Turei Metiria: Biosecurity and Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Legislation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Biosecurity and Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Legislation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15199] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 Yes Madam Chairperson you are quite right to remind us of the clause we are debating. I do want to address some of the accusations made by the Minister and particularly the kind of intellectual “pretzelism” that he is suggesting we engage in in order to justify not just the bill but the process that led up to it. 
The Green Party does agree that there is some confusion here about who is responsible for dealing with these kinds of organisms and the Government is quite right to look for mechanisms to deal with that confusion. The problem here is that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has had a view about changes that it would like for itself in the Biosecurity Act and it is not unknown for ministries and Ministers to be opportunistic about when they might try to make such changes. So I do not think it is in the least a surprise that legislation and policy that is prepared some years in advance might find themselves coming before the House when an opportunity to progress them makes itself available. That is not irrational; it is perfectly sensible. That is not a conspiracy; it is just a process one might expect from a Government that wants to present its policy. 
The Greens are very concerned about the confusion as to who is responsible for dealing with known but unintentionally brought in organisms. That is what the bill is concerned with and in fact that is what the Court of Appeal decision concerned itself with as well. It concerned itself with known organisms not unknown ones. The Court of Appeal did not concern itself with organisms one would not know could be brought in. So for example it is quite clear and obvious that  
Paenibacillus alvei 
 is a known organism. It comes in with honey imports so it is not brought in purposefully. It is brought in unintentionally but it is brought in knowingly. The Minister the ministry and this legislation are purposefully trying to confuse the community on that difference in order to justify why the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the biosecurity legislation should have the responsibility for assessing those organisms as opposed to the Environmental Risk Management Authority whose job it is to assess new organisms that are brought into the country. 
As I said we agree there is some confusion and we would have liked to see the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act amended to enable it to be made more clearly responsible—it can be responsible actually under the current law but we would like it to state that more clearly—for known but unintentionally brought in organisms rather than the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry whose tests for risk assessment are much much poorer than those of the Environmental Risk Management Authority. 
The Green Party is happy to support amendments to this legislation that it considers will make the legislation better and that is why we are supporting the amendment to insert new clause 2A to impose the sunset clause. It is why in fact we will be supporting one of the Minister’s own amendments and later on in the debate no doubt we will get a chance to discuss that. The key here is that a great deal of confusion is being propagated by the Government in order to enable an organisation to approve knowingly brought in organisms at a much lower standard of risk assessment than that used by the Environmental Risk Management Authority whose job it is to do that. I do not think it is right for the Government to convey that kind of I guess confusion to the public. I think the public have a right to know the real intention behind the policy and legislation. They have a right to know what the true impact of the legislation is and they have a right to know what the future intentions of the Government might be in relation to that legislation particularly where it may concern genetically modified organisms. 
We know from the papers produced by the relevant ministries that there was an intention to allow GMOs to be brought in under legislation like this. It is proven it is in the papers and it is publicly available. People know that that was the intention. It is very difficult then to have any faith that this Minister this ministry or certainly this Government or National has any intention of not following that policy in the future when there is opportunity to make such changes.