King Annette: Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
King Annette: Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:11836] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Minister for Food Safety) 
: 
 I move  
That the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. Firstly I thank the Primary Production Committee for its consideration of the bill as well as those persons who provided submissions and representations to the committee. The committee’s consideration has resulted in a number of enhancements to the existing provisions of the bill. 
This bill provides for changes to the principal Act—the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act 1997—to make it more effective and more administratively efficient. It includes improvements to the regulatory framework and clarifies certain provisions in order to achieve the original policy intent of the Act. The changes improve the workability of the Act for stakeholders. In particular these changes make provisions for a one-stop shop system for assessing and managing risks associated with the use of agricultural compounds. 
The bill also allows changes to be made to the organisational environment—that is it allows changes to the Government department responsible for the administration of the legislation—without the need for further specific change to the Act. This change will allow for the recognition from 1 July 2007 of the New Zealand Food Safety Authority as a separate public service department with responsibility for the administration of the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act. 
The bill makes provision to close several gaps identified in the coverage of the Act in order to better manage the public health effects of agricultural compounds and the regulation of all parts of the supply chain. These provisions expand the purpose of the Act to include managing risks to public health and specify that the manufacture and import of agricultural compounds that do not comply with the Act are prohibited. They also provide for the ability to set requirements for the distribution storage and transportation of agricultural compounds. The bill clarifies the statutory backing for arrangements to restrict the supply sale or use of certain products such as prescription animal medicines and poisons such as cyanides to authorised persons and the process for transfer of registration between authorised persons. It also clarifies that pet foods and stock foods are covered by the Act. 
The bill will also make changes to improve the enforcement of the Act. It provides for alignment of the processes and powers relating to imports of agricultural compounds and veterinary medicine products with those of the Biosecurity Act. It enables the director-general to recall non-compliant product or suspend product registration and provides for a more appropriate and effective range of penalties for offences. 
The bill makes changes to improve the flexibility and administration of the Act by providing an alternative approval process in special circumstances for the import manufacture or use of agricultural compounds without registration. It allows for recognition of persons or agencies to carry out specified activities or functions for the purpose of the Act and provides for the issue of certificates of compliance to assist exporters. It also updates cost-recovery provisions in the Act. 
The bill removes or amends regulatory requirements that are in excess of those necessary to manage risks or where the required degree of control can be achieved by non-regulatory or administrative measures. The bill also makes some minor technical changes removes provisions that have become redundant following changes in the operating environment and updates terminology.  
Hon Tau Henare 
: Read the speech. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: The member opposite is interested in my speech. Somebody is awake to hear this very very good speech. I thank Mr Henare. 
I will continue telling members about this very good legislation. The Primary Production Committee made amendments to clauses 20 21 and 44 of the bill which relate to sections 28 and 75 of the Act in order to clarify the way in which the Act works in respect of the imposition of conditions on agricultural compounds the setting of standards required to effect those conditions and the notification of technical specifications detailing how standards can be met. These changes arose from concerns raised by the Legislation Advisory Committee to the New Zealand Food Safety Authority officials advising the select committee. The Legislation Advisory Committee was concerned that the Act was complex lacked clarity and conferred wide powers on the director-general. Further it was advised that the bill as introduced added to these difficulties rather than reduced them. To address this the select committee made changes to the bill to further clarify the relationship between codes standards and conditions on trade name products. The mechanisms for setting these requirements at the secondary and tertiary levels of the legislation have been made more straightforward and will be subject to increased levels of parliamentary scrutiny. 
I fully support the changes made by the select committee to the structure of the Act. The changes deliver on the policy objectives and the intent of the Act and the bill without stepping beyond the scope of the bill. The amended provisions will confirm the power to impose standards through regulation thus providing transparency in the standard-making process and ensuring parliamentary oversight via the Regulations Review Committee. To ensure that people can understand what is required to achieve standards set under the Act the director-general will have the power to issue notices that set out the technical detail of how compliance with a standard can be achieved. These changes prompted a further consequential change to the bill with the deletion of clause 55 which amended the Privacy Act. Clause 55 became redundant with the changes to the standard-setting and code of practice provisions. Additionally codes of practice will now be known as operating plans in order to convey more accurately the nature of these instruments and their place in the scheme of the Act. A definition of operating plan is added to the interpretation clause of the Act. 
The committee amended the bill by adding a section that broadly sets out the overall scheme of the Act in order to address the Legislation Advisory Committee’s concerns about the lack of clarity in this respect. The committee also amended clauses 15 and 21 by replacing the words “prescribing” with “authorising the use of” to address concerns raised by submitters about the potential for confusion in this area between the requirements imposed on veterinarians in respect of the standards for prescribing medicines under this Act and those under the Veterinarians Act. 
The committee also amended clause 23 which extends provisions for protection from compensation to cover the revocation or amendment of an approval under the new section 8C entitled “Director-General may approve agricultural compound as exempt in special circumstances”. The committee’s amendment clarifies that the provision covers court-awarded damages as well as compensation given by the New Zealand Food Safety Authority. 
Minor amendments to the bill made by the committee include the deletion of the reference to the Meat Act 1981 and the Dairy Industry Act 1952 as these Acts have been repealed since the bill was drafted and changes to the wording in new section 81E(1) of the Act to correct a drafting error. 
The Government supports all these amendments because they clarify the intent of the bill provide greater transparency for the stakeholders and improve the workability of the bill. Although access to and the use of agricultural compounds and veterinary medicine is vital to New Zealand’s pastoral horticultural and forestry sectors there are also risks if they are used inappropriately or unwisely—risks to human and animal health our biosecurity and our agricultural exports. The Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act is a key part of New Zealand’s regulatory framework for managing these risks. 
I thank once again the members of the Primary Production Committee for their work in considering this bill and I also acknowledge the helpful contribution of submitters. I commend the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill to the House.