Fitzsimons Jeanette: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:818] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 The Green Party will not be supporting this amendment bill not because we are opposed to the concept of group standards which are actually quite a sensible way to proceed—contrary to what the previous speaker just said this amendment does actually reduce costs and compliance for users of hazardous chemicals—but because it is the final closing of a window of opportunity to make the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act work in the way it was originally intended. 
I want to give the House a wee bit of history because there may not be many people here whose memories go back quite so far. The Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act came out of considerable concern in the late 1980s and early 1990s that our system for managing hazardous substances was a mess. We had a raft of overlapping and inconsistent legislation such as the Pesticides Act the Toxic Substances Act the Dangerous Goods Act and numerous others that imposed a sloppy inconsistent and not comprehensive regime on the management of hazardous substances. The Act was a very good idea. One of the things that led to that perception was the work I did in 1984 for the Auckland Regional Council on the management of hazardous activities in the Auckland region that showed up some of these legislative imperfections. 
Be that as it may the legislation was drafted to bring all hazardous substances under one umbrella and to provide a process whereby substances that were already approved could be transferred across to the new legislation with new sets of conditions that brought them into the modern world that were consistent with international practice and that discovered and got rid of environmental risks in the process. That is exactly what has not happened because the process since the Act was brought in has been for hazardous substances simply to be transferred from their old legislation across to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act without any major review of whether they should be registered at all and with very little review of the conditions under which they should be registered. 
What makes this worse is that this actually creates a right in perpetuity to use a particular substance no matter what science might show in the future about its appropriateness no matter what public opinion might be in the future about its appropriateness and no matter what new chemicals might be found that would do a better job for less environmental cost. The problem is that once this regime is complete—once the substances are transferred and are under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act—the substances cannot be reviewed by the Environmental Risk Management Authority except at huge cost to the public purse. This Act is supposed to parallel the Resource Management Act which gives planning permission for certain actions that affect the environment. But under the Resource Management Act the maximum length of time that one can have a consent is 35 years. Under this Act it is forever. Once a person obtains permission to use say DDT—it is not used any longer—it is forever and the only way that can be changed is totally at the cost of the public purse. I do not think Michael Cullen realises the costs to the Crown that are being imposed by this regime. 
There was an opportunity here and this was put to the Education and Science Committee and to the Minister for the Environment—I put it to the Minister myself—to provide that if there is not time for the Environmental Risk Management Authority to review properly all the substances that are in transition then they should be given short-term registration under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act and a review provided at the expense of the applicants. They could be given 10 years and after that time the authority could at its discretion roll over the consent or it could decide that it is one that needs to be looked at and needs to go through a review at the expense of the applicant. That has not happened despite all the arguments that were put to the Minister and to the select committee. 
That means that one of two things will happen. One is that old chemicals that are no longer appropriate without the conditions that are appropriate in the modern world without international best practice will continue to be registered and used here in preference to the new ones coming on the market internationally because new ones coming on the market internationally will have to be registered at the cost of the applicant whereas the old ones just carry on regardless. New Zealand is a small market. We cannot expect innovative chemicals that might have lower environmental costs but do the same job to be registered here if the applicants have to pay but they do not have to pay for a reassessment of the old out-of-date chemicals. So this measure will stifle innovation and will increase risk to the environment. 
The alternative is that the Environmental Risk Management Authority will conduct a number of reassessments at a cost to the Crown of probably something in the order of $1 million every time it happens because it is a public process and it is not funded to do that. So either there will be some big Budget bids from the authority which will make Michael Cullen blanch in order to review a number of these chemicals which the authority already knows ought to be reviewed and which the authority already knows are under unsuitable conditions or should be deregistered—either there will be that cost to the Crown—or the risk to the environment will continue. There could have been an easy remedy in this bill: the consents could have been time limited. 
We also have this absurd contradiction where the Ministry for the Environment has advised the Minister that this bill has got to get through before Christmas because there is a time limit in the Act that everything has to be transferred by July next year. The legislation needs to go through so that the Environmental Risk Management Authority can do them in groups because it cannot meet that deadline otherwise. And we have advice from the Environmental Risk Management Authority that the deadline cannot be met anyway. In its briefing to the incoming Minister it said that the July deadline will have to be extended. So if the July deadline has to be extended why are we rushing this bill through before Christmas and why are we not having a good look at giving time-limited consents rather than perpetual property rights to pollute? 
I note that the Supplementary Order Paper that we have picked up this morning does not actually extend the time limit from July next year so I am wondering whether we will get a second Supplementary Order Paper to do that or whether the Environmental Risk Management Authority’s advice that it cannot do it by July is being disregarded—in which case what kind of mess are we going to be in? There is going to be even less scrutiny as the authority transfers all these substances across in huge haste without any proper look at the conditions under which they are registered. 
We are talking here about the sorts of substances that cause long-term human illness that cause long-term environmental harm if they are not used properly and if people are exposed to them when they should not be. It is always a Faustian bargain where humans use dangerous chemicals for useful purposes but how much environmental risk does one accept in doing that? Obviously this regime aims to make sure that the most lethal substances are not registered at all that the most environmentally appropriate ones for the purpose are registered and that the set of conditions under which they are registered gives one maximum protection for the environment. This measure is not going to do that. This means that the old Pesticides Act the old Toxic Substances Act and the old Hazardous Goods Act live on in disguise under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act because substances have been transferred to the new legislation with the conditions set under the old legislation and we do not really have a new comprehensive modern regime for hazardous substances at all.