Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Thank you very much Mr Speaker and thank you for the excellent contribution from the Green Party very much appreciated that. This bill amends the Biosecurity Act 1993 and further protects New Zealand's natural environment biosecurity and primary industry. I commend the member Steph Lewis for such a great bill. I think she's a great member who advocates strongly for her community and this bill is a testament to the fact that she's thinking about those impacts on the primary industry and how we can further strengthen a key backbone of our economy at a time when we need it more than ever.This bill means that we can require large commercial craft that are en route to New Zealand to provide information to the craft's passengers about the biosecurity law relevant before they arrive in New Zealand. It's a barrier to protect us from those things coming in. A really good example is—we'll remember well the Queensland fruit fly for example which came in through Northcote and Devonport: that cost the New Zealand economy $12 million to eradicate. But if travellers are told on the plane not to bring the apple that they've put in their bag—to leave it on the plane or to put it into the Ministry for Primary Industries bin that they get at the airport—that reduces the risk of undetected fruit fly or larva hitching a ride into New Zealand. It also prevents the taxpayer from having to shell out to eradicate a pest that can cause significant damage to the New Zealand economy and primary industry. So I'd like to congratulate the member for having the foresight to see that this is a key area that we need to do more about.There's two main reasons why the Labour Party supports this bill why the Government will be supporting this bill. And that first of all is the environment. We know that making New Zealand's biosecurity system more resilient will help protect our taonga. That's our ngahere Tāne-mahuta: the forests the rivers and the beautiful natural environment that we've been gifted. We love to take our children for bush walks. We love to enjoy what we've been given in New Zealand and protecting that and making sure that we nurture it and look after it as the caretakers we should be is incredibly important as New Zealanders to our identity to our future and for the generations to come. We owe it to the kids yet born to make sure we look after the natural environment that we've been given. More than 3000 of our native species are in serious trouble or at risk of extinction and in fact 142 species were at risk in 2008 and three-quarters of our native fish and one-third of plants were threatened with extinction. We have a fight on our hands to keep in place the beautiful natural environment we have now and it's a worth a fight I can tell you.Unwanted pests and diseases can further endanger native species and upset delicate ecosystems. And we know this for a fact and we've seen it happen with many instances: kauri dieback Mycoplasma bovis. We've seen these instances. We know how damaging they can be and it's important that we have a strong service to make sure we protect them. It's important to note that the Ministry for Primary Industries do an amazing job of making sure this works well. They work incredibly hard to protect our local businesses to make sure they can keep earning a buck and exporting internationally. I think Mycoplasma bovis is a fantastic example of how New Zealand was one of the first places in the world to eradicate and work hard to make sure that we protect those areas hard.It's also important not just for our natural environment but also for our economy. New Zealand's economy depends very heavily on our primary industries and this means we need to run a tight biosecurity system. Farmers and growers have been at the forefront of New Zealand's export-led economic recovery and over the past two years we've seen this continue to do well despite the global economic conditions that we find ourselves in under COVID. Aotearoa New Zealand is largely free of many of the pests and diseases that we see in many other countries—Australia next door. This gives us a unique comparative and economic advantage to other countries that we are trading against. New pests and diseases can undermine the advantage that we hold right now on the global stage and so it's more important than ever that we maintain this and keep working at it. These can have consequences both across regional and national economies and that's local jobs local businesses and local farmers. Unwanted pests and diseases can weaken New Zealand's earning potential and introduce new costs including by reducing the health and the productivity of commercial animals and New Zealand's access to export markets.We work hard as well as a Government to make sure we continue to have access to those export markets. An example recently is the new trade agreement with the UK which we are setting in place. It will provide new opportunities for our primary industry. Incredibly proud as part of this Government to promote new trade agreements that provide great opportunities for local growers and producers to continue providing their products at top standard into those markets overseas.It's also important to note that unwanted pests and diseases can also require costly controls and these fall back to the business owner. The impact of bacterial kiwifruit vine disease Psa on the kiwifruit industry highlighted the extreme difficulty we face in our growing industry when you're having to fight back on that basis. Horticulture New Zealand has spoken up and said that they are thrilled to see this bill drawn from the ballot. New Zealand's top-performing horticulture and other primary industries could be easily destroyed particularly if a virulent pest or disease entered the country and this could potentially have catastrophic effects on our exports and New Zealand economy at a time when things are already fragile.It's important to note that there is a growing risk. While we have a huge advantage of being an island nation and being able to have tight borders that we've used it's also important to note that the size of New Zealand's biosecurity security challenge has been increasing. I've already noted the example of Queensland fruit fly. It's important that we continue to make sure we have tight controls that we make sure we look after our primary producers and that we maintain the ability for primary production to continue to thrive as we do.Thank you to the Primary Production Committee. They've made a phenomenal amount of changes when we go through what's been happening at the select committee process. I've never seen so many changes come through. A really important one and a practical one that the select committee have agreed to is to change the commencement date. So initially the bill had that it would come into effect as soon as the bill was passed. But the committee has recommended that instead of it coming into force on the date specified it would come into force by Order in Council or by 12 months after the bill receives its Royal assent which gives time to prepare time for the right preparations to be in place for this to come into effect in the best practical way possible.The other changes I'm not going to go through them in detail. I wasn't a member on the committee but I acknowledge that they've also provided for a general duty to provide biosecurity information. They've also moved detail duties from primary legislation into secondary legislation. In addition to that the powers of the director-general have been changed and a new provision in that space for the Director-General of the ministry to approve written and audiovisual biosecurity information shown to passengers and [to] notify it in the Gazette. It is our view that this is an administrative matter which does not need to be set out in primary legislation. We consider that … the Director-General's powers should be set out in regulations." In addition to this changing the duty to provide information to passengers rather than all on board provides greater clarity as well and also applying the duty to provide biosecurity information to commercial craft.It's really great to see that we have some really hard-working local members of Parliament who are out in those rural areas who are well connected into people working hard on a day-to-day basis who understand the types of challenges that come to primary production and those business people who have to fight to be able to earn a crust each day. Making small changes like this piece by piece shows the commitment that this Government has to backing the backbone of our economy which is primary production in many ways. We are committed to continuing to promote free-trade agreements with the UK to provide new markets that no other Government has previously provided like into the UK. We continue to strive to give working New Zealanders a fair go and an open market to be able to sell top-quality products that we are proud of. I commend Steph Lewis for an awesome bill and I commend this bill to the House."