Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on this bill. I have not been part of the process that the Minister Kieran McAnulty has just described but National does support this bill. In our estimate it is a bill worth supporting because it's really important that hazard classifications are accurate and up to date and it's equally as important for new substances as it is for substances that have been around for a while for the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to take another look at those. So National understands the rationale for what on the face of it seems to be a really practical bill. Anything that speeds up regulatory processes albeit with due checks and balances and safety has to be a good thing. It's estimated that the Environmental Protection Authority is responsible for managing more than 150000 hazardous substances under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act so it's quite a significant role that they undertake.I think the important thing that I have seen in terms of looking through the discussions that have been had on the bill and the bill itself is that really it enables better use of information from international regulators. This is important for the reason that you know if I actually think across a lot of things that people are now starting to ask to be regulated to use fall into the environmental climate change areas of where we operate with our agricultural systems. You know we need to make sure that those substances are safe for our environment safe for our country. But there's something that always seems to come into question every time we discuss this: that if international regulators have had a look at some of these substances and they consider them safe for human use its's really good that our EPA is going to start taking some notice of those things as they cross borders. Actually humans are humans wherever they may live and if there is a safe human factor then I think it's hugely important that some of the background work that's been done in other countries if deemed to be safe across international regulators—that we are able to take account of it. We're quite good in this country at times at reinventing the wheel and actually we're a small population compared to the rest of the world and we have other regulators that are much bigger and have much more resource in terms of being able to assess some of these products.There are other improvements to the reassessment process and it seems from reading this that some of the chemicals and substances that are being reassessed—it's taking a very long time to be able to reassess those. We know from history that if we think about some of the chemicals and substances that have been used in the past and the issues that we've had with those we certainly don't want any more hold-up in terms of making sure that these are safe and environmentally friendly and if the continued use of those is going on and we don't have the ability to speed up the processes to assess them then we certainly have a problem.The EPA for those who are listening out in New Zealand today is the regulator that's responsible for making decisions on whether to improve new hazardous substances. I've had a few conversations with people over the last little while about some substances that may be very useful for eliminating things such as—or lowering methane emissions from agricultural ruminant animals. You know I think that speeding up the process and taking into account the human factors around those sorts of things is very important if we want to stay ahead of the world as a nation in terms of how we produce and how we are very climate effective now. If we have a regulator that is slow and unable to follow due process in a meaningful and timely manner compared to other parts of the world we certainly risk getting left behind.So those really I think are the key points in this bill and I don't really see any point in labouring out another five minutes on it because I think it's very clear: let's pass this bill. We don't want to be the hold-up to any processes that might give us the opportunity to get some products in this country that might solve some of our other issues. Thank you Mr Speaker.