Hon JIM ANDERTON (Minister of Agriculture) : I move, That the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Primary Production Committee for consideration, and that the committee present its final report on or before 31 October 2007. I thank the members of the Primary Production Committee and its chair in advance for their cooperation. I also intend to move that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, and during any evening, after 6 p.m., on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on any Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 192, 195(1)(b), and 195(1)(c).

The Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) amends the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act 2001. It provides export rights to 11 designated dairy markets at the expiry of the initial allocation of rights held by the Fonterra Cooperative Group. In this way the bill will complete the transition begun in 2001 to a new industry structure without the export monopoly powers of a statutory marketing board—the New Zealand Dairy Board. It will also provide certainty to all parties in the industry about future access to these markets.

The 11 export markets are Canada, the Dominican Republic, the European Union, Japan, and the United States. They are generally where the importing countries have country-specific tariff quotas for specified dairy products of New Zealand origin. This means that New Zealand has access to these markets for specific quantities of product at preferential tariff rates. In 2001 Fonterra was allocated exclusive access to these markets for fixed periods. But these exclusive allocations expire progressively from 2007, with the last expiring in 2010. This bill provides for access to each of these markets in different ways. The different approaches to be applied are necessary because of the different import arrangements applied by the Governments of the importing countries. In respect of the markets for butter in Canada and cheese in Japan, the bill will remove all economic export restrictions that currently apply. This will allow any entity to export New Zealand - origin product into these markets, and in this way allow a much wider group of New Zealand dairy processors and exporters to access the potential benefits from those export opportunities. Any relevant quality assurance and certificate of origin requirements imposed by the importing country will of course still apply, and the New Zealand Food Safety Authority will continue to play a key role in that regard.

For the remaining markets, the bill provides a mechanism whereby export licences can be allocated among New Zealand dairy processors on the basis of objective criteria. Again, a much wider group of New Zealand dairy processors and exporters will gain access to these markets, and will have the opportunity to benefit from the increased exporting opportunities. The volume of product that a processor will be allocated in an export licence will depend primarily on the volume of milk solids that the processor collects directly from New Zealand dairy farmers. Export licences will be allocated initially for terms of 1 year at a time. For export licences that become available in 2011 and later years, export licences will be allocated for terms of 3 quota years at a time, to give longer certainty and continuity. The bill also provides for processors to trade export licences, allowing licences to flow to those exporters who wish to take full advantage of the market opportunities. All registered dairy product exporters will be eligible to hold export licences.

To facilitate the effective operation of the new allocation mechanism outlined in the bill, additional enforcement provisions have been included regarding penalties for false declarations, and various search and seizure provisions. It is important that the allocation mechanism is robust, and that the information provided for the purposes of allocation has integrity and accuracy. Two of these markets will have additional rules to ensure that export licences allocated to New Zealand processors can be adequately enforced. For those two markets, any entity will be able to export product outside of the quota—that is, at the normal tariff rate—but only after the quota itself has been filled. These provisions relate to the market for dairy fat blends in Japan, and the market for certain milk powders in the Dominican Republic.

As a consequence of the new export licence regime set out in this bill, the New Zealand Food Safety Authority will need to develop and implement new systems for export certification and reconciliation. This bill, therefore, provides for amendments to the Animal Products Act 1999 to allow these systems to be developed on a cost recovery basis.

I believe that the amendments contained in this bill relating to dairy export markets will continue to maximise the economic benefits to New Zealand arising from our access to these markets, while at the same time ensuring that we are meeting New Zealand’s international obligations. As well as introducing provisions relating to dairy export markets, this bill amends existing regulation-making powers relating to the New Zealand Dairy Core Database—an important, industry-good asset containing comprehensive information on dairy herds and their production performance. The current regulation-making powers in the Act apply only to the Livestock Improvement Corporation. The bill provides for regulations to be made that would apply to any other entity operating the database for industry-good purposes. This measure will ensure that the integrity of the database can be maintained into the future.

The Government would like to see the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) enacted by 31 October 2007. This will enable the first round of export allocations to be done for some of these markets before Fonterra’s exclusive allocations to those markets expire at the end of this year. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAVID CARTER (National) : The National Party will support the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) to the Primary Production Committee. We do that, acknowledging that the quota access for New Zealand dairy products to the European Union, to the United States, to Japan, and to Canada has been hard-earned by New Zealand over many, many years. Prior to the previous National Government initiating producer board reform there was a lot of discussion around the allocation of quota.

It is worth recalling just how it was managed prior to the reform of the producer boards. Of course, at that stage the allocation of quota was relatively easy. It was in the hands of the New Zealand Dairy Board, which had the compulsory right to market all dairy products from this country. But as the reforms were initiated and intense discussion was occurring in 1997, 1998, and 1999, and various alternatives to compulsory marketing by the New Zealand Dairy Board were developed, there was a very vexed question around the allocation of these quotas. At that stage there was recognition by all involved—industry players, Government officials, and politicians—that we as a nation needed to do everything we could to protect the interests of New Zealand producers and to maximise the economic benefits to our country.

As an Associate Minister at that stage to the Minister of Agriculture, John Luxton, I remember these discussions well. The ultimate solution that was hammered out at that time was a temporary solution, and it was that exclusive access was to be given to the then still to be formed entity Fonterra. There was no free lunch. There was, of course, a monetary recognition or compensation paid at that stage to the other players within the industry, Westland Milk Products and Tātua Cooperative Dairy Co. Ltd.

It was, as I said, a temporary arrangement that was meant to be resolved by the Government well before today. I note that two of the quota markets—the Dominican Republic with 4,800 tonnes of milk-powder and Canada with 2,000 tonnes of butter—have expired and have been extended by regulation. It is fair to say that the Labour Government has never been strong in its connection to agriculture and to rural New Zealand. No one should be surprised that the deadline has passed with not a solution being presented, prior to tonight.

The responsibility for this failure clearly lies with the Labour Government. It is not as though the Order Paper has been full of urgent legislation over the last 12 months. This matter could have been sorted out quite a long time ago. Although I say the responsibility lies clearly with the Labour Government, it also lies with the current Minister of Agriculture, Jim Anderton. But, as most of rural New Zealand knows, he is certainly struggling as he grapples with this new portfolio. He was a very surprise appointment by Helen Clark, after the election of 2005. He has found it very difficult, and I think he would be the first to acknowledge that he has not really had a background of association with rural New Zealand, and he certainly has struggled to show any empathy in connection with farmers.

But to be fair to the industry, it gave the Minister Mr Anderton, on his surprise appointment, every opportunity. He did start with a little bit of promise. He said that he would get out there amongst the country and do some listening. He proceeded to get out amongst the country, but it was not long before he gave up the listening and started with the very long speeches that Mr Anderton is now famous for. I am afraid that the industry has well and truly switched off. The dairy farmers do not rely on Mr Anderton to solve the problems they grapple with, this one included.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: They certainly don’t want this member.

Hon DAVID CARTER: I suggest that that member has a look at the current polling. I suggest that rural New Zealand is well attuned to the ability of this member in rural New Zealand, as compared with the current Minister, Mr Anderton. Anyway, I acknowledge he has had his honeymoon. It was a very, very short honeymoon and now he has some challenges.

But we do finally have some action tonight on the vexed issue of quota allocation. As I have said, it is too late, but having put the Bill into the House tonight I am surprised and disappointed that there is the guillotine clause there, which requires the Primary Production Committee to report back by the end of October. The Minister has mucked around for years and years on this issue. He has had the opportunity to get the bill before the House, and he gives us a total of 10 weeks as a select committee to advertise for submissions, which will take about 3 weeks, I guess, and then to hear what I suspect will be a substantial number of submissions. I am sure that he said in his speech that the committee is to report back to the House by 31 October, and then later in his speech I heard him say that he actually wants the legislation fully enacted by that time. As usual, I give the Minister my assurance as chair of the Primary Production Committee that the committee will cope with this challenge diligently. It will fully cooperate, and I certainly hope that we can do it without having to go for an extension.

I suspect we will get some submissions from the likes of Fonterra, Open Country Cheese, Tātua, Westland Cooperative Dairy, Synlait, and many of the other new players that have appeared within the industry since the original passing of the Act in 2001. As I have said earlier, National will support this amendment bill to the select committee, because we acknowledge that the issue has to be sorted out to give not only the dairy farmers of New Zealand every opportunity for maximum economic gain but, more important, all New Zealanders the chance to maximise economic gain.

It is a pleasure to be part of this debate tonight, particularly when the dairy industry—as compared with beef and sheep in New Zealand—is enjoying such buoyancy. I recall my visit to the National Fieldays earlier in June, walking amongst many, many farmers—particularly dairy farmers—over those couple of days, and the angst and anger among the dairy farmers who had just a few days earlier been blamed for inflation in this country by the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Mr Bollard.

Colin King: How outrageous!

Hon DAVID CARTER: Colin King says it is an outrageous comment, and it was. The Governor of the Reserve Bank had put up interest rates another 25 basis points on that occasion—he has since done it again, which makes it effectively 50 points—and at the time of his announcement in June, he was saying that the reason he had to do this was that the dairy farmers were receiving too much money. Now, the first thing is that he should have actually been celebrating the success of the dairy farming industry, which has made so much progress, firstly for their own benefit—and I champion that and good luck to them—but more so for the benefit of all New Zealanders. But the other thing that was amazing is that he made that comment early in June, in the first week of the new dairy season. There would not have been a farmer in New Zealand who had received any benefit of the announcement of a payout of $5.35. So I think that in that statement Mr Bollard is as out of touch with the dairy industry and its ability to spend as recklessly as he seems to accuse it of, as indeed that Labour Government and the current Minister of Agriculture are out of touch.

Anyway, we will support the legislation going to the select committee. We will do our best to get it back on the time line that the Minister has given us tonight. We look forward to the submissions we receive. We encourage anybody who has an interest in this industry and who will be affected by the allocation bill to come forward to the committee, because we look forward to their comments on the legislation.

Dr ASHRAF CHOUDHARY (Labour) : I am certainly looking forward to working together with David Carter on the Primary Production Committee. I hope we will work very closely, as we usually do in the select committee, because this is a very important bill for us and for the farmers of New Zealand.

The Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) deregulates some dairy quota controlled export markets. I want to say a few words about the recent visit that the Primary Production Committee made to the Waiariki block in Taupō. Landcorp is developing huge tracts of land, converting them from forestry to dairy production. I must confess I was amazed to see that development, and I think, in relation to some of the development going on, this bill is very timely. We saw thousands of hectares of forestry being converted to dairy farms—and they were state-of-the-art dairy farms too, I must say. I was certainly impressed with the equipment being used, the equipment being installed in the milking sheds, and the machinery being used to convert these lands to dairy production.

This area was considered to be a wasteland years ago, when scientists and farmers did not know about the cobalt issue. Cobalt is an element in the soil. They knew about the selenium problem, and they found out later that pastures were not growing very well because there was a shortage of cobalt. Once they found that out, an additive could be put into the soil to make sure the pasture grows well, and that is what happened, as I understand. Now forestry is being converted to dairy farming, because that land will be very productive. I must say I have some concerns in terms of the environmental impacts of this conversion, although I was told that Landcorp works very closely with Environment Waikato to make sure these conversions are in keeping with the environment in the area.

Let me say that this bill will provide assurance to all parties in the dairy industry about future access to export markets, and it will provide for access to each of these markets in different ways, as the Minister of Agriculture said earlier. In terms of the markets for butter in Canada and for cheese in Japan, the bill will remove all export restrictions that currently apply. For the remaining markets, the bill provides a mechanism whereby the export licences can be allocated among New Zealand dairy processors on the basis of objective criteria. So, in both these cases, a much wider group of New Zealand dairy processors and exporters will gain access to these markets, and have the opportunity to benefit from the increased exporting opportunity.

Similar to what happened in the meat markets, this dairy deregulation clearly will be a fantastic opportunity, not only for businesses to get into the quota-controlled markets but also for the wider group of processors and exporters to be part of the dairy industry. With those few words, I commend this bill to the House.

NATHAN GUY (National) : Is it not interesting tonight that when we have a look at this market-by-market summary of these 11 countries that we currently have quota arrangements with, we find that two of them have expired—in June and July—and have had to be extended by Order in Council? This legislation went through Cabinet, I believe, in May 2007—recently—and now there seems to be a mad rush, does there not? Once again, there is a mad rush. The Minister would have had a briefing on this when he came in, when he did not even own a pair of gumboots, in 2005. He would have had a briefing, and he would have known that the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act was on the agenda and was coming up. The legislation went through Cabinet in May 2007. We have been asking where it has been and when it is coming to the House. Finally the bill is now here, and there is a very, very tight time frame on it. The Minister wants it reported back from the select committee and through the House by the end of October. We do not know how many submissions we will get.

This is a big issue for New Zealand dairy farmers; these quota markets are worth about $50 million a year. So I cannot understand. One would have thought that if the Minister were competent, this would be before Cabinet earlier than this and in the House way before now. Here we have a Minister who talks big and fails to deliver. We have seen that with the microchipping of dogs, and several other things where he has failed to deliver on his promises to the rural community.

I want to talk a little bit about the bill, a little bit about the background, and a little bit about what the future holds. I have talked about the 11 markets already and how it is very important that New Zealand farmers as a whole own the quota value, which is worth about $50 million a year to them. This legislation will remove the export restrictions, it will allow a 3-year period for quota years at a time—which I think is fundamentally very good—and it will open up these markets.

The Hon David Carter, who leads the Primary Production Committee, has talked about where we expect some of the submissions to come from. I think we can expect submissions from Fonterra, from Open Country Cheese, and from Tātua, which is a very good niche company up in the Waikato. We can expect a submission from the Westland Cooperative Dairy, which is doing particularly well down on the West Coast because it has not got the big share structure overheads that Fonterra currently has. We can expect a submission from Synlait, an up-and-comer in the market that I am sure will be interested in this, and possibly even one from Gisborne Milk. AFFCO, which has put its flag up the pole saying it is interested in getting into the dairy industry, may well look to put a submission in, as well.

So I cannot understand why the Minister has taken that long to get this bill into the House.

Hon David Carter: Incompetent.

NATHAN GUY: I think that Mr Carter is right; the Minister is very incompetent. One of the big areas in this bill that I think we need to talk about in the first reading tonight is around the New Zealand Dairy Core Database. A significant part of this bill is around that; it is sort of hidden in there. In essence, this bill will expand the regulation powers. Here I am talking about the Livestock Improvement Corporation database. If Livestock Improvement Corporation shareholders want to commercialise it, then the bill will allow them to do that. I probably have a few issues about that, and I will be interested to see how many submissions we get from possibly the Livestock Improvement Corporation, Ambreed New Zealand, and whoever else is in that market.

The Livestock Improvement Corporation has been going for 100 years. It has been doing extremely well in innovation in terms of genetics and reproductive technologies, and has been actually driving the profitability for our dairy industry. It is really important that when this bill comes to the select committee these people submit on this very, very important part. The corporation does about 3.3 million inseminations a year, so it is a big business. For about 80 percent of the dairy industry, the corporation manages to do the inseminations into these cows. The future profitability lies in the Livestock Improvement Corporation database, I believe, being held by the New Zealand shareholders. The corporation has diversified into international markets, as well, such as Australia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. It is very, very important that we hear from those people who are at the coalface of the industry.

The other thing I wanted to talk about—and Mr Carter has already touched on it, as well—is how it is interesting that Fonterra has signalled an increase in payout of up to $5.56. If the dollar keeps going down, that may increase even higher, as well. This is fantastic for the dairy industry. But we need to be mindful of the fact that the dairy industry has been struggling for a couple of years. It has high debt, and now interest rates and mortgage rates are going up. So dairy farmers have not actually seen these returns yet.

It was so interesting when Mr Bollard came out with his statement, at about the time of the Fieldays. I am sure he had had a cup of tea or coffee with the Minister of Finance, who had probably told him to say: “Look, the dairy industry is why we have to lift the official cash rate another 0.25 percent.” But I do not believe that statement at all. The dairy farmers have not seen that increase in payout yet, and they are unlikely to see it until the end of the 2007-08 season—right through until about April or May—when this money will flow. It is estimated that about $2 billion will go through into provincial, rural New Zealand.

As we are talking about the dairy industry, I will mention something that is very topical. A couple of weekends ago, I was listening to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright when she was having a wide-ranging interview on Radio New Zealand National. Here she was, spouting on about how the dairy industry is causing all this degradation in water quality in New Zealand. Never did she say: “These are the facts.” Never did she quote any study or any scientific research to say that dairy farming is the reason, possibly, for some of the water quality problems in New Zealand. So I am really interested to catch up with Ms Wright and—

Steve Chadwick: She will be at our select committee tomorrow.

NATHAN GUY: Well, the member can ask her these questions for me: where is her scientific knowledge to say that what she said on the radio is actually correct? That is one question I would like answered. What Mrs Chadwick can say to the environment commissioner tomorrow is that dairy farmers right now are up to 97 percent of complying with nutrient budgets, which is fantastic. All the time dairy farmers are very mindful that if there are environmental problems, they need to change those and be mindful of the fact that we export 95 percent of what we produce in this country. A lot of it is on the back of what we have here, and that is an island nation, generally free of pests and all those other harmful things, and we are reasonably clean and green and we are doing a pretty good job at it. Dairy farmers are very, very mindful that we need to do a bit better, but when the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment says farmers are bad and are polluting the waterways, I do not think she can back that up with science. So I would appreciate catching up with Mrs Chadwick tomorrow when she has had a chance to put those questions to her.

The other thing I want to touch on with regard to the environment is Dairy InSight, which is a levy-based organisation. Farmers pay a levy into Dairy InSight, which has signalled that $15 million is going into research and development on a sustainable strategy for the environment and best practice, which I think is fundamentally very, very good. Huge growth is happening in the dairy industry right around the country. Let us look at Southland, I say to David Carter, as an example, which is not far from where he lives. In 1997 there were 285 dairy farms. Now there are 643, with a queue of people looking to convert. Another 50 or 60 are struggling to get builders to build cowsheds down there. It is changing the whole aspect of how Southland operates and putting more and more money into its economy, which I think is fantastic.

So in summary, I cannot understand why the Minister thinks we have to have a mad rush with this bill. He has known for ages that this is coming. We have been quizzing him when he has been in front of the select committee. We have asked: “Where is the bill? When are you going to bring it into the House? When can we start work on it?”, and now it is in here with a very, very tight time frame. We are expected to report back by 31 October.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Do some work.

NATHAN GUY: We do not know how many submissions we will get.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Get up earlier, then.

NATHAN GUY: Mr Cosgrove chips in all the time—the little strutty rooster. If the Minister had any competence, he would have had it in the House in plenty of time. [Interruption] What would that member know about dairy farming? All he does is sit in here and interject, but he does not know what he is talking about. So there is a tight time frame. The members on the other side of the House really do not know what they are talking about with this bill. At the Primary Production Committee we will do our utmost to get the bill back to the House by 31 October, but we should have far more time, and if the Minister was competent and we had a nice little cosy arrangement with the Labour Government, then we would have had more time to work on this very important legislation.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) :Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora anōtātou katoa. For a number of years my whānau and I lived in Taranaki. My wife is from Pūniho and Parihaka, in Taranaki, and every day as we passed by some of the beautiful dairy farms in heartland Taranaki, she would experience a range of emotions. None of them, unfortunately, are addressed in this Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2). I believe that the issues are of sufficient severity that it is impossible to consider this bill without thinking of the original dairy restructuring that occurred following what the Waitangi Tribunal has called the “wrongful confiscation and subsequent bungled return of Taranaki land.”

The context dates back to the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, the two west coast commissions of the 1880s, the West Coast Settlement Reserves Act 1881 and 1892, and eventually the Maori Reserved Land Act 1955, which established a perpetually renewable leasing regime with rents at 5 percent of the unimproved value of the land. The imposition of an unjust leasing regime on the returned land has conclusively been determined as a breach of the Crown’s active duty to protect the rights determined in the Treaty. And so, as we come to this latest piece of legislative change, a bill that is promoted as allowing for greater participation and certainty in the dairy industry, let us remember to consider the concept of greater participation and certainty for tangata whenua who were robbed of the opportunity to enter the dairy industry.

Having done some homework on this bill, I understand that it removes export restrictions from some markets, and allocates export rights to dairy quota markets to a wider group. In essence, this bill allows a wider group of dairy processors to participate in export markets, and the Māori Party supports the opening up of wider opportunities for growth within the dairy industry sector. The Māori Party is also supportive of the concept of future certainty for the industry being provided by export rights becoming available during 2008-10 being allocated for 1 quota year, and those becoming available in 2011 being allocated for terms of 3 quota years.

We are also mindful, of course, that any interested parties on which this policy will impact most will have another opportunity, other than the consultation that occurred at the start of this year, to give feedback to the process through the select committee. Amongst that, we would expect that the 18,000 farming businesses represented by Federated Farmers will want to have a say; they will be pretty keen, and I am also sure that the Federation of Māori Authorities would be keen to offer some comment. Within that, of course, the significant proportion of Māori who are involved in primary industries will have a voice. We know that, as at the 2001 census, 6.4 percent of people involved in the dairy cattle farming sector were Māori—some 2,232. Roughly 20 percent of the population employed in services to agriculture were Māori, as well.

Members may not know that, collectively, Māori are the largest client of Meat and Wool New Zealand, and also of Fonterra and of fertiliser companies. On a monetary basis, more than 50 percent of the $9 billion of commercial assets estimated to be owned by Māori is in the primary industries of farming, forestry, and horticulture. I indicated in an earlier speech that Māori in the farming sector and Māori land - based organisations represent enormous potential for the national economy. So there is an obvious advantage in sending this bill to a select committee to hear from concerned stakeholders, including Māori, in the dairy-farming sector.

I want to return to the large-scale land confiscations that the Crown enforced in the 1860s, in the process depriving many iwi of their economic base. We recognise, too, the enduring impacts of discriminatory land laws and pastoral leaseholding arrangements, which took effect from the 1850s right through to the 1970s, resulting in entrenched alienation of Māori land. The impact of confiscation and alienation was that the prime land, the most fertile, versatile land, was the first to go, leaving only the land with fairly limited potential.

Because of the long-lasting effects of that limited potential, a case was taken by Edward RongomaiiraTāmati and others on behalf of the beneficial owners of land held by Parininihi ki Waitōtara Inc., known as the Wai 790 claim. The findings of the Waitangi Tribunal confirmed that, indeed, the cost of the claimants entering the dairy industry on their land will only increase as “fair value” shares increase in value. The tribunal found further, in its 2001 report, that, first, successive Governments over more than a century had failed to respond to claims for relief; second, that that failure was in itself a breach of the Crown’s duty to protect Treaty rights; and, third, that had the Crown responded in a timely manner, the claimants would have been in a position to enter dairy farming prior to the effects of unbundling becoming apparent. The tribunal’s conclusions were clear: the claimants were prejudiced by the difficulties they will encounter in obtaining sufficient capital to buy shares to ensure a right to supply milk from resumed farms.

Some in this House may question the relevance of the Waitangi Tribunal to the bill. Well, the Waitangi Tribunal labels that whole saga as the “whole sorry business of the Crown’s breaches in Taranaki”, and they have some relevance to this new dairy industry restructuring amendment bill in 2007. How do the principles of participation and certainty promoted in this bill bear any relationship to the situation in Taranaki—or, indeed, any area throughout Aotearoa—of prime farming land that was illegally acquired from tangata whenua? Well, I say it actually has everything to do with it.

I return to the Wai 790 claim for one last reference, which may make the relationship to this bill a little bit clearer. The Waitangi Tribunal summed up the Wai 790 claim by recommending that “the claimants’ opportunity to become dairy farmers in their own right should not have been allowed to diminish but should instead have been actively protected.” That is what it said; there we have it. The Taranaki dairy farm land case study offers this House an opportunity to learn. It tells us that the ability of Māori people to get back into the dairy industry is extremely limited. Māori interest in entering the dairy industry is very limited. Crown inactivity over subsequent Governments has meant that the opportunity to enter the dairy industry has become even more limited. Māori would need access to enormous investment to be able to buy shares based on milk solids and stock.

So we support the passage of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2), on two grounds. Firstly, we want to hear how Māori farming interests will be affected by this bill, how Māori dairy farmers will benefit from our allowing greater participation and certainty into the dairy industry. The second, wider goal is under the cloud of the latest bad report from the United Nations. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination concluded in its New Zealand report that actions undertaken by the Crown “tend to diminish the importance and relevance of the Treaty and to create a context unfavourable to the rights of Maori.” We in the Māori Party are very concerned about this finding, as every other member of this Parliament must be, and it is our absolute commitment to take every opportunity that we can to enhance and consolidate the status of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in every aspect of our work.

There is no time like the present to begin the pursuit of Treaty justice, so the Māori Party will be monitoring the reaction to, and developments of, the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2), with a view to enabling stronger, more confident implementation of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

• Bill read a first time.

Hon RICK BARKER (Minister of Internal Affairs) on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture: I move, That the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 2) be referred to the Primary Production Committee for consideration, that the committee present its final report on or before 31 October 2007, and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during questions for oral answer, and during any evening, after 6 p.m., on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on any Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 192, 195(1)(b), and 195(1)(c).