Choudhary Ashraf: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Choudhary Ashraf: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 17 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7747. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr ASHRAF CHOUDHARY (Labour) 
: 
 I also rise to support this Biosecurity Amendment Bill. It is non-controversial legislation and that can be seen by the fact that no submissions were made on it when it came to the Primary Production Committee. 
I must say that the Primary Production Committee does a good job on the bills that come before it but I do have a concern about an issue that has just been raised by Shane Ardern and it is in relation to SmartGate vis-à-vis travel to Australia. It is a real concern to some of us because people who are travelling can have very good intentions but as we know mistakes can be made. In the past people have unintentionally brought in stuff they should not have brought in. When I recently came back from travelling overseas I was horrified to see two passengers bringing in such stuff one of whom was caught by the dog This couple said that they did not know that they had the stuff which was flowers actually in their suitcase. It was a dangerous thing to do and they were caught by the dog. Another passenger who had been sitting beside me said when she came into the airport that she had some biscuits. She had been eating those biscuits on the journey and she was going to bring in the half-packet she had left. I said: “Look you can’t do that. It is food that you are bringing in.” but she did not even declare it. I had to ask her about it and seriously pose the question as to why she had not declared it if she wanted to bring it in. In the end I made her throw it away in the bin. These are the kinds of things that can happen in our airports and people can unintentionally bring in stuff—in particular fruit of all sorts that could bring in fruit fly. 
This bill is a very important step towards good biosecurity. It is not the end-all for biosecurity but it increases the fines—in particular fines for erroneous declaration and also fines in relation to infringement fees which are increased to $1000. I think that sends an important signal a message to travellers that breaches are not acceptable. This country is a small island we are very much dependent on agriculture and we want to keep New Zealand’s clean green image. 
Sometimes I wonder though with all this stuff coming in intentionally and unintentionally why we have cut the number of front-line biosecurity staff. It is a real shame that 56 staff have been cut. Whenever we come into the country we see huge queues at our border which shows that there are not enough people doing the job at our border. I know that those people do a great job but there are not enough of them. I noticed this myself when there was a 45 to 50-minute queue waiting to get through the X-ray machine. It is clearly an issue. I think that cutting the number of staff in the biosecurity area by 56 is a real nonsense. Clearly it has been done in the name of balancing the budget over 3 years. The passenger clearance director Theresa Morrissey actually mentioned that this had been done in the name of balancing the budget and I do not think that that is good enough. 
Overall we support the bill as I believe everybody in the House does. I think it is important to give a signal to the travelling public that it is not acceptable to bring unwanted organisms pests or weeds etc. into our country which depends on agriculture. We cannot afford to have those organisms.