Foss backs local growers fearful of overseas produce dumping

POINT MADE: Craig Foss, pictured at an election meeting last year, has written a letter sharing fruit-industry concerns over possible relaxation of anti-dumping controls on imported produce. PHOTO/FILE

Government MP Craig Foss has vowed support for Hawke's Bay fruitgrowers worried about threats posed by possible relaxation of controls on dumping of overseas produce in New Zealand.

The support was pledged in a letter the Hastings-based MP for Tukituki prepared for a meeting of growers and other concerned parties at Wattie's in Hastings yesterday.

The food conglomerate in June lodged a 17-page opposition to the introduction of a "Bounded Public Interest Test and Automatic Termination Period into the New Zealand Anti-Dumping and Countervailing Duties Regime".

The change could remove duties for the dumping of goods on the New Zealand market and sales that severely undercut domestic product.

Cabinet has already agreed in principle to the changes and put the proposal out for consultation, with those opposed voicing fears for the future of Hawke's Bay's $15 million golden queen peach industry.

Mr Foss, the Minister of Veterans Affairs, who is in Turkey representing New Zealand at the Battle of Chunuk Bair centennial, said in the letter: "I am fully aware of the potential negative impact on you, Bay families, and businesses, if the Automatic Termination Period provisions of any dumping protection is brought in.

"I am also very concerned at the massive uncertainty any 'gap' in protection, between successful anti-dumping protection applications will create," he said.

"Such uncertainty and anxiousness is, to me, unacceptable. I have made your concerns, which are also my concerns, very clear to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs (Paul Goldsmith)."

He was confident Mr Goldsmith, Primary Industries minister Nathan Guy and the Government "fully understand your anxiousness, and how strongly you rightly feel about this issue".

Mr Foss said Mr Goldsmith had stressed no final decisions had been made, and that responses during the consultation process had "most certainly not gone unnoticed".

"As your Hawke's Bay MP, I will continue to speak regularly to Minister Goldsmith on this issue and will take every opportunity to reinforce to him the views you have expressed."

Mr Foss said officials have now presented "a number of options" to ministers.

"The Government will discuss the issue, take on board all of the points raised, and make its decision in the coming weeks," Mr Foss said.

"I will continue to push back on the ATP proposal."

Mr Foss said Fruitgrowers president Lesley Wilson, Heinz Wattie's managing director Mike Pretty and agronomist Bruce Mackay had done an excellent job on behalf of the industry to show how the proposal could impact not only the peach industry in the Bay, but also the pear industry and the processing plant in Hastings.