Ardern Shane: Budget Debate 
Ardern Shane: Budget Debate 
[Volume:608;Page:5958] 
SHANE ARDERN (NZ National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 Never in the history of New Zealand has there been a Government with so much financial good fortune that delivered so little. We have a Prime Minister who has developed an ability to generate so much spin that if we could harness it to a turbine we would be able to solve the energy crisis. 
John Carter 
: Only if she were conscious. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: Yes absolutely. We have had “Picturegate” we have had “Corngate” and we have had “Goregate” and when she is not apologising for public statements she has made consciously that have offended our trading partners around the world—the very trading partners she depends on to give us the good economic fortune she has had—she goes around trying to apologise for things that none of us have had any part in. 
I want to bring the House’s attention to a letter that was sent to me by a former Taranaki – King country constituent who now resides in the US. He is a good National supporter of course. He wrote: “The Prime Minister Helen Clark does not speak for all of us Kiwis. I can’t express how personally sad her strategic error makes me.” That is what he wrote. “I would have thought I would have been happy to see her bungle give the National Party a bit of an edge. However the damage to the country transcends any political advantage real or imagined. I watched the interview with President Bush and the Australian Prime Minister at President Bush’s private ranch in Texas and closed my mind to the damage that was being done to New Zealand.” That is what he said in his letter to me and that is exactly so. 
Under this Government we have seen the arts—and my colleague in the south has referred to that—the America’s Cup and a whole range of other feel-good do-good socialist engineering get a big dollop of money but what have we seen going into defence and biosecurity? We have a Government in this country that quite clearly does not understand that this is an export nation. We have a Government that quite clearly believes that an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff is better than a fence at the top. We have a Government that does not realise that this economy depends on exports. 
In response to public concerns the Auditor-General did a most comprehensive report on biosecurity and he noted that the overall emphasis was that the response to incursions was too slow and the funding process too complicated. So what do we have? We have disjointed departments no clear objectives no cohesion between groups and a lack of ability to react quickly to incursions. If we look at the recent painted apple moth debacle in Auckland which has cost $90 million thus far—and the meter is still ticking on that eradication programme—what we have is a dog’s breakfast. 
Clayton Cosgrove 
: Sounds like the National Party caucus mate. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: No no what we have is a dog’s breakfast over on the other side of the House. What sort of wake-up call does this Government need before it does something about it? How much insurance is too much and how much insurance is not enough? That is the question this Government needs to ask. Last year 8 tonnes of meat came into this country with people. We had 15.9 tonnes of fruit 3.6 tonnes of seeds 3.2 tonnes of dairy products 3.2 tonnes of fish products and 5800 plant species introduced into the country or brought into the country on someone’s person. What concerns me is how much was not picked up. The Ministry of Agriculture in its own audit said that there is about 10 percent that it does not pick up. That is far too much meat and other potential foot-and-mouth material coming into New Zealand. 
A recent Treasury report stated that as much as $12 billion would be lost to the New Zealand economy with a foot-and-mouth outbreak. And what do we get in the Budget in response to that? Zilch! We get a reduction. To eradicate the problem we need to educate the public and increase the penalties. Where was there any evidence of that? There was none at all. Today we have learnt that the bee varroa mite has escaped right across the North Island. It was being contained in the northern part of the North Island but it has escaped right across. 
What are the long-term costs of that? Let us look at the response we get from the Government. In response to a question in the House the Acting Minister for Biosecurity Marian Hobbs told us that she thought that finding only six incursions in the last fortnight showed that we were really good at surveillance. Well what does one say? This is the Minister who often acts for the Minister for Biosecurity because as the Minister for Biosecurity told the Federated Farmers conference in Taranaki last week in regard to a recent trip overseas: “This was the third trade mission I have led this year and just one of the many many overseas trips I will be making this year.” 
We have a Minister for Biosecurity who says at the Federated Farmers conference that he will be out of the country most of the year. As Minister for Trade Negotiations that is absolutely right and proper. So we have an associate Minister who actually handles biosecurity and who believes that finding six incursions in a fortnight is a very very good response. What hope do we have? We have a problem and one that urgently needed addressing in this Budget and what did we get from the Minister? Nothing absolutely nothing—that is what we got. [ 
Interruption 
] 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! I refer members to Speaker’s ruling 51/5(3). 
SHANE ARDERN 
: The more they heckle the better the speech but I am thankful I have your protection. We have a $4.2 billion surplus which is plenty of money to deal with the border control problems and what do we get? We get nothing at all. Last year 420000 sea containers came into New Zealand. We have a problem with incursions through sea containers. How many of these containers do we inspect? We inspect 24 percent of the high-risk containers and a recent Ministry of Agriculture audit showed that of the 24 percent we inspected as many as 1700 containers contained further incursions of insects and spiders. I think the figure was an increase from six to 71 spiders that the ministry had not found in the initial inspection. 
Brian Connell 
: Sounds like the Labour caucus. 
SHANE ARDERN 
: Exactly. It does sound like the Labour caucus. Quite a few spiders are hidden in amongst there. The containers themselves are very host-friendly. One would have thought there would be some mention in the Budget of how the Government was going to deal with that problem. But there was not a thing. We did not see a thing in the Budget about that. There is a suggestion that the Government will introduce some further process in this regard but where is that? And when is it? When will it happen? How big a risk do we have to take before this Government wakes up and understands what this will be? 
In the last 6 months we have had a number of incursions and the number we have had is increasing steadily—and the Government is doing nothing. The only good thing we can say about the consistency of our defence is that it is consistent. We seem to get a new incursion every week—and this Government sits on its hands at a time when it has a huge fiscal surplus like no other we have seen in the history of this country. So I say to this Government that it is time it did something about that it is time we saw some investment in this area and it is time we did something to eradicate the problem we clearly have with our biosecurity. 
I warn the Government to fix it because otherwise its $4.2 billion surplus will turn into a $10 billion deficit. A recent Treasury report that said $12 billion would be lost to this country if we had a foot-and-mouth outbreak. That amount could expand when we take the flow-on effects of tourism and from the evidence we have seen from overseas it could expand to as much as $60 billion. I suggest to this Government that it take some action while it still can.