Kedgley Sue: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:623;Page:18779] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party has huge concerns about this bill which we see as something of a regulatory facade. It is a way to fast track or make easier the transfer of 70000 toxic substances—currently not registered or regulated—in an essentially meaningless way through the mechanism of group standards. It clumps things like 20000 cosmetics all together in one standard. Rather than grouping them on the basis of hazard or risk it shoves them all together because they are “of a similar type”. 
The intention of this bill is transparent; it is stated quite clearly. Its intention is to reduce the number of applications that businesses have to make to gain efficiencies for business to reduce business compliance costs and to reduce costs to Government. There is nothing in the bill about protecting the consumer or the environment and protecting our health and safety is only vaguely mentioned. Basically the intention of the bill as I said is just to fast track those substances in a meaningless way. 
Let us look for example at cosmetics. New Zealand is the most unregulated country in the Western World in the area of cosmetics. The European Union has legislation with regard to cosmetics and there are regulations in Australia Canada and so forth. We have nothing. We do not even require the disclosure of the ingredients in cosmetics. We really have no standards whatsoever. What we will be doing in the area of cosmetics is taking 20000 cosmetics and ramming them into a group standard thus ignoring the huge range of different risks. Looking at the European Union legislation I see that cosmetics can contain arsenic and its compounds benzene antibiotics—I could go on and on. There is a huge range of difference in risk amongst the substances in cosmetics. By putting all those 20000 different substances in cosmetics into a group on the basis that they are simply of a similar type and then by managing them through one set of conditions we ignore the fact that very minor differences between substances can have huge effects on their properties. 
For example in the controversial area of milk the difference between A2 milk and A1 milk is a single amino acid made up of a number of atoms yet it is believed that the two types of milk have substantially different effects on some people’s health. The difference is one single amino acid. 
I could give many other examples. Polychlorinated dibenzodioxin is 10 times more potent a toxin than hexachlorodibenzodioxin even though the difference is just one chlorine atom. Even a tiny difference between chlorine acids can make a huge difference to the type of risk to which we will be exposed by that particular hazardous substance. 
So surely it would be logical to regulate the 70000 toxic substances according to risk. That surely is what a risk-based or hazard-based approach would mean. But no we are just clumping them all together in group standards which will be essentially meaningless. 
I am appalled to discover that the Minister is seeking to ram this legislation through by 3 June. This legislation should be very complex. It is really a regulatory facade but it certainly deserves intense scrutiny. 
Why are we sending it to the Education and Science Committee? There has been great speculation about that. Nick Smith says he thinks it is to divert the committee. I believe that it is because the Government is hoping that that committee will not have the expertise and knowledge to understand some of the complexities of this bill. It certainly does not have as much expertise as the Local Government and Environment Committee which has examined a whole lot of similar legislation. It would be far more sensible to send the bill to that committee. I suggest to Ron Mark that the Government’s concern may be that Jeannette Fitzsimons is too effective a chair. She would subject the bill to real scrutiny rather than ram it through after taking a very superficial look at it and then pull it out of the committee by 3 June. In fact I am quite sure that Jeannette Fitzsimons would not agree to try to ram this bill through by 3 June. No doubt that is why the Government has sought instead to have the bill go to the Education and Science Committee. 
The Minister said that one of the main reasons for having the group standards by which we can ram everything through—like 20000 cosmetics in one group standard—is that it would otherwise cost an extra $2 million. Is $2 million not worth it to properly regulate 70000 toxic substances that are presently unregulated? 
When I first read that 70000 toxic substances are not regulated I really did not believe it; I thought it must have been some sort of joke written in the bill. But in fact it is absolutely true. Nick Smith made light of it saying that Sellotape is amongst the 70000 unregulated toxic substances. What he did not mention is that those substances also include pesticides household cleaners paints fly sprays—all sorts of substances that pose a risk to human health. 
Some Labour members might find it all very humorous and take a light-hearted view of the effect of these toxic substances on our health but I assure them that many New Zealanders are extremely concerned about a number of toxic substances we are being exposed to that are basically unregulated. We had the Building Bill and it turned out that virtually no building materials are registered in New Zealand; nor are the Sellotapes the fly sprays the household cleaners and so forth. 
It has been a very long time since the passage of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. One would have hoped that in the past 5 years we would have come up with some very rigorous legislation to ensure that those 70000 substances are managed according to their risk—according to their hazard—and in a way that protects the health of New Zealanders offers consumer protection and protects the environment. 
Regrettably this is not the legislation to do that; this is what I call a regulatory facade—something that makes it look as though we are regulating those substances when we are really doing the absolute minimum possible. We are doing such a minimal job that we would almost be better off with no legislation at all. 
So the Greens have huge concerns about this bill. We will be vigorously present in the select committee trying to strengthen and amend this bill. We are extremely unhappy with it and we hope that somehow in the select committee—which we hope will be given some proper teeth—sense will prevail and we will come up with a risk-based system instead of these fast-tracked group standards.