to little Louise and her upbringing because I think you know there are some really neat things here that are kind of coming through obviously there's work ethic but there's also like sticking with something and the sense of life being you know not guaranteed for anyone but I think some of that hard workingness and the resilience is probably from maybe some of the childhood experiences that you had so I'm keen to understand what did little Louise's childhood look like

one oldest daughter so the oldest daughter always has extra responsibilities but also i have been in the couch with my dad i don't know i was i think it's a picture when i was like two and a half um the story goes is that mum went into labor with my sister four weeks early there was no plan b so dad was like oh well off we go and he was milking and relief milking for a local farmer um who i'm actually still in touch with he's such a dick but Essentially, I had to go.

That was it.

And so I loved it.

I've always loved cows.

I've always loved dairy.

I started relief milking by myself.

And when you can't

Yeah, so the contract milking, I suppose, so this share milking act has not been redone since what, it came into force in 1937, is that correct? And also it got a wee tweaked sometime in the mid-2000s.

So over the course of the last century, it's had several tweaks.

Probably the most substantial one occurred early 90s, which was to change the way a variable order share milk was paid.

Previously, we had three categories.

We had the 29% variability of shear milker, which is probably the most similar to our current contract milker.

We had the 39% shear milker, which was a lot more involved in the day-to-day management of the farm.

And then you had your 50-50.

okay It's interesting, isn't it, because I think in the survey that you did with a lot of those young contract milkers, people moving from being a manager effectively into a contractor, there seemed to be... misunderstanding on both sides from the contract milkers and the farm owners and potentially a power imbalance from the farm owners back towards the contract milkers who are effectively not employees anymore but the farm owners didn't seem to understand that what would you like to see in this review to address that because contract law is quite complex

Louise, can you explain to us then what happens if those agreements, if there's a problem then with that, with the, if there's a dispute, and then going to the next step in terms of trying to come to an agreement or getting a, an outcome from that?

Okay, so the disputes process in that agreement are varied and interesting.

So but the first step is essentially notifying of a breach.

Now most people don't do that correctly, and that causes the problems later.

The next step is that you essentially get lawyers involved.

They go and argue back and forward, and your client is always right when you're a lawyer.

And so as long as the other lawyer can continue to push your lawyer and drive up the bill before it leads to specifically going to conciliation or mediation, that can blow things out pretty quickly and timeframes get completely blown out of the water.

Like, how does the order and the act, how do they fit together, and how do, how do we go about getting those changed?