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:848] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 We have heard an awful lot this morning about compliance costs for business. We have heard about the trouble it will give farmers. We have heard all of that from the National Party which is voting for the bill. We have heard from the Labour Party that this legislation will reduce compliance costs—we have not really heard how—but we have not heard anybody talk this morning about the nature of the materials that this legislation tries to regulate and why they need to be regulated. 
 I think it is time that somebody spoke about those issues because amongst the thousands and thousands of chemicals that we are transferring from old legislation to new legislation—but without any change in the way they are managed or in the regulations under which they have to be used—are some chemicals that are known to be capable of causing cancer some that are known to be capable of causing birth defects some that are known to be capable of causing and do cause chronic illnesses some that are known to be hormone disrupters and that affect people’s reproductive systems and their general health and some that are known to accumulate in the environment long term and to concentrate up food chains. Surely that is the reason we have legislation to try to control these substances. We have heard nothing from anybody in the Chamber about how this legislation will improve the management of those hazards. 
We have heard from one National Party speaker that we should not have any compliance rules or any enforcement; we should just trust people who use these substances to use them wisely. I wonder whether the National Party actually needs a lesson in toxicology or in the illness that is caused in society by exposure to hazardous chemicals. It makes me very concerned that the House does not see fit to debate the health effects of these substances but only whether it will be inconvenient for farmers to have to have some training or whether it will be costly for industries to have to pay assessment costs to have their products approved for sale given that they make enormous amounts of money out of selling those chemicals and there are consequences for the rest of society. 
As I said in the second reading debate the hazardous substances and new organisms legislation sets up a system of grandfathering whereby substances that have already been approved under old and—everybody agrees—inadequate legislation are grandfathered in under the new legislation and approved and there is no way that that can then be challenged except at enormous cost to the Crown. It creates a perpetual property right or a perpetual consent to use those substances without further assessment in a way that no other legislation does for any other purpose. If we want a consent to take water discharge into water discharge into air or use land for a purpose under the Resource Management Act we have a time limit on that consent. We have to apply for a new consent at the end of it so we can go through a process to check whether what we are doing is still acceptable by modern standards whether there are better ways of doing it whether the consent should have new conditions on it or whether in fact the consent should not be allowed at all. 
It has been widely accepted virtually forever that consents are not perpetual but these consents are to be perpetual in such a way that it would be an enormous cost to the Crown to reassess the chemicals that the Environmental Risk Management Authority already knows need reassessment. The authority has a list of the ones it is concerned about. It has a list of chemicals that do not meet best international practice either in being used at all or in being used under the conditions that they are currently used under. There is no time before 30 June 2006 to put those chemicals through a rigorous reassessment so they are being brought in and given a perpetual consent. The only way they can be reassessed in the future is at the cost of the Crown. My bet is that they will not be reassessed because the authority will never persuade the Minister of Finance to make enough Budget available to go through those processes. That is why we need to set up a system where the applicant pays the cost to get its consent continued. That opportunity has now been missed. 
At the same time this legislation creates a great disincentive for innovation. New Zealand is too small a market for a company to apply to introduce a new chemical that is better and particularly less environmentally harmful than an existing chemical if it has to face the full cost of the assessment of the new chemical but it gets to continue a consent for the old chemical forever for free. That is a huge disincentive for innovation; it is a huge disincentive for environmental improvement. I simply cannot understand why the Government will not accept the evidence that was given to the select committee the submissions that I made personally to the Minister and what many other people have been telling the Government. It seems to be all about a concern that business will kick up if it has to pay any costs at all for the privilege of subjecting the rest of us to chemicals that may endanger our health. I would like to suggest that that is actually the wrong way round. If business wants to get its chemicals registered in New Zealand—and I am not denying that chemicals have many uses—then it needs to face the cost of having them properly assessed. 
So we have the inadequate provisions of the Toxic Substances Act the Pesticides Act the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act and the Dangerous Goods Act rolled over in perpetuity under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. That is a huge missed opportunity that could have been remedied in this amendment bill but it is not. So while the Green Party accepts that there are useful things in this bill—and it is not actually the content of this particular bill that we are opposed to—we are voting against it because it does not take the last remaining opportunity to set up a system under the Act whereby it is possible to reassess chemicals and get safer ones without it being at the expense of the Crown.