Donnelly Brian: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Donnelly Brian: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:613;Page:10127] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 In rising to speak on behalf of New Zealand First on this bill I note how amazingly responsibilities seem to grow around this place. When the royal commission reported back and New Zealand First had only five members I put up my hand and volunteered that I would go through the issues and report back to our caucus about the position we should take on GE vis-à-vis the royal commission report. Now every time we get a bill that has anything to do with hazardous substances I get: “That’s yours Brian. You’ve got to look after that Brian.” 
Nevertheless this is the other side of the hazardous substances and new organisms equation. It is not to do with GE but to do with hazardous substances. It is about protecting our environment and our people so it really is worthwhile getting one’s mind around the issues. They are far too important to get wrong because they will affect our lives our people and our country. That is why I am somewhat concerned about the report-back date being 13 February 2004. The Education and Science Committee certainly took the attitude towards the New Organisms and Other Matters Bill that we wanted to do our very very best to get it right and sometimes it takes some time to hear all the submissions. I raise that in relation to this particular issue at this point in time. 
Whilst we are talking about the very important issues of the future the safety and the health of our nation I say that it is possible to have paralysis by fear. In other words we do nothing because we are too scared of making some mistakes that might affect our environment or anything else. That is certainly what Dr Hutchison was alluding to in his speech concerning the New Organisms and Other Matters Bill. I think we had the balance right in that case and we have to make sure we have the balance right with this bill. 
There is a simple way to ensure there is no danger from hazardous substances. All we have to do is ban them completely from our borders and not have anything to do with any substances that have hazards attached to them. But the stupidity of that proposal is obvious. We have some 80000 hazardous substances in New Zealand at this time and while most of them—in fact all of them—bring benefits to the nation they also bring risks. The answer therefore has to be to establish a system that will manage the risk. One way of doing that is to have the Government set all the rules and regulations. It can look at each hazardous substance and decide whether we can have it and under what conditions. Once again such a bureaucratic system would atrophy the country and its operation. 
 Or we can set up a process a system to ensure that we progress the benefits and also that we manage the risks as best as possible. It is the latter course that New Zealand is pursuing and has been pursuing since the establishment of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. This bill is really a further step down the track. Previously existing hazardous substances were subject to controls under separate Acts and some transitional approaches had to be made. What this bill does is streamline the approach to move from the transitional period into a permanent new period for the future. 
There have been complaints that risk management processes have set up artificial barriers artificial hurdles that cost but do not actually make the system safer. The purported intention of this bill is to reduce those particular barriers and to reduce some of the costs involved. It unashamedly sets out to minimise costs to business and to Government. That objective is to be applauded but it should not be gained at the cost of safety. It really is necessary that the Environmental Risk Management Authority is able to ensure that the appropriate controls are imposed. 
The bill will provide the authority with greater flexibility. That is also fine as long as the authority has a robust methodology to assess risk. It removes the need to effect transfers of previous provisions from the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act to the new regime through continual Orders in Council so it is a “be good to the Governor-General” sort of bill. It moves matters from transitional controls to the principal Act. In doing so it empowers the authority to impose its own controls. It delegates many of those decisions to the body that is supposed to be the risk-management expert in such matters and is supposed to have the expertise. It will be successful depending on the quality of both the authority and the agency Environmental Risk Management Authority 1 and Environmental Risk Management Authority 2 because if we do not have those bodies working with real quality then mistakes will be made. 
One of the interesting things about legislation around hazardous substances and new organisms is the quaint terminology that seems to be attached to it. Our select committee visited the Australian gene technology regulator earlier this year. There was a quaint expression which they continued to refer to called “a dealing” and that was in the Australian legislation. We did not quite know what this “dealing” was but it referred to any activity related to GE. That was the generic term used for it in their legislation and in their processes. 
There is also some quaint language in this bill. For example there is the term “a permission”. The authority will be able to give a permission to a particular body. A permission in this particular case is defined in this legislation as an authorisation to allow a general or a particular use of a substance. So if the authority says that such and such a body has a permission to use a particular substance it can establish certain conditions around that but it will be part of the authorisation or as referred to here the permission. 
The other somewhat new concept although it has been used in other parts of the law is the creation of a “fit and proper person” test. The decisions that the authority makes will have to be around some form or some concept of a “fit and proper person”. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: Does Helen Clark still make the decision? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: I do not know. Certainly we would have some difficulty with her signing off certain things but other than that maybe she would—I am not too certain. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: What about Dr Don Brash? 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: We will come to that one later on. But the issue around the “fit and proper person” test is that there will be regulations to prescribe the criteria to define who a “fit and proper person” actually is. It will be interesting to see what this particular minority Labour Government comes up with in terms of its criteria of a “fit and proper person”. 
The other aspect of this bill that New Zealand First would like to note at this time is that the explanatory note has a list of the bodies and agencies that were consulted in the preparation of the bill and it is very extensive. It covers all sides of the argument from private companies to Government agencies to agencies involved in the environment to the New Zealand Chemical Industry Council to the Ministry of Justice and to the Ministry of Health. It is a wide-ranging group. I believe it is a very constructive approach to put within the text of the explanatory note those bodies that have been formally consulted on the preparation of a bill because it certainly gives us some insight into how extensively it has been done. 
As far as New Zealand First is concerned—as we did with the New Organisms and Other Matters Bill—we will be voting for this bill to proceed to the select committee. We believe it is timely. Certain processes have to be achieved by July 2006 so we have to move the process on its way. However we will be scrutinising the bill very carefully when it is at the select committee. We will finalise our position once we have heard the submissions and looked through all the issues. We will make our decision as we always do in the best interests of New Zealand and its people.