COLIN KING MP for Kaikoura

New Zealand seafood is a premium product and five important projects focusing on aquaculture will benefit from the latest round of Sustainable Framing Fund Grants.

The projects being granted funds cover wide ranging projects including farming premium salmon to Koura aquaculture (developing best-practice guidelines for raising fresh water crayfish), short-fin eel aquaculture (learning more about young glass short-fin eels so they can be raised successfully and sustainably) and management of the GLM9 green lipped mussel spat resource.
 
Managing the wild greenlipped mussel spat resource is of particular importance to mussel farmers here in Marlborough. Which brings me back to what has been happening in the Sounds in recent times.  
 

This is a particularly special time of the year, especially for those on the treasury benches. These people set the budget, something that has a big influence on every man, woman and child in New Zealand.
While opposition parties make all sorts of wild promises, they cannot carry them out because they don’t have the authority or the finances to implement them.

Last month a total of $8.8 million was awarded in funding for 42 sustainable farming projects.

These projects are driven from grassroots and will help to improve economic and environmental performance. This co-funding will make a real difference to rural communities because it focuses on community driven initiatives to address common problems.

All the initiatives that have received funding are highly appropriate and some are essential for successful farming in North Canterbury into the future.

Stopping the Chilean needle grass (CNG) invasion is one issue I have promoted in Marlborough and the Hurunui.  My efforts alongside the Marlborough District Council, ECan and the local committee group, chaired by Charles Wiffen, have included attending field days with Charles and the ECan commissioners, helping me elevate the issue with the Minister of Primary Industries. Somewhere up the track we really do need to have a national strategy to eradicate this pest.
 

In recent correspondence it was suggested that this government is giving away land for water storage in the Hurunui. There is no giving away of land, no move to sacrifice what our forebears once fought for – all that I am advocating for is a change of land use for water storage. Water storage that will green the Hurunui and make it more viable for farming of all types. Water storage isn’t a nod to intensification but rather a means of ensuring our rural communities prosper into the future.
  

New vehicle rules are set to reduce costs in the rural sector. I have advocated strongly on behalf of local agricultural contractors, firm in the belief they should be given special consideration. Today very few farmers own all the equipment that they need to till, cultivate, plant and harvest in the technologically sophisticated way modern farming demands. The contractors’ gear needs to move from farm to farm and for reasons such as this, the new rules for agricultural vehicles are timely.

Recent news from government has been good news for farmers. In mid-April Nathan Guy welcomed 30 new vets into the 2013 intake of the Rural Veterinary Bonding Scheme. This scheme is into its fifth year and making good headway in tackling the rural vet shortage.

We now have a robust number of vets which, in the first instance will manage the health and wellbeing of our animals, but most importantly will provide a biosecurity ‘safety net’. Rural vets are part of the front line defence when it comes to identifying biosecurity problems.

Minister Ryall after the Chruchill Trust Hospital opening with Dominic Ramano left and Hamish Matheson right.

It’s always a very positive experience to have cabinet ministers visit Marlborough and over recent weeks I have hosted two, Tony Ryall and Nathan Guy.

Tony Ryall, Minister of Health, was here for the official opening of the Churchill Trust, an exceptional asset for Marlborough that will provide top quality elective health services while delivering extra income for our hospital and assisting in the retention of specialist services in Marlborough.
The new Churchill Trust facility is twice its previous size and while it provided some 1400 operations for Marlburians last year, it now has the capacity to double that number. In the context of the Wairau Hospital redevelopment, we are well placed to utilise the additional third theatre. The private/public service arrangement that exists between the Churchill Trust and Wairau Hospital is one of only two examples in New Zealand and is both innovative and positive for the province.