Goudie Sandra: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Goudie Sandra: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:7053] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (NZ National—Coromandel) 
: It is good to be able to speak to clause 2. I would like to talk about the commencement date. It is an absolute tragedy that this bill has a commencement date of maybe tomorrow or maybe 2 weeks from now. This should have been— 
Brent Catchpole 
: It should have been 2 years ago. 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: Absolutely. It should have been 2 years ago in 2001. It is an absolute tragedy that it has had to wait as long as this. We fully understand the importance of biosecurity on this side of the Chamber—that is my colleagues over here excluding the ones over there and we all know to whom I am referring. This commencement date is a tragedy. Only 7 months ago we had several reports on biosecurity—I have a pile of press releases here about incursions. Here is one from 9 January which talks about New Zealand being ill-prepared to meet any looming biosecurity threat. Here is another one from January: “Eye out for agriterror” stating that how New Zealand reacts is a key to dealing with agricultural contamination. It is a huge issue for New Zealand. The consequences are absolutely enormous and I will elucidate on that later in my presentation. I am sure I will probably far exceed the 5 minutes allotted to me. 
Here is another one on 17 January: “Search intensifies for foreign mozzie”. Of course members have heard my learned colleague speak about the range of pests. I am sure I will be forced at some stage to go through that list again but for the moment we are talking about the headline “Search intensifies for foreign mozzie” on 17 January. So far I have hit only January and that is three press releases already. There are still a lot more. Here is another one for January so this is the fourth one: “Man admits importing tussock moth eggs”. Here is a gentleman actually importing them so that is another one that was missed. This is the absolute— 
David Parker 
: No we caught it. How else was it reported? 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: I beg the member’s pardon? “Man admits importing tussock moth eggs”—this is one that was caught. How many more are actually getting through? So far we have four press releases for January alone. I cannot remember any other time in the history of my time in agriculture that we have ever had incursions to this degree and the Government has allowed this Biosecurity Amendment Bill to languish on the shelves for 2 whole years while this has been going on. We had four activities in January alone. Now I will move on to February: “Auckland to battle the eucalypt leaf moth”. Then here we go on 27 February in the  
Dominion Post 
: “Another moth gets out”.  
This reminds me of one of the problems they have with the painted apple moth in Auckland. I remember when they first wanted to do something about the painted apple moth. There was a whole heap of resistance to the initial spraying round. Where did that resistance come from? It came from the Green Party if I recall. Oh it came from the Greens certainly the real fundamentalist greenies who did not understand the importance of immediate eradication and did not want to understand the huge impact not only on the rural sector but on the nation’s economy affecting all the people of the nation. I have the substantial figures here. The net present value of the estimated impact of this painted apple moth is $58 million to $364 million. That is the impact and what did the Greens want to do? They wanted to gather the painted apple moths together. They wanted to burn them and sprinkle their ashes in the neighbourhood in the hope that the rest of the painted apple moths would go away. But where would they go? They would just go away into another neighbourhood. This is the type of suggestion the Greens are making.