Turia Tariana: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Turia Tariana: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:820] 
TARIANA TURIA (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 I stand today considering the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill within the context of kaupapa and tikanga Maori. As the caretakers of Ranginui and Papatuanuku we have the responsibility to care for and to actively protect the environment which includes our whanau and the flora and fauna that clothes this land of ours. It is a question of values and of preferences and it is a question of what we are willing to pay to ensure that this country we call Aotearoa maintains its ability to be clean and green. 
The aim of the bill is to improve the workability of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act and it includes specific proposals to address enforcement and regulation of tolerable exposure limits and environmental exposure limits and groups various substances together. These are issues of prime importance to us in our commitment towards ensuring genuine progress for the management and care of the environment. In this regard we have been supportive of the concept of a genuine progress index which is current in both the international scene and in initiatives being considered by a number of local authorities. 
The genuine progress indicator distinguishes between positive contributions to progress ensuring that toxins and hazardous substances are strictly tested and regulated and negative activity—the polluting of our land our waterways and our people. What has it cost this country in terms of the health or is it the ill-health of the land the waterways and the people? Would it not be more cost-effective to ensure that in regard to pollution and the use of toxins the effect of which is not clearly known there is thorough testing before availability for widespread use? Do I need to remind anyone in this House of what happened on the night of 2 December 1984 to the hundreds and thousands of people who were devastated as a result of the activities of the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal Central India? It is over 20 years since tank 610 spewed out a deadly cocktail of methyl isocynate and 23 other chemicals manifest in a cloud of poisonous gas. Those injured by the gas are indistinguishable from those who escaped. Their lungs and immune systems suffered but apart from eye problems such as cataracts they received few visible injuries unlike the victims of other disasters such as those caused by thalidomide or Agent Orange. 
Government officials say that around 6600 died from the effects of the gas and 350000 were injured. But local pressure groups put the death toll at 16000 and say that up to 600000 people were injured. Powerful commercial interests ensured that those workers were denied justice. In many cases throughout the world we have seen just how those with interests in the chemical and toxic industry who in my view should have been prosecuted for the hundreds of thousands of people whom they have maimed have been protected. 
We do not have to look very far here at home to see the evidence of other tragic examples. In the Waiariki electorate Sawmill Workers Against Poisons have led the charge against those responsible for the chemicals that workers handled throughout their sawmill careers from the 1960s to the 1980s. The worst chemical of the lot pentachlorophenol or “PCP” was used to prevent sap stain a fungal infection in freshly sawn timber from the 1960s right through to 1988. It was absorbed through the skin of many workers affecting various systems in the body. The dioxins in pentachlorophenol are toxic causing health problems from severe skin rashes to liver damage and possible cancer. The members of Sawmill Workers Against Poisons say that they have been exposed to 48 chemicals throughout their working lives. 
The Maori Party will stand and continue to stand strong until we can see action to address the inexplicable cancers ulcers and other health conditions suffered by those who work the forestry and sawmill sites contaminated by pentachlorophenol. This could be immediate and simple such as providing full free and regular medical check-ups for ex - sawmill workers from the Whakatane Kawerau Kinleith and Waipa sawmills and their families. 
As the member for Te Tai Hauauru I am also painfully aware of the need for urgent action to address the adverse health effects such as cancers and birth deformities reported from Taranaki residents living near the Ivon Watkins-Dow now Dow AgroSciences chemical plant in Paritutu. It is an outrage that the last Government report into cancer rates in New Plymouth released just 2 days ago by the Ministry of Health failed to follow a robust process to ensure that any findings as to what happened in Paritutu would have any integrity. This report released 2 days ago sadly does not do that. 
Last September a report released by the same ministry confirmed that the Ivon Watkins-Dow plant at Paritutu was one of the largest historical polluters in New Zealand. The ministry chose to ignore the recommendations that for any study about Paritutu to be valid one would have to identify the actual residents who were exposed and track them down. Instead the study adopted a scatter-gun approach towards testing anyone in New Plymouth. A responsible approach would have tracked down the families who were exposed at key periods in the 1970s. Many of these families have now shifted away but the impact of their compromised health will remain and of course many have died. 
Here we are today talking about the approvals and enforcement required to ensure that hazardous substances and new organisms undergo rigorous and consistent assessment prior to entry into New Zealand something that the management of Ivon Watkins-Dow plant failed to do. My constituents have repeatedly asked the Government to take seriously the health problems that have resulted from dioxin contamination including birth defects behavioural problems diabetes and a strong association between exposure to dioxin and cancer risk. We are talking about a period of 30 years of neglect. Perhaps as Ross Wilson the President of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions has previously suggested it might be time to introduce a corporate manslaughter provision in our criminal law so that offenders can be held to account. How many lives have been lost? 
Sadly corporates which are not socially responsible entities have a reputation of denying any responsibility for products that they may use to increase what they refer to as the return to the shareholder. The shareholder must be our society and its citizens not just those who invested in a corporate entity. 
We still have issues with the bill including the basis of the groupings for group standards. The rationale for having group standards is so that we can save $2 million. It would be of great interest to the Maori Party if this Parliament were able to be briefed using the Land Transport New Zealand’s “value of a statistical life” calculation about the real benefits—the genuine progress—that we can expect from this new measure. This calculation estimated that each suicide cost a total of $2931250. That is the statistical value of one life. When one considers the number of lives that have been lost or seriously affected as a result of what happened at Paritutu and Whakatane the impact of Agent Orange on Viet Nam vets the impact on those naval personnel involved in supporting the British atmospheric tests at Christmas and Malden Islands during Operation Grapple and on all their descendants and families $2 million is a minuscule amount to be saving. 
These communities deserve to have effective health-care in recognition of the disastrous impact of the corporate manslaughter that they have endured and which many Governments have turned a blind eye to. This country must never allow to ever occur again such damage to its citizens to its land or to its environment whether by accident or design. To this end we live in hope that socially responsible behaviour will be encouraged by this bill; that people will not knowingly attempt to import products that they know are hazardous substances which put the health of the citizens and the environment at risk. 
Bill read a second time.