Ardern Shane: Urgent Debates — Biosecurity Incursions—Report of Auditor-General into Ministry of Primary Industry’s Preparedness and Responsiveness 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Shane: Urgent Debates — Biosecurity Incursions—Report of Auditor-General into Ministry of Primary Industry’s Preparedness and Responsiveness 
[Sitting date: 12 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8403. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 I totally agree with the comments of the previous speaker Steffan Browning when he said that the Government supports the report from the Auditor-General and that is about where my agreement with the previous speaker’s contribution ends. We do support this report. The Ministry for Primary Industries has accepted the report and all seven recommendations that the Auditor-General has recommended are being implemented or are already halfway through being implemented as we speak. 
It is without doubt that biosecurity is the biggest threat to the New Zealand economy—without doubt—and to the total social infrastructure and the standard of living that we have become accustomed to. So biosecurity is a No. 1 issue for this Government. So let us correct some of the statements and introduce some facts into the comments made by our previous speakers. First of all people would be surprised to hear that under the previous Government there were something like 30 or 40 incursions annually and some of those incurred a major biosecurity risk. For example something like 8 tonnes of raw meat was intercepted at our borders by biosecurity officers under the previous Government—8 tonnes of raw meat. We know about that because the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry’s own audit told us that. Eight tonnes of raw meat—and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry itself admitted that potentially it had not been 100 percent correct. 
So what has happened since then? We have heard a lot of suggestions about funding cuts. Well in fact there has been a 35 percent increase in surveillance. There has been a 13 percent increase in core response capability. There has been a 5 percent increase in pest management and preparedness funding. In fact the funding has gone from $181 million in the 2007-08 year to $196 million for the 2012-13 year. That does not sound like a cut to me. In fact that sounds like a substantial increase. 
So this Government does take biosecurity very very seriously. In fact this Government implemented major changes in regard to the way we deal with container devanning. Under the previous Government there was a major concern about the number of devanning sites. I heard the previous speaker describe some of the processes in regard to devanning as being inadequate. He was right. During the terrorist attacks overseas—9/11 being the one that I guess gave the most focus—the Customs Service was required to carry out far greater levels of inspection than it ever had been before. In that process it discovered the ability to use X-ray equipment that allowed a far greater surveillance of imported containers. 
So biosecurity was able then I guess to some extent piggyback on the back of that and use that technology which of course has meant a far higher level of surveillance. When that was first recommended to the previous Government it turned that option down. This Government has implemented it. So it is interesting and probably a little bit rich to hear our opponents say that this is not a Government that is interested in biosecurity. 
The Minister outlined a whole range of areas where the Government has beefed up biosecurity. There are Government-industry agreements. The industries themselves hold a substantial amount of intellectual property on biosecurity and are able to contribute and where that is possible there are agreements implemented. Under the national identification scheme animals are now far more traceable than they were in the foot-and-mouth scare or hoax on Waiheke Island. There has been the introduction of far greater surveillance when people come through our borders using dogs using X-ray equipment and using a much wider range of opportunities there and there has been a reconfiguration of how people come into New Zealand. When they come through a high-risk area they have a much greater level of surveillance. When they do not they have a lower level of surveillance. To suggest that this Government is not investing heavily in biosecurity or is not taking biosecurity seriously is very very short-sighted indeed and in fact is not correct.