Ardern Shane: Biosecurity (Status of Specified Ports) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Procedure Third Reading 
Ardern Shane: Biosecurity (Status of Specified Ports) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Procedure Third Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:853] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 First of all Madam Assistant Speaker can I take this opportunity to wish you and your fellow presiding officers a merry Christmas because I may not have that chance on the last day of Parliament. 
I thank the Minister for Biosecurity for in his first job as Minister playing catch-up with his Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry over what clearly has been an oversight. The National Party will be supporting the Minister in his endeavours. I totally agree with the Minister’s comment made at the Biosecurity Summit when he quoted a former Prime Minister of Australia Gough Whitlam who as Opposition leader had said: “The new Minister is of a calibre above that of the previous Minister.” When responding to an interjection about what that meant he said: “He is a bigger bore than the previous Minister.” So I congratulate the Minister on acknowledging that right upfront. 
I tell the Minister that there are a number of issues that he will need to address very quickly. Not only will he have to fix up this measure and have it passed on 13 December—it is 14 December already but in the time-honoured fashion of the House when in urgency it stays in the day that the urgency started; so the Minister is already a day behind in terms of what he is trying to achieve—but also he will have to do something about the major biosecurity problems we have in this country. Thus far every single piece of rhetoric I have heard from this Minister tends to indicate there is no progress on that whatsoever. 
Clause 4 inserts new section 184A which basically does what the Minister outlined and it does need to happen. But given that he has been able through the process that has brought him to introduce this bill to see that there are quite a few holes as it were in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry will he be doing something to fix up some of the other vacuums or shortcomings in the rest of his portfolio mix? When he made a speech to Federated Farmers and told them there was absolutely no logical reason to have a biosecurity strategy in place before an incursion took place—in fact I think he said it was illegal to have a strategy in place before an incursion took place—did he know then that that is within his power? Clearly he does not know that. If that is the case perhaps he should get a briefing from his officials; they will tell him that the law provides that he must in some cases have a strategy in place before there is an incursion. That is yet another gap in the law or in the Minister’s knowledge—I am not sure. As far as I understand the law there must be a strategy in place before there is an incursion in a number of areas. I give but one: the potential foot-and-mouth threat that this country is under all the time. There is within the law a power for the Minister to make sure a strategy is in place before there is an incursion. So I am really curious about what the Minister was referring to when he made that comment. 
The pest management strategy that his ministry has in place appears to be fairly robust in that area. Unfortunately it is not robust in a number of other areas. During the process of this bill—and research obviously has gone on therein—the Minister might have a look at what other gaps there may be in the law and bring those to Parliament so that the people of New Zealand can be confident that this Minister is on top of his portfolio. There certainly is no evidence of it thus far. 
I want to quote to the Minister section 69A of the Act: “A national pest management strategy must specify the following matters: (a) The pest or pests to be managed or eradicated:”. That throws up another question. Given that the Minister presumably knew that and we have had a couple of incursions just recently—namely sea squirt and didymo—was the Minister aware that under the Act he is required to try first of all to eradicate? We can see from the outcome now that both those incursions appear to be permanent residents in New Zealand and will be devastating not only to our biodiversity but potentially to our aquafarming economy that the Minister himself may have slipped up in that regard by not doing what is required under the Biosecurity Act which he is required to work under. Maybe the Minister has a different view of that; I am sure he does. 
 So when he says in speeches at biosecurity summits Federated Farmers conferences and other such places where he has spoken as the new Minister for Biosecurity that it would be stupid—I think that is the language he used—to employ funds in the area of a biosecurity strategy before we have an incursion—[ 
Interruption 
] It might be a good idea if the Minister checked the Act he is supposed to be working under to find out the reason his warrant has been given to him. 
I give the Minister yet another example of failure—by his predecessor—and that was the case of the varroa bee mite. Once again there was a surveillance process there was a biosecurity advance strategy and neither was used. It was a wait and see situation; the Government would not throw money around willy-nilly so it just waited to see whether that organism could live in New Zealand. Perhaps the Government hoped that a cold snap would freeze it out or something like that. Maybe the Government had people sit down at the port with a fly swatter to try to catch the organism on the way through. That sort of approach has failed and the cost to this country is billions of dollars. We have yet to establish what the cost of the didymo outbreak will be but I suspect that it could be billions of dollars. So I say to the Minister that while we fiddle while the house burns as it were and fix up what is obviously a shortcoming within his own department he might want to go back and look at some of the other major gaps within his department to see whether there is something he can do about them. 
There has been a 93 percent increase in the number of passengers coming into New Zealand—I am just telling the Minister this because I am sure he does not know. There has been a 40 percent increase in the number of cargo movements—containers and suchlike. That is the reason why we are far more at risk today—and all that is good because it shows there is growth in the economy—than we have ever been before. For the Minister to sit there and say we have the best biosecurity in the world is just not good enough because it does not take into account all that extra traffic and extra risk. The Minister will tell us how many more millions of dollars have been put into biosecurity since 1999 but he will never quote how much extra passenger and cargo traffic there has been. He will not mention that. There has been a 96 percent increase in container movements alone. Did the Minister know that? He did not know that. The last time he was anywhere near a port was when he was at the airport coming into Wellington. He had no idea that was the case. 
So the amount that the Government has put in percentage-wise compared to the increase in traffic is miniscule and the Minister knows it. He needs to go back and use his now-elevated position as No. 1 in a caucus of one use that horsepower to beat up the Minister of Finance and say that the biggest single risk to this country is the threat to our biosecurity. Of course the Minister will make light of it and of course the Minister of Finance will spit him out like he does all the other ill-prepared Ministers who turn up and do not know their portfolios. 
Here is a figure that the Minister will not be aware of: 16000 tonnes of foreign ballast water are estimated to be discharged into New Zealand waters each year. The question we need to ask is how the sea squirt got here. Well 16000 tonnes of foreign ballast water is discharged into New Zealand each year. The Minister should fix it while he has a chance.