Ardern Jacinda: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) — In Committee[Sitting date: 19 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2465. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I have been looking forward to my opportunity to speak on the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4). Given that we are in the Committee stage I hope that the Chair will indulge me while I delve in a little more detail into some of the specific amendments that we are making in the Committee today. You will forgive me that of the 32 parts that we are debating I have decided—Hon David Parker: 33.JACINDA ARDERN: Thirty-three; excuse me. I have decided to skip over the first the Animal Welfare Act amendment around search warrants. But I would like because it took my attention to delve a little more into Part 2 “Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act 1994” mostly because of what some might call my obsessive—others would just be fair and call it keen—interest in Antarctica and Antarctic exploration. So this caught my eye. I wanted to talk a little bit about the changes that we are making to the Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act. Of course the premise of a statutes amendment bill is that everything you do tends to be non-controversial. That does not mean that it is not interesting. So I want to go to section 28 of the Act because that is where the amendment is that we are making.Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga: Really?JACINDA ARDERN: Yes really—follow along Minister. You might learn something. You of course will already know this as the Minister has taken an intense interest. Under section 28 of the Antarctica (Environmental Protection) Act there is a provision in there—and I will read it quickly—that sets out what you are not allowed to take into the protected areas and for good reason. So it states: “No person shall—(a) enter or carry out any activity in an Antarctic Specially Protected Area; or (b) take or attempt to take any native bird or native mammal in Antarctica;”. You see that it is actually quite a reasonably narrow range. You cannot take or attempt to take any native bird or native mammal. What about the native invertebrates—what about the native invertebrates? So rightly so the Statutes Amendment—Hon David Parker: What about the albatross?JACINDA ARDERN: The albatross? Well you cannot attempt to take out an albatross at the moment. So thankfully there has been the good foresight by—I am assuming Antarctica New Zealand probably put this proposal forward. Perhaps the Minister can tell me who proposed it. Thankfully anything that has no backbone or spinal column—because of course that is the definition of a native invertebrate—will no longer be able to be removed from Antarctica. There are so many things I could say about that. I will act in a restrained manner and not make jokes about not removing National Party members from Antarctica any more. But that is one of the things that for instance the Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) is doing. We are making sure that there are certain native species now that cannot be removed from Antarctica.That does raise a question though. Going down to clause 6(2) the bill is also adding a little bit of a disclaimer clause. Any politician will know that when you are not sure that you have covered everything you add in something like “including but not limited to”. That is what we are doing in clause 6(2) where it says you cannot “(e) introduce onto land or ice shelves or sea ice or into water in Antarctica any living organism (including but not limited to any species of animal plant or micro-organism) not native to that area;”.Hon David Parker: What about Shackleton’s ponies?JACINDA ARDERN: Shackleton’s ponies—you cannot take them back in. So we have added a disclaimer there I imagine just to make sure we have got a cover-all. My question is and I hope that the Minister will respond to this: why we have not done that for the amendment that we have then made underneath that? In clause 6(3) it says: “After section 28(1)(e) insert—(ea)”. I will read what we have currently got now. Again it is just simply limiting what we are unable to take in. They have listed again living birds for instance as one of the listed things. But why should we not put again that disclaimer statement in there of “but not limited to” to make sure that we do not have to come back again and add another thing to the list? Basically what we are saying is do not take anything in and do not take anything out. So why would we not consistently draft through that provision to make sure we have got that cover-all I guess in there?Finally we have got an amendment to section 28(3) of the Act. At the moment it says: “No person shall import into Antarctica any dressed poultry knowing that an inspection in accordance with the Protocol revealed evidence of any disease …”. We are replacing that “dressed poultry” with “poultry or avian products”. I actually do not know what the difference is with “dressed poultry”. I do not know whether anyone in the Chamber would care to enlighten me—perhaps the Minister. [Bell rung] Oh there is more Mr Chairperson. I would be interested to see what the difference is there. But we are now removing an entire appendix that sets out the diseases that you cannot knowingly bring in a bird with. We are removing that; we are just covering ourselves with “poultry or avian products”. Just a nice—Tim Macindoe: I can’t believe you’re talking about this Jacinda.JACINDA ARDERN: This is interesting stuff Tim. So we are just doing a cover-all provision. I am just demonstrating that I have done my homework and read what we are actually doing in this Committee today.Hon David Parker: What impact would this have had on historical exploration?JACINDA ARDERN: If we had this at the time of historical exploration we certainly probably would have had a lot more of them perishing much sooner—a good point you raise Mr Parker.I know everyone is waiting with bated breath until I get to Part 3 “Biosecurity Act 1993”. I have got a few questions there as well. We are amending the zones that these provisions relate to. At the moment the meaning of “craft risk management standard” applies only to territory. We are now inserting the exclusive economic zone. That is the right thing to do—a simple amendment.But I have a few more questions though around the amendments to section 110 of the Biosecurity Act which I will pull up now. In section 110(1) of the principal Act which is what we are amending at the moment it states that when getting a warrant to inspect a dwelling house or marae “An issuing officer (within the meaning of section 3 of the Search and Surveillance Act 2012)”—again we are fixing up some quite recent legislation—“may on an application made in the manner provided by subpart 3 … of that Act by an inspector or authorised person issue a warrant authorising the inspector or authorised person to enter and inspect the dwellinghouse marae or building associated with a marae specified in the application.” So basically it is handing down the delegation for issuing a warrant. At the moment we are referring to authorising “the inspector or authorised person”. Obviously there has been a problem with the way that has been drafted because now in our statutes amendment legislation we are replacing “authorising the inspector or authorised person” with “authorising every inspector and authorised person”.My question to the Minister is this: have there been occurrences where the warrants undertaken by these inspectors or authorised persons have been deemed null and void because of the way this has been drafted? Because we are now doing a cover-all provision that says every inspector will be covered when before it used the word “the”. Have we actually had a situation that has been brought to the attention of the Minister by biosecurity enforcers where they have either had their warrant questioned or subsequent to engaging that warrant whatever they have found has been for instance ruled null and void because of the way this has been drafted? I think it is a reasonable question because the changes that were made as part of the Search and Surveillance Act were reasonable. There was an extension of powers there and this raises the question as to whether or not those officers acted in an authorised way according to the legislation when they exercised those powers based on what we are doing here today.Then I move on to section 142A. This section of the Act basically sets out how the Director-General can establish a biosecurity database and where they are able to get their information from when they establish a database. Currently information in the public domain can be used to form that database. The Statutes Amendment Bill (No 4) is changing the phrase “public domain” to information that is “publicly available”—interesting. I would be interested to hear the legal difference in definition between “public domain” and “publicly available”. You never know; it may affect our Standing Orders and the ability to table documents. If the Minister could speak to that question I would be very interested indeed. I will leave to my next colleague the privilege of speaking to the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Act because I have no doubt they will find just as many interesting matters to comment on as we progress through the Committee stage of this debate.