or expectations. Because I would have thought that any Government, whether it’s a blue stripe Government or a red stripe Government, their expectation would be for NAIT to do the right job for farmers, for animals, for biosecurity, for food safety, and the like. So it would be good to hear from the Minister in a moment, when he gets to his feet, what his expectations are that he might be going to give NAIT officials and the board in due course.

In summary, this is a good bill. The National Party supports it. It was a good process to go through, and a lot of submissions that were heard. They should be aware that their views have been picked up in this bill, and that’s why we’re supporting it this evening.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, once again, I appreciate the efforts of the select committee to work through the bill. It is the number two bill, and we said that this would be coming. It is more technical and it does address some of the, I guess, harder issues, and there probably will be adjustments into the future—there’s no doubt about that—as we learn more.

Look, I’ll just speak to a couple of the issues here. If I can just go back and, I guess, explain the reasoning for the bill. There are some pretty basic requirements that haven’t been in place—that tags be attributed to a single place. I guess there was the growing practice of farmers mainly just sending to the freezing works animals that weren’t tagged because it was inconvenient. Now, we had to play around with that. They would pay the $35 penalty or thereabouts but sometimes they’d think that was easy. So it was slippage from the scheme which really did need to be and does need to be really robust. We exposed a lot of faults through the M. bovis management programme. Trying to eradicate that has been a lot more difficult, a lot more costly, because we haven’t had a decent traceability system.

So ensuring that farmers understand the value of this and the importance of it is what we’re trying to do. You will be able to send an animal to the works without a tag but it must be unsafe to tag—there are some big animals, and that’s absolutely true on some occasions rather than just being inconvenient to tag, as it was effectively being used as.

The other two issues raised here: one is the, I guess, the Minister’s ability to direct. We did have an organisation, and they could well have said that while they were focused on getting tags in animals and traceability, not the wider issues of M. bovis management. So when we asked them for a bit of cooperation to help us they were, quite frankly, uncooperative and gave us the finger, quite frankly. So under the existing legislation there was no ability for the Minister to step in and ask them to step up their game and focus on not just animal tracing but actually being part of a useful biosecurity system. So the reason we are appointing someone and putting in place the ability to direct is that as a company they won’t be responsible for biosecurity, but if a priority of the Government is to actually focus on utilisation of the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) scheme for a biosecurity eradication programme, then we need to be able to instruct them and to give them a bit of guidance on that. That’s the reason that we’ve inserted that.

The ownership of the core data, it’s left unknown. I have to say that when it comes to the interface with MINDA, a point raised by one of the speakers—that is the other database system used extensively in the dairy system—then it’s going to be a bit hard to work out if it comes to ownership—and a lot of people think that there’s a lot of intellectual property and value in databases. Actually, I think the world’s moving on, and saying a database is just a basic tool, utilisation of it is where the value is; the point being is that not being certain as to who owns it. The only reason that the Government sought ownership on sale is that if the organisation was sold by any future Government—it certainly won’t be a Labour coalition Government—but if it is to be sold, then the database might go with that. What we say is it’s so important for our biosecurity systems that we should retain ownership of that. Parts of NAIT might be sold by a Government in the future but the database should remain with the Government. Now, that was kicked around by the select committee—that has been left unknown.

Can I just say on the issue of transport operators that I too understand full well getting up in the dark and helping load animals on to a truck, and you can’t see whether the tags are there or not. But what we’re supposed to have is tags that can be used, read by some kind of monitoring system. We have better technology every single day, and whether it’s ultra-low frequency or high frequency, we will see tags on animals in the future that give more than just identification but actually give movement, location, and the health status of animals; the point being that anyone who participates in a sports event will probably roll over or run over a pad or some kind of monitor that identifies when they started and when they finished.

There could be 20 people going over at once and the technology now allows people to identify them. So in my opinion, there will be a technology solution for truck owners. They will just have a monitor on the backdoor and every animal that goes on to that truck will be recorded with its electronic ID and the truck driver will know in the cab exactly the animals on board, just as they know their tyre pressure, just as they know a whole lot of things that we never knew of in the past. So we’ve left that, and I think the position established by the committee is that a declaration should cover that and protect the truck driver, that the person in day-to-day charge of a NAIT animal should state that, as they do with an animal status declaration (ASD) form, as they do now.

But we should probably move on from a paper-based ASD form and we’ll move into an electronic one. And the ASD form, if it aligns with NAIT, which it should in the future—it should be quite simple for the truck driver to know exactly what animals are on their truck. If there’s an animal not identified , then that shouldn’t be carted because M. bovis—and some say bovine tuberculosis—is carried and spread on the back of a truck. You hear that from farmers all the time. So it was our attempt to say that every person in the system has to share some responsibility. It wasn’t an attempt to put all the blame on to the truck owners or the transport operators or the truck driver; it was to say that we all have to do our bit to ensure that we have a robust animal tracing system.

Anyway, I accept the position that the select committee’s come back with. We’ll pass that through but I’m sure, as we move forward, there will be a solution in technology that allows us to know where animals are going—every one of them, all the time, in real-time data—and that will allow us to actually battle and eliminate things like M. bovis in a hell of a lot more timely and less costly manner. So I just, once again, acknowledge the select committee in working through this very carefully. Thank you.

I stand on behalf of the National Party to talk about this bill. We only need to look at the recent incursions with Mycoplasma bovis costing the country about a billion bucks; the Queensland fruit fly, which costs around about a million dollars per fly to get rid of; myrtle rust; infectious bursal disease (IBD)—the list goes on and on. I just want to take the opportunity to thank the Minister for Biosecurity for allowing his officials to come and brief me and fellow members of the National Party rural caucus on IBD. It’s affecting two mainland farms just north of Dunedin and it’s actually halted our chicken exports to Australia, so it’s a pretty serious concern. So I’m very interested to see what the Minister’s doing about it. But I just want to say thank you to the Minister for giving me the opportunity to hear from his officials.

I just want to acknowledge a very pivotal person involved in this process. He got a few good wins for the National Party. That is the chair of the Primary Production Committee, David Bennett. Well done in your leadership, David. You did a good job and you got several wins for the National Party.

I just want to raise five points. The first is the non-compliance with National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT). It’s still of concern. The 0800 number is still a bit slow. Our farmers have been frustrated and it’s still clunky to use. To be fair, it has been swamped with queries and hasn’t quite coped with changes made. But I understand NAIT, the industry, and Government are working hard to ensure the system has improved.

The second point I’d like to touch on is the unsafe tagging. Through the select committee there was previously, it was called—farmers could use an exemption to tagging if there was concerns. That’s been changed to “unsafe to tag”. You might have a large breeding bull or a particularly stroppy stag. Like David Bennett, it’s unsafe to tag. So there is a five-year time limit, which will, I believe, be reviewed after five years.

Our third concern was privacy. We were concerned with privacy issues around who actually owns the information. You’ve got the system, which the Government owns—the IT system, which holds the information—but there were concerns with who actually owns the information within that system. You’ve got obviously M. bovis throughout the country. Down in Southland we did have a deal—actually, two deals that I know of were cancelled because the buyer buying the stock couldn’t be assured that these stock were free of Mycoplasma bovis and I believe the cost was around about $400,000 or $500,000. The buyer pulled out, went to court, and the seller of those stock eventually got compensation.

The privacy concerns—the good leadership of David Bennett, the chair of the Primary Production Committee, hardworking MP for Hamilton, got the change there. The penalty is lifted from $10,000 up to $100,000 and for a body corporate from $20,000 up to $200,000. This just shows how serious this is. And another provision, which I believe is a good one, is for transport operators. These guys and girls work incredibly hard to move stock. As the previous agriculture Minister Nathan Guy mentioned, often stock are moved in the dark. It could be 10, or 11, midnight, or 1 a.m. It’s basically impractical to identify every animal that has a tag.

Lastly, just the improving access to NAIT data, I do believe the Minister has bulked up resource for that Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) 24-hour, 0800 number. This is a good move.

That’s about it for me. Hopefully, I’m better behaved than in my last speech. And it would be rude not to mention just lastly, if I may, my member’s bill, which increases the biosecurity fines for people bringing high-risk biosecurity items into New Zealand from $400 to $1,000. And, more importantly, it backs the MPI officials, the immigration officials at the border who work tirelessly 24 hours a day, plus all the other initiatives introduced by the member to my right, the Hon Nathan Guy, such as the improved X-ray machines, the doggies at the border who do a great job smelling out unwanted items like fruit and beef coming into New Zealand. So it also gives them the powers to deport people out in New Zealand who put our $46 billion sector at risk. I commend this bill.

Part 1 agreed to.

I seek leave for all remaining parts to be taken as one.

Leave is sort for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none.

Part 2, Schedules 1 to 5, and clauses 1 and 2

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 410 in the name of the Hon Damien O’Connor to Schedule 2 be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 410 in the name of the Hon Damien O’Connor to Schedule 3 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 2, Schedule 1, Schedule 2 as amended, Schedule 3 as amended, Schedule 4, Schedule 5, and clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2) with amendment and the National Animal Identification and Tracing Amendment Bill (No 2) with amendment.

Report adopted.