Mapp Wayne: Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mapp Wayne: Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:609;Page:6960] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (NZ National—North Shore) 
: I wish to speak specifically on two issues found in new sections 3A and 3B inserted by clause 9 concerning the prohibition of exports and the conditional prohibition of exportation. I know that my colleagues have some very thoughtful and considered amendments for those sections which I would like to speak on later. 
I ask members to think of this situation: a lawful activity occurs in New Zealand that results in the production of the goods to be exported. We then have to ask why we would be lawfully producing these goods in New Zealand but then prohibiting their export. It seems a far more sensible and proper approach if there is a concern about the environment—and this is in essence what this legislation is about—to prohibit the production of the goods in the first instance. That presumably is where the mischief is caused. I cannot believe that it would be the intent of the Government to allow New Zealand businesses to produce goods for internal and domestic consumption or to use those goods within the industrial process but then not to allow those goods to be exported. 
Surely we should have a principled approach that says if the goods are permissible in New Zealand then they are permissible for export. If that is not the position then I feel we have done exactly what the Hon Ken Shirley raised—signed up to a series of international conventions that on the face of it look well intentioned. I note that they specifically focus on persistent organic products that get bound into the food chain in particular and I guess most people would recognise the dangers of those; that seems rational. But surely those goods are also prohibited from being manufactured in New Zealand. That is the question I would like the Minister to address. 
What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to prevent exports or are we trying to prevent the production of those goods? There should be a single test and that test should be: if the goods are genuinely dangerous to the environment in any shape or form then the production itself should be banned. I can think of dioxin as a particularly good example of that as it is a persistent organic product that one would want to prevent from being produced or admitted into the environment. After all the explanatory note states that: “Persistent organic pollutants (POPs)”—and dioxins and those kinds of products are included in that category—“are amongst the most highly toxic substances on Earth. They are transported by ocean and air currents and bioaccumulate in the tissues of living organisms. There are clear human health and environmental advantages to their substantial reduction and elimination where feasible.” 
That is all very well and good and I think generally acknowledged as a desirable outcome. The approach that I would commend to the Committee is to ban their production. Thereby that will necessarily mean we do not get exports because we cannot export something we cannot create in the first instance. What is now raised by the structure of the legislation is the prospect that we can quite lawfully produce things in New Zealand but we cannot export them. 
I turn to another point. The view is often taken that for instance plastic bags are a terrible pollutant but in fact they are not. They are an efficient use of resources. The mass of an individual plastic bag is vastly less than a paper bag. It is hugely less. It would be in the order of one-twentieth in weight terms. Plastic bags take less energy to produce they are more useful for the purpose for which they are manufactured and when they are disposed of—presumably in a landfill—we have lost virtually no resources at all.