Smith Nick: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Smith Nick: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6944] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson) 
:I want to address a number of important issues in this bill but firstly I want to respond to the issues raised by the chair of the committee. I think he rightly says that the bill has been turned around in a very efficient time by the select committee and I commend committee members. I simply want to point out the point that has been misinterpreted by him from my very competent colleague Paul Hutchison: it is a very long time from the point when the agreements were made by New Zealand to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and when this bill arrived before the House and progressed. My colleague Paul Hutchison is absolutely right to question the Government on why it took so long. 
I would like to address three substantive issues in the second reading of this bill. The first of those is that this Parliament has spent an inordinate amount of time on writing primary law dealing with issues of hazardous substances—the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Act 1996 and repeated amendments have come through for the Stockholm convention and others. 
But my problem is that one can have all the first-order law that one likes but it is the second-order law and particularly the regulations that come from our Environmental Risk Management Authority that are going to deliver the real benefits for the environment. In that regard the process has been extremely tardy. There is a huge lack of proper standards for dealing with contaminated sites for dealing with pentachlorophenol and other chemicals dealt with by this legislation. If we spent as much time on those standards as we did on the law then our environment would be substantially better served. I want to challenge both the Ministry for the Environment and the Environmental Risk Management Authority in that regard. 
The second issue I wish to raise with respect to the bill as it has been reported back from the select committee goes to the core of issues between Parliament and international organisations and their respective roles. It is a good thing that New Zealand plays its role as a responsible nation and that it joins other countries in the development of conventions and international law. But this Parliament needs to be quite determined that it finally is sovereign over this country. I must note with some concern that if we provide legislation that states that parties to the Stockholm convention can go on and make further changes and amendments—and they will and that is quite proper—then this Parliament must have the final say on any amendments that flow from that. 
I worry that when we make changes to clause 4 in the Committee stage and we include the convention and any subsequent amendments to it in some respects we are abrogating our responsibilities in terms of ensuring that it is we who write the law for New Zealand and that here is the opportunity for New Zealand citizens who may be impacted on to have some say which would be unlikely in a United Nations or international forum such as the body that has responsibility for the implementation of the Stockholm convention. While of course we should be open-minded about further changes that may be made to this convention before any of those changes take legal effect they should come back to this Parliament so that we can endorse or reject them and give New Zealand citizens and businesses the opportunity to have a say. 
The third area in which I have an interest in the Stockholm convention and this bill is the way New Zealand is able to deal in a sensible and efficient way with previous chemicals organic pollutants and their disposal. The international community quite properly wants to provide some restriction on rich countries producing dangerous chemicals and then shipping them off to Third World nations where there is not the regulatory control where there is bribery and corruption and where the result is an inappropriate disposal of such chemicals in those countries. 
So it makes good sense for the international community to come up with rules like the Stockholm convention to put restrictions on that and to say to developed rich countries that if they make those dangerous chemicals they must be responsible for their disposal. 
But one of my concerns is that large countries such as European countries or Japan or the United States have sufficient volumes to be liable to economically dispose of those chemicals. Whereas small countries like New Zealand whether it is the transformer pentachlorophenol that is used—which has been referred to by my colleague Paul Hutchison the member for Port Waikato—or whether it is those chemicals used in the niche horticultural industries in my own area and we say that those chemicals have to be dealt with in New Zealand then we actually make a very high price for those. 
It makes sense for us to work with Australia and with other Pacific countries on the disposal of those chemicals quite simply because it is practical and efficient. My point is that we need to be pragmatic about it. If we allow those restrictions to be excessive then we take away good practical solutions that can be found in combination with Pacific countries with Australia in providing appropriate ways and technologies for the disposal of those chemicals. So I initiate a word of caution in that regard. 
 The last point I wish to make concerns the role of the Environmental Risk Management Authority in implementing these latest amendments to the Stockholm convention. We note that the authority is years behind. Its latest report to the select committee is that the provisions of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act which was passed by this Parliament 6 years ago are not going to be fully implemented until after 2006. In fact the authority’s latest programme is suggesting 2008. That is glacial pace. That is ridiculously slow. Why does this Parliament go to all the effort of passing new laws if the Government is going to drag its feet to that extent in terms of implementing these laws? I will want to know from the Minister during the Committee deliberations whether we will get the same sort of snail’s-pace implementation of these provisions from the Stockholm convention that we are seeing with the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. 
I also say that Parliament has to ask some tough questions with regard to the performance of the Environmental Risk Management Authority around the issues concerning new genetic organisms. There are articles in our newspaper this very day that raise serious questions about the authority’s capacity to be able to deliver the goods. If we are going to pass these sorts of provisions I want to make sure at the Committee stage that the Environmental Risk Management Authority has the capacity the resources and the drive to actually be able to give these sorts of provisions meaning. Passing all the laws in the world and participating in all the international conventions we like is not worth it if we do not have the local body—in this case the New Zealand body the Environmental Risk Management Authority—getting on and doing its job. I leave the House with those points and I look forward to the Committee stage of this bill. 
Bill read a second time.