I became a junior Minister and Associate Minister in 1998 and was privileged then to be part of the discussions as these two major cooperatives came before the then National Government and talked about trying to amalgamate Kiwi and New Zealand Dairy Group to create a company which at that stage was unnamed but later became known as Fonterra. Of course, the Government was then challenged with making sure that we established some competition to allow Fonterra to establish, and yet allow the industry to develop, to mature for other players to come into the industry. I recall long, long discussions with some of those dairy stalwarts at the time: John Storey, Sir Dryden Spring, John Roadley; the Prime Minister, Jim Bolger, was heavily involved; Ministers like Bill Birch and particularly the senior agriculture Minister at the time, the Hon John Luxton. 