Annual Review Debate — Agriculture

Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s my pleasure as the chair of the Primary Production Committee to lead this afternoon’s debate. I want to begin by thanking members of the Primary Production Committee, and our officials who responded to questions during the course of our hearings.

As per the previous two years, we decided to consider our report on the primary sector as a whole, rather than reporting on each separate entity. We’ve had hearings from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), from Land Information New Zealand, Pāmu Farms, and Crown Irrigation Investments. We also had written reports from Animal Control Products Ltd, AssureQuality Ltd, New Zealand Walking Access Commission, and Quotable Value.

I want to also acknowledge, as the officials in our hearings and the Ministers in our hearings did, the impact that both Cyclone Hale and Cyclone Gabrielle have had on our primary industries—the devastation that our food producers and growers over the course of those two cyclones have experienced between Northland, all the way down as far as the Wairarapa, particularly impacted on the west coast. So I want to acknowledge all of those affected, and acknowledge as well the Ministry for Primary Industries, who, at the time of the writing of the committee’s report, had provided more than $55 million worth of support to our primary producers.

I’d like to comment on some of the topics that the committee canvassed with officials during the course of the hearings—in particular, around the international pressure to reduce emissions. We noted that the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism—CBAM—which is a tariff on carbon-intensive goods entering the EU, such as fertiliser and cement, will take full effect by 2026. We heard from the Minister around the negotiations in the free-trade agreements and the need for us to strive to stay at the lower end of the emissions scale for our food production; provided we can do that, we will remain in a good position. We need to ensure that we are investing in emissions-reducing technologies elsewhere, just the same as our international competitors are doing. We heard as well that the Government is invested in an emissions-reduction programme, which was pleasing to hear; it includes launching the Centre for Climate Action on Agricultural Emissions, which was opened in November 2022. The centre’s purpose is to accelerate research and development and the commercialisation of tools and technology to help reduce agricultural emissions.

There’s been a lot of interest in forestry as well—in particular, the overseas purchase of productive New Zealand farmland and the conversion of that to forestry. We note that both the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Forestry said that highly productive farmland should not be converted to forestry. We had the opportunity to talk to Toitū Te Whenua—or Land Information New Zealand—about the special forestry test, and they advised us that both the special forestry test and the benefit to New Zealand test potentially support forestry; however, the special forestry test only allows overseas investment in existing forests, and therefore it doesn’t permit carbon forestry. The land must be currently forested and the test does not allow forests to be planted on land that has not been forested in the past.

Also of interest to members and the wider public was an update on the actions that MPI has taken in the last 12 months to protect New Zealand against a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, which, obviously, we saw happen in Indonesia last year; also an update on the ministry’s efforts to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis, and we heard that we are making good progress to that end.

We also had an update on investment from the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund. To date, the total investment is sitting just under $11 million. When asked for a specific example of investment there, the Minister mentioned the joint venture with the Wool Research Organisation of New Zealand. They’re working to develop a pure wool particle that has export potential in cosmetics, printing, luxury goods, and personal care industries.

The Hon Todd McClay—but just before I start: if members take their full five minutes, I’m likely to take the next call; if they do it in a question and answer, they’re likely to get some continuity. It’s just the way we’ll do it.

Hon Todd McClay: If I may, point of order, Mr Chair. I’d just like clarification: that doesn’t mean we need to take a full five; someone else can intervene and we can come back for the remainder of the time by party?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): If the member takes the full five, then I’m likely to give the call to another member.

Thank you very much. Mr Chair, thank you, and I won’t take my full five but there will be many questions from this side of the House. The reason for that is—on behalf of farmers in New Zealand, what they want is short, sharp questions and short, sharp answers, and they want solutions. They don’t want very long explanations that are actually making it harder for them.

So I have some direct questions to the Minister about what’s happened over the last year. But going back longer than that, for the time that he has been the Minister of Agriculture, you’re going to see, all up and down the country, farmers saying to anybody who is talking to them, anybody that will listen, that it is now harder than ever before to be a farmer. And it’s harder because they don’t get the recognition that they deserve—they need—from the Government, and that more and more rules and regulations are being piled upon them. So my question to the Minister is: what did he do over the last year—or three or four years—to stop the excessive amount of rules and regulations that have been imposed upon farmers? More than 20 changes, and counting, and more, that are piling costs on them, many of which are not actually making the changes that the Government has said that they want to. So that’s a first question.

Second question would be: where is it that he, as a Minister, on behalf of farmers in New Zealand, is asking questions around the Cabinet table about if these rules are necessary and what is the extra cost and the extra burden? Because today the cost on farm is greater than it has ever been at any time in the history of this country—it costs farmers more today to run their farms. They spend 20 to 30 percent of their time filling out paperwork to send off to this Minister and his colleagues and it’s hard for them to do what we need them to do, which is actually continue to work hard in the rural communities and export for us.

And I want to give one example of this, and here is my third question for the Minister: when he and his Government decided that there was a blanket rule for the whole country around winter grazing for animals on slopes of greater than 10 degrees, did he decide at that time that that actually was necessary, even on parts of the country where there was no environmental harm being done? And did he ask for advice to decide that up to 10,000 resource consents that will be needed in New Zealand for farmers to be able to get on and just farm in areas they always have—where there isn’t any environmental risk or damage—at a cost of $100 million was justified and was OK? And when we came out a short while ago and said we wanted to make changes around this to protect the environment and go on a catchment-by-catchment approach, did he actually mean to say to farmers that these farmers need to understand that all the new rules and regulations that he and his Government are imposing on them are for their own good? Did he honestly think that, actually, they need a Minister of Agriculture that tells them they don’t know what they’re doing?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m more than happy to answer some of the questions here. The member, who’s new to the portfolio and new to farming—I’m happy to give him some advice. What has got us to where we are now—and we are one of the proudest and most innovative and efficient farming countries in the world—won’t be enough to get us to where we need to go. And if he hasn’t noticed, and he should have as a former trade Minister, as you get out around the world, there are different requirements being imposed upon us and different expectations from consumers now than there were even five years ago, because the issues of climate change are now very acute. Be it fires and droughts around the world, or be it massive floods, people are aware that we all have to do our bit while producing food to feed the world. Aside from the fact that we waste one-third of all the food that we produce in the world, we in this country are efficient, but we are still challenged by some of those things.

His first question was: what did I do to advocate for farming. Well, he can go back many, many years to look at my advocacy for farmers, not just now but, actually, farmers for the future, because if we don’t have enough young people coming in to farming to learn the skills, to acquire the capital to take over, then the older farmers—and there are quite a few of them—won’t be able to sell their farms on to those other farmers. I have staunchly advocated for the requirements for new sustainable farming systems and I will continue to do that.

He asked another question regarding the costs on farmers. I acknowledge the war in Ukraine and global inflation has imposed, in the last 12 months, inflation on farming systems that is not sustainable. Thankfully, those prices on fertiliser and fuel in particular, are starting to come right back, and that’s great because I don’t think that our farming systems, no matter how good they are, could sustain those for too long. We now have talk of dairy farmers requiring an $8 per kilogram of milk solids payment to break even. Well, it’s not because of—and I contest his claim that farmers are having to spend hours and hours in compliance costs for the Government. Well, there are some for councils; there are some for their processing companies.

There are more requirements coming from the market back on traceability—National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT). When we got into Government, the previous National Government had ignored the value, the importance of the NAIT system. And so when they delivered to this incoming Government not only Mycoplasma bovis as a disease and had done nothing about it—nothing—and delivered for us a NAIT system that was failed and broken, we had to impose upon the farmers a bit more kind of discipline around NAIT and to get on with eradicating M. bovis. Now, we’ve got almost to that point, we have one farm. And I want to thank all of those farmers and thank all the people in the Ministry for Primary Industries and across this country who have committed a lot to try and eradicate M. bovis. There are more costs on farmers, there are more requirements because that’s what the market consumers demand, be they people at the supermarket shelf or be they customers like Nestlé, the single biggest customer to the single biggest company in this country, Fonterra. They are demanding of Fonterra and all their suppliers a whole lot more requirements.

Can I just refer to—there were claims of 10,000 consents. The kind of rhetoric and ranting that we saw when it came to what would be required for winter grazing. I think we’ve got about 100 consents or 200 consents that have been applied for, a small number in reality. And even if there are other farmers that maybe need one and haven’t applied, the reality is that the clear signals that we sent from this Government to farmers about those market requirements, that images of animals standing in half a metre of mud projected around the world are not good for our country and do not project the high standards that the vast majority of farmers in this country adhere to. Those farmers were saying “Deal to those farmers who don’t have proper winter grazing practice.” Indeed we have. We’ve moved on, and in fact we’ve put in place some clear guidelines and so that the number of consents applied for is minuscule compared to the number that were projected by the doomsdayers, sayers, and prayers and all the rest of them out there who said the sky was going to fall. And what I have to say is: $55 billion record exports from our primary producers.

I’d like to acknowledge my colleagues in the Primary Production Committee who have provided this overview. And, in fact, we hear claims of parties wanting to know where money is spent in Government. Well, I trust the Primary Production Committee—members from all parties, they can ask any question they like about any area of expenditure here and they have and good on you to know where money is being spent. We don’t need some kind of stupid system of receipts for every bit of each Government expenditure.

Can I also acknowledge, while I’m here, my ministerial colleagues in the areas of forestry and fishing; my associates, who have done an outstanding job to guide us in a time of so much change, of so many climatic adverse events and new expectations from the markets. We are taking our primary sectors—the most important part of our economy—into a sustainable future, not burying our heads in the sand like the previous National Government did when it came to agriculture.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Well, Minister, I’m one of those people that actually goes home wondering why the hell I do it, to be quite frank with you. I’m a dairy farmer—operational dairy farmer. I don’t evangelise and offer priestly sermons about how other people should run their businesses, but I can tell you: $339 million on the Centre for Climate Change Action on Agricultural Emissions—what does that look like when an emissions pricing scheme is being asserted on a primary sector? Minister, can you please tell this committee today what annualised costs in terms of productivity losses we’re going to see?

To speak to the sheep meat sector, Minister; the wool sector—one in five of those people is potentially going out of business. Can you please reconcile that statement in a Government discussion document, as proposed, that suggested one in five people are going to go out of business? Now I’ve got to go home to these people and tell them it’s all good—that this Government actually cares. I can’t reconcile that.

And what of methane mitigation technology, Minister? When is it going to be commercially available? Boluses into 2.5 million animal ruminants in the beef sector that happen to be 600 and 700 kilograms? What kind of malarkey are we talking here? I understand mitochondrial DNA and ruminant bacteria; I work with it every day—every day. I understand what I put down my animals’ necks comes by virtue of outcomes as methane. What interventions are you asserting here in this Centre for Climate Change Action which will help ameliorate those emissions and not drive people off their farms? Minister, can you please answer this House?

I’d hate to think that I don’t answer any of the questions, the relevant ones. Can I just, firstly, point out the ranting and rhetoric of the idea that one in five would go out of business.

Mark Cameron: It’s your document.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: It is not the document. What the document says—

Hon Members: They were your numbers.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Can I read for the—would you like to listen? Would you like to listen? The discussion document models that sheep and beef net revenue and production could drop by about 20 percent. That makes no reference at all—no reference at all—to the viability. Can I suggest to the member, if he is a proper farmer, that he’s probably incurred that kind of drop in production through drought or through adverse events; the member’s still in business. The reality—and I have to acknowledge the resilience of New Zealand farmers and farming systems—is that they do incur, without subsidy, some huge variations in production costs from year to year because of a whole lot of climatic conditions. They’ve been able to mitigate that with some supplementary feeds at times, but through droughts and through floods and through the kinds of things that we’re now seeing in Hawke’s Bay, there are massive impacts, sometimes, on farmers’ production. This discussion document—on a model, which I personally think should be challenged, this is just modelling—said that net revenue could drop. That’s all it says; not that 20 percent are going to go out of business. That’s the kind of irresponsible leadership from members in the House for political purposes that has, understandably, caused concern across the farming sector.

Can I just go on to the $335 million—yes, we did commit that to climate change initiatives, to the Global Research Alliance and the Centre for Climate Change Action on Agricultural Emissions that we have here; $170 million in partnership with progressive New Zealand agribusiness firms, and more are interested in coming on board, and there are many areas of international research. I’ve just come from the biggest gathering of agriculture Ministers in the US that they’ve seen, last week, talking about climate change and about how we progress these areas of science. There are boluses being worked on that can be put into the animals and reduce methane.

Mark Cameron: Rubbish.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: There is—no, it’s not rubbish at all. If the member would lift his head up a little bit, there’s work going on with thanitropes. There’s selective breeding programmes. There’s monitoring of both cattle and sheep in New Zealand to identify those that, just because they are different, emit 20 percent less methane from the sheep or the animal beside them—just because of genetic difference. If we can identify those, as we have across all other areas of farming—we have the Livestock Improvement Corporation arguably being one of the best genetic livestock organisations in the world. They have identified those that produce more and selectively bred from them, just as we can with lower methane emissions from ruminant livestock.

This is one of a number of areas that is being worked on. There is Dutch technology that, if fed on a regular basis to animals, can reduce methane from those animals by up to 30 to 40 percent. We can’t apply that at the moment to a pastoral farming system, but those are the areas that are being investigated by the partnership, by the Global Research Alliance.

And, indeed, in summary from the few days I had in Washington, none of us had the magic answers, but I suggest that we as a country have a huge opportunity to lead the world, to share the technology, and to ensure that livestock ruminant farming can produce high-quality protein and lower the emissions, satisfying the expectations of consumers and of our customers to be better producers of food for the world.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Nicola Grigg—can I say that the National Party have seven minutes and 30 seconds left.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m pleased that the Minister has enlightened the Chamber that he’s just returned from America, because I have too. In the meetings that I had with farming producers—not Ministers, not people who sit in cushy offices; actual farmers—they talk about the targets being imposed on some states across America, and fear a food reduction of up to 40 percent, Minister. So we’ve got to get real about these things.

Can I also ask the Minister to enlighten himself in reading a very educative document—the National Party’s first tranche of its agricultural policy—called “Getting Back to Farming”, because that’s what we’re all here for, Minister: to represent a sector that just wants to farm; that just wants to produce food and create those $52 billion worth of exports that you have talked about and that your Government consequently taxes.

But what I would actually like to start asking the Minister of this afternoon is farmer confidence. As the rural community spokesperson for the National Party and our associate agricultural spokesperson, it sets cold fear in my heart when I start to see surveys from farming representatives and lobby groups that are the worst we have seen in decades—some might say since the 1980s crashes.

A net 81 percent of farmer respondents—Federated Farmers’ most recent survey—expect economic conditions to deteriorate in the next 12 months. Their top three concerns, Minister, are the climate change policy and the emissions trading scheme. We are talking about 5.4 percent of respondents expecting their production to decline over the next year and that their spending will increase—24 percent of them—over the next 12 months.

So while the Minister wishes away this country’s inflation and blames a war in the Ukraine, the Minister needs to turn to his own Government’s domestic spending and actually acknowledge that that is driving inflation in this country; that is driving the 20-odd percent of on-farm inflation.

I asked the Minister in the Primary Production Committee recently, and I wasn’t satisfied with the answer, so I ask it again: when the Prime Minister talked about his regulations bonfire and that too much, too fast has been occurring under this Labour Government, what has he looked at? What has he sought to review in the agricultural space, because the National Party has identified hundreds of double-ups across regulations that, yes, also include local government, but these are set by central government. What has he done to start to look for regulation reduction in the agricultural sector so that it does not harm on-farm productivity?

I’ll start at the beginning, where the member set off, and that was saying to “Get Wellington out of farming; let farmers get on with it.” That’s a kind of a noble little rant, again, because when it comes to biosecurity, the first thing the farming sector needs is for us to run a really robust biosecurity system, checking on everything that’s imported into the country. [Interruption] Excuse me, excuse me. So do you think the farmers themselves can do that?

The second thing is food safety—

Nicola Grigg: Mr Chair, can I ask the question?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): No. The Minister has the floor.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: —so we can produce lots of things on the farm but they need to meet a standard that meets our market requirements. So if the member wanted to deliver on her little rant, it would be, “Get out of our food safety systems. Get out of our food safety systems.”, because I hear that kind of rhetoric coming from people all the time: “Get out of our lives.”

Nicola Grigg: Yes!

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Here we go again. So we’ll take away all the biosecurity systems in the country.

Nicola Grigg: I wasn’t asking about that.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Oh, I see. You’re very selective of where you should be able to. It’s all very well to be selective. And then when it comes to things like adverse events, where in the 1990s under the National Government, there was no support—no support whatsoever—regardless of the events that occurred through this country. It was post-1980s; no subsidies, no support.

When we came into Government in 1999, a Labour Government said, “It’s not really sustainable; people in rural areas can’t handle this burden on their own.” So we intervened and we continue to do that. Hundreds of millions of dollars, literally, to Hawke’s Bay, Northland, and we will continue to do that because we value and understand the importance.

That’s not getting out of our lives; that’s supporting where necessary. And we will continue to do that through robust biosecurity systems, through food safety systems that maintain our reputation, because we might like to claim all the credit, but the reputation we have internationally for our food safety is because of what our ancestors did: adhering to the expectations of the markets and imposing upon themselves the self-discipline to make sure that nothing went offshore that was unsafe. That’s Government providing good guidance and regulations, not getting out of our lives.

If we can go on to animal welfare, because that was kind of taken for granted—we’re good animal farmers. Well, the reality is with social media and the world we live in now, one example of animal abuse can be around the world in the flash of an eye. Unfortunately—and we all accept there will be some odd occasions—without robust regulation, without Government guiding the farming sector and every other sector of our economy, we will be judged by the lowest common denominator. And that means that as food producers to the most discerning customers in the world, we would not have a future. So we need good regulation.

Where we make mistakes, we’re prepared to change them. The slope maps on the freshwater farm regulations—we’ve made the adjustments. We don’t claim to be perfect and we will work with the industry body and organisations to make the adjustment necessary. But you cannot get Government out.

Lastly, I’ll finish on the one intervention that we as a Labour Government are quite proud of—because the previous National Government said, “Well, we’re not going to get in there.”—which is the eradication of Mycoplasma bovis. We’re proud of that intervention, we’re proud of committing hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars to help farmers so they can run efficient farming systems, because if Mycoplasma bovis was here, go and talk to a couple of farmers who were hit with it. We are lucky to have the systems we have in place now.

We will always be prepared, as a Labour Government, to intervene where necessary. And if it’s not perfect, we’ll make the adjustments to regulation. But it’s a partnership model, not some ideology that says, “We should get on and do what we want and get Government out of our way.” That’s idiocy and ideology.

Teanau Tuiono—you have four minutes and 16 seconds.

Thank you, Mr Chair. First of all, I’d like to acknowledge the Minister’s work in terms of shepherding through the Organic Products and Production Bill. That was something that was widely celebrated around the organics community, and, in particular, from us here as the Greens as well. Yes, good things take time, like the old man in the cheese ad says, but this one finally got over the line.

But my questions are around just kind of dropping down in terms of that regulation space, in terms of the work that the Minister has done to support that sector around standard-setting, around education, possibly, but also around putting in that support to actually help the organics sector to realise the economic opportunities, but also stepping back from that, recognising that when you work well with the land, what that means in terms of the climate crisis that we’re living in at the moment.

On top of that, I was wondering if the Minister could also talk to us a bit about that time period between now and when the floods hit in Hawke’s Bay—as someone who lives on this side of the Ruahines, I saw the tonne of water coming down—and acknowledge that there needs to be a lot of work done to support farmers, to support the producers and growers as well, and the sort of work that he could be doing within that space in terms of supporting farmers to become more climate-resilient, but also looking at that mitigation space as well.

Firstly, I’ll just get up and acknowledge that, actually, agriculture’s probably the least partisan of any issues across this Parliament. I acknowledge that support for the primary sectors from most MPs in this House. As I say, through the Primary Production Committee, I think there’s a whole lot of really good work, and all the members have spoken.

Briefly, on a couple of the issues raised: the organic legislation that we passed was our best attempt, and it was a request from the sector to say that we need some consistency so that when we go into different markets, people trust our brand. I think it was a huge step forward. It will offer some certainty for the organic growers.

In terms of education, two of the things that I think we are very proud of are Taratahi and Telford, two training establishments that have a long history, a proud history of bringing many people in. I heard last night that Telford had trained a number of the dairy industry winners—quite proud of that. These are people who started, went through these establishments—but they kind of ran amok, and, I have to say, it was the previous Government that tried to merge them and muck around with them, and they failed, and now we’ve been picking them up and trying to get them up and running again.

What is taught is different now. What needs to be taught is different, and so we’re working through the reforms—Te Ara Paerangi. They’re working through different programmes to ensure that what we do put up in front of these young people is relevant to both their employers but also to the future needs that they may be faced with.

I think that one of the things that was discussed—and I accept the previous speaker’s reference to, in the US, the farmers having these things imposed upon them by the states. Can I say that the reason for that is not because any legislators like to impose stuff on farmers; it’s that there’s a need for them. Just as it’s happening in the US, and farmers are struggling to understand it, the same thing is happening here. But there was a lot of talk of regenerative agriculture. For the most part, most New Zealand farmers actually operate a regenerative system—rotational, pastoral grazing, and looking after the soil and not being in such a scale as to destroy the values. That’s something that is an opportunity for us if we move forward with that.

Can I come back to the questions from the member there. It is through new, innovative ways of using our soil, protecting our water, and looking after our livestock and our people that, actually, we can be quite proud of the values that drive our agricultural systems. Those are the opportunities, or they create the base of opportunities for our country into the future.

Joseph Mooney—just a warning that National have four minutes and 44 seconds.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. To the Minister: our farmers produce $52 billion in export receipts. New Zealand is facing a pretty challenging 12 months ahead of us. We have the biggest balance of payment deficit in the developed world, so this country needs to sell more things to the world, because we’re, frankly, spending more than we’re earning. Why have we not heard more from the Minister about the critical importance of the primary sector for New Zealand? If New Zealand wants to buy cellphones, wants to buy Teslas, wants to buy fridges, etc., that are manufactured overseas and that New Zealand doesn’t have the capacity for, we need to be selling things to buy those, so why have we not heard more about that?

The other thing is, I note the point earlier about sheep and beef farming, that Government proposal which did say that it would reduce sheep and beef farming by 20 percent and beef and dairy by 5 percent by 2030. Two-thirds of the reduction in emissions in New Zealand could be undone by high emissions shifting overseas through doing that. Why haven’t we heard more about the fact that, for example, the sheep herd was almost 58 million in 1990, reduced to 26 million by 2020, so there’s been a huge reduction in the sheep herd in New Zealand. Why haven’t we heard more about the unique pastoral farming system in New Zealand, which is quite different from most other places in the world? We have a unique system in New Zealand. We have a, effectively, free-range farming system that most other places in the world can’t replicate. Why aren’t we telling this story more strongly to the world—the unique value that we have; the unique proposition that we make?

I’ll just note that people want food, and, yes, you need to listen to what the consumers want, but take eggs, for example. I went to the local supermarket with my youngest daughter. She wanted to make a cake for Mother’s Day. You couldn’t buy eggs. I mean, people want to be able to buy food. So how are we protecting our food producers, making sure that they can continue producing food for this country and for the world?

And I’ll just note the point that there have been more than 20 changes to legislation, regulation, and all new rules since Labour came into power in 2017. I talk to farmers regularly who have to spend at least two days a week in the home office, working on these compliance regulations that they have to do, rather than being out there farming. We need them out there farming and getting their goods out to the world. So why has there not been more focus on the integration required to bring this together so we can actually focus on good environmental regulations that can ensure our food producers can do well and get their food out to the world?

And I’ll just note one example, the significant natural areas (SNAs): they were so broadly defined that farmers faced the risk of being shut down. In 2021, a third of the Far North district—250,000 hectares—was tentatively declared an SNA, including 100 percent of some properties. I mean, we’re getting all these signals coming from the Government that aren’t well thought through. Why hasn’t there been more thinking at the Cabinet level to actually get a good signal out to our farmers, saying, “We recognise that you’re the most carbon-efficient in the world; we’re going to help you meet these environmental regulation outcomes that we want to achieve and produce food for the world and food for our country.”?

The honourable Minister—three minutes 56 remaining.

Look, thank you, some very good questions in there, I’ll try and whip through them. The story? Perhaps the member Joseph Mooney doesn’t come to enough of my speeches—and I repeat them within New Zealand and overseas. Believe me, what you were referring to is something we should be proud of and we should be shouting it from the rooftops. And I do—I can promise you that.

Can I just come back to—actually, Joseph Mooney’s a bit too young to remember, but, actually, we had 70 million sheep in the 1980s, and it’s now down to 26 million. We’re producing the same amount of meat and the same amount of wool; it’s just that the wool’s worth nothing, which is a tragedy, but I won’t go on to that for the moment. He said we have a challenging 12 months ahead. I’d suggest, actually—and the banks are saying as well, the economists—the 12 months ahead look a lot better than the 12 months we’ve just been through, because we’ve been through a period of excessive global inflation. The prices on most of the core inputs into farming are actually coming back, which is great. As I said right early on, it would have been hard to sustain that. And it’s not $52 billion; it’s $55 billion. You know, $3 billion—nothing to sneeze about.

And so the point about significant natural areas (SNAs) that he refers to—in fact, SNAs were identified in the 1991 National Party Resource Management Act piece of legislation. And so what happened is, actually, some councils got on and identified where they were, and some didn’t. In fact, now there’s been an obligation to get on and identify.

What has been seen as one of the biggest liabilities for the sheep and beef sector, because they’ll talk of about 1.4 million hectares and indigenous bush, and some of it might be kānuka and mānuka—actually, that’s an asset, not a liability. And the farmers—and there are many of them—have turned it from a liability into an asset. Where they thought they had to go on and keep clearing it, as we did in the past, they’re now leaving it to grow, to create mānuka honey, and to sequester. Now, we’re working through, and some—depending on when it was cleared, pre- or post-1990—of that is generating significant carbon credits for those farmers that are letting it grow back. And that will be the opportunities for sheep and beef farmers into the future. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, you and I are pretty collegial most of the time, but I’m still trying to reconcile something to do with the national herd size. Go back to 2006, Minister, when you know that we had peak numbers in terms of the animals in the animal ruminant sector. Do you reconcile today, Minister, given that methane is a short-lived gas, we’ve got to have an honest conversation about what role methane has in terms of our emissions profile, what its actual net warming addition is? Sir, do you agree, yes or no, today, that in 2006 we had our peak national animal ruminant herd numbers? We’ve subsequently fallen since then. That’s the first question.

On the basis of your answer on that, what interventions are currently commercially available today to my people in the rural sector, i.e., dairy farmers, those in the beef sector, or the sheep meat sector, that we could use as interventions that will not actually have this—it’s nothing more than an arbitrary tax, and you know that I’m talking about He Waka Eke Noa. What interventions are commercially available, excluding the development of genetic material, which we know will take arguably six to eight years to be in the mean average herd or flock in New Zealand? Can you please, for the sake of this House and anyone listening, answer those very important questions?

Thank you, Mr Chair. Can I say plantain has been acknowledged as reducing nitrates and nitrous oxide; EcoPond, which has been developed internationally and used by one of our major fertiliser companies to reduce the methane emissions from effluent ponds across the country; and selection—CRV, and I know the Livestock Improvement Corporation, too, are identifying sires that have lower emissions. Those are three available now, and there’s work going on on bolus and other issues—as I say, the Dutch technology, which claims a huge reduction in methane from animals that ingest this on a regular basis, and you can do that in an internal farming system. We haven’t worked out how to do it in a pastoral system; that’s why there’s more work needed. So there are some opportunities. They incrementally add up to and, I’m sure, will contribute to the 10 percent reduction target that we have by 2030, and that’s been acknowledged. In Ireland, they’ve targeted a 30 percent reduction in emissions from farm systems by 2030; we’ve set a 10 percent reduction in methane.

Can I just come back to the point around peak animals and methane; you see, we had a lot more animals in 2006, and now, than we had in 1900 or 1850. Global warming hasn’t happened overnight, and so what we’ve seen in the Hawke’s Bay, in my simple kind of physics, is that we’ve had a warming of the sea and we have more moisture go up into the atmosphere, and it’s coming down. Atmospheric rivers: not something I had ever, ever heard—I lived by the Buller River, not an atmospheric river, but now the Buller’s more threatened by atmospheric rivers than it is the Kawatiri, because of the warming and the effect that more moisture goes up and has to come down. That’s the reality we face.

Thank you, Mr Chair. To the Minister: the horticulture sector is quite disappointed about the lack of response to Cyclone Gabrielle, and the project coordination group report recently noted that between $650 million and $960 million would need to be injected around clean-up, replanting, income continuity, financing arrangements, and a whole lot of stuff. What further steps, if any, will this Government take to help those growers impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle?

Sorry, the Minister’s time has—

Hon Damien O’Connor: He won’t let me answer.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): The Minister needs to seek leave to answer that question.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Very quickly, Minister—

I’m sorry, but the time for this debate has expired.

The question is that the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the annual financial statements of the Government for the 2021-22 financial year be noted.

Motion agreed to.

Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Appropriation (2021/22 Confirmation and Validation) Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.