Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Primary Industries Ministry scrapped

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The Ministry for Primary Industries is being scrapped with a stripped down agriculture ministry and a range of special purpose bodies likely to replace it.
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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed the ministry would go because it was not fit for purpose.

In her list of Cabinet appointments Damien O’Connor was named as agriculture minister.

He would also have the biosecurity, food safety and rural communities as separate portfolios. O’Connor would also associate minister for trade and export growth.

Napier MP Stuart Nash was named as fisheries minister and former Labour man and now NZ First MP Shane Jones would be responsible for fisheries and regional development.

Ardern revealed widespread changes would be made to the super ministry created by National.

It has long criticised the inclusion of biosecurity and food safety as ministry functions.

Ardern said there was now a real need to prioritise separate aspects of the primary sector.

“MPI will be gone in the form that it currently is,” she said.

Ardern said the Government would be “more aspirational on export growth” and Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker would work closely with O’Connor given that agriculture represented a large part of NZ’s export sector.

The link between the two ministers was likely to extend beyond trade.

With Parker as environment minister he would have a role in determining land use and therefore a major hand in determining the future growth of the primary sector.

Ardern said she appointed Jones to regional development to drive a strategy to create jobs in the regions and be responsible for the new Regional Development Fund.

The decision to link regional development, infrastructure and forestry was the precursor for dividing the primary industries portfolio along its traditional lines of agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

Outside Cabinet, Labour MP for Ikaroa-Rawhiti, Meka Whaitiri would be associate minister of agriculture.

Whaitiri had sought a primary industries role, saying recently that fishing, forestry and farming was everything Maori people work in.

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