Kedgley Sue: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:615;Page:11622] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I rise to speak on behalf of my colleague Metiria Turei who is not able to be here in the House this afternoon. The Green Party shares the very serious concerns expressed by the member for New Zealand First. Frankly it is an affront to this House to drop legislation in at the eleventh hour just before Parliament rises for the Christmas adjournment and basically to have no consultation. The Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill can only be described as one of those bills that are rammed through this House. We consider that to be totally unsatisfactory and we say there is really no way that one can pretend there has been consultation on the bill. 
We have other misgivings about this bill. The intention of the bill is all about minimising the costs to business and to the Government. We are talking here as others have mentioned about 70000 notified toxic substances. One would have thought given we are talking about 70000 notified toxic substances there would be something in the purpose clause about the health and safety of New Zealanders but no it is all about minimising costs. I suspect that if we had the time to examine the bill more carefully we may find it is all about minimising costs to businesses that are busily using toxic substances without having had them properly evaluated and without disposing of them properly. We may very well find that this bill provides loopholes for them to continue doing so merrily. 
When we think about the fact that 70000 toxic substances are not currently controlled we should really pause for a moment and just contemplate that. We should let New Zealanders think about the fact that that is so and that many or most of the 70000 toxic substances not currently controlled are in use. They are in our homes our environment our workplaces and there is no regulation of them. Frankly that is scandalous and one would have thought that there would be some urgency about dealing with the situation. But we just heard that even though the Environmental Risk Management Authority has had the power to transfer these substances to the controls that apply under the principal Act for many years now it has managed to transfer only 10000 of the 80000 toxic hazardous substances. Frankly we have to ask ourselves what the Environmental Risk Management Authority has been up to. What priority does it give to the exposure of New Zealanders to 70000 toxic substances that do not even have any controls on them and that are in use in our everyday lives? Is it any wonder that our cancer rates in New Zealand are so high given that we have so many unregulated toxic substances in our midst? 
I have the privilege to sit on the committee that is considering the Building Bill and looking at various aspects of the building code. One of the things that have emerged during the course of the hearings is that none of the building materials that we use in our homes are assessed for their health effects. We know we have flame retardants that are known to be cancer-causing and materials that give off gas and cause a range of health effects. But nobody is bothering to assess the health effects of those toxic substances and most of them have—as far as we can see—very little or no regulation. 
Once can only speculate as to what the 70000 notified toxic substances are that are not currently controlled and one can only speculate too as to where they end up—how they are being disposed of in our land. Are they all ending up in our landfills? We suppose that that is the case. Obviously nobody is bothering to regulate those substances. I presume that many of them are pesticides sprayed on our foods fly sprays and household products as well as building materials. It is extremely disturbing that so many of those substances are not controlled or regulated in New Zealand and that the Government has been so tardy in doing anything about it. Obviously the issue is not regarded as being of any priority. The Government’s only real priority is to minimise the cost to businesses of finally having to have some sort of regulation of those 70000 toxic substances. 
We have huge misgivings about this bill. We will support the second reading but we look forward to some amendments being made at the Committee stage and we will consider our final position based on those amendments. We are concerned that it looks as though the main issue in the bill is the flexibility to business—reducing business costs—and we are worried that sufficient protections and safeguards are not in place to protect ordinary New Zealanders. We are worried about the potential trade-offs between cost-effectiveness and protecting the health and safety of ordinary New Zealanders. We have huge misgivings about this bill—about the way it has been parachuted into Parliament the lack of consultation the foot-dragging way that the Environmental Risk Management Authority has dealt with the issue and the shocking and frankly scandalous situation in New Zealand whereby we have 70000 notified toxic substances that are in use in our everyday lives but that are not currently controlled. That is a scandal. We hope that this bill will do something about it but we worry that all it will do is to reduce the cost to businesses by providing loopholes for businesses in dealing with the many toxic substances that are imported and in use here in New Zealand.