Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill
Second Reading
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NATHAN GUY (National) : I rise to take a call on the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill, and I say thank goodness the bill went through the Primary Production Committee so that we could tidy it up. It came through in December of last year. On 6 December 2006 the bill had its first reading. It was reported back to Parliament at the end of May this year. It has languished on the Order Paper for about 3½ or 4 months now, and finally it is in front of us. We had six submissions on the bill, and we heard four of them.
In general, the bill is a one-stop shop intended to tidy up the legislation, and we support it. We actually had to do quite a bit of work on the bill in order to get it into a tidy state. I do not need to respond to Mr Roy’s good contribution and to the Hon David Carter’s speech this evening, because I think they have covered a good deal of what is in the bill. I guess we will get into the intricacies of that in the Committee stage.
I think it is worthwhile at the moment to just touch on rural affairs, which this bill is focused on. Damien O’Conner has been left in limbo by the Prime Minister, so right now people in the Beehive will be running around with bits of paper, doing the backslapping, saying: “I am in your camp. I am supporting you.”, and doing a trade-off here and a trade-off there. When we think about it, we realise that all the cockies who may be listening to this debate now—having a cup of coffee and a bit of cake before they head off to get a good night’s sleep before calving and lambing commences in the morning—will be wondering who in Labour will potentially fill the gap on rural affairs. If we think about it, we wonder whom Labour has. If Mr O’Conner loses all his portfolios—corrections, tourism, and rural affairs—then whom does Labour have? Labour members are not going to text Jim Sutton and ask him to come back, are they?
Hon David Carter: Well, they might.
NATHAN GUY: Does the member think they might?
Labour members will be busy sending out texts to rural New Zealanders, asking them to come on board and join the Labour Party, because it has a real shortage of rural people in its caucus. There would be a deathly silence in response to that, I am sure, because rural New Zealand is pretty sceptical about Labour. So we will watch with interest to see whom it can pull in for the 2008 election to support rural New Zealand, because we do not see that happening right now.
The National Party supports this bill. We had to do a bit of work in the select committee in order to get it tidy. In essence, we are really supportive of the 3-yearly review on cost