Browning SteffanSTEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I rise to speak to the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill. Colleagues have waxed lyrical on the need for safety and training and some sort of reliance on the regulatory authorities for getting it right around the safety of these chemicals. I note that Damien O'Connor said that some of them will become unwanted over time—of course they will become unwanted because they are patently dangerous. They are patently risky for the community for the workers and for the environment. Over time—Hon Damien O'Connor: I didn't say that.STEFFAN BROWNING: —is too late—yes you did—for far too many in our communities. It is far too late. It took a long long time to rid us of DDT—and it is still in our soils—and it will have caused many many cases of breast cancer in its time. And then there is endosulfan: the Government has sat on its hands because it was seen to be convenient for industry for the primary production part of New Zealand. But was it necessary? No it was not as a lot of agriculture chose not to use that; it did not need it. It is totally dangerous but was taken off only when trade was affected—when trade in meat into Korea was affected which it was when it was taken out. Our Environmental Protection Authority (EPA)—or Environmental Risk Management Authority in the day—did not look at that in terms of the community health in the way it should and nor will the EPA or Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) for the raft of pesticides that this bill is meant to be allowing or encouraging in. That is what they want. They want better data-protection so that it seems more lucrative for those big pesticide companies like Syngenta and Bayer and BASF and the numerous other ones—DuPont and so on. They somehow need help? No they do not.We in the Green Party did a minority view and clearly opposed this and I am very disappointed that other colleagues in the House have not persuaded their parties to oppose this as well because 5 years' data protection was any amount—absolutely any amount. It was seen as maybe being too small and deterring companies from registering products because they would not get enough time to get their loot back out of developing them. Well actually the statistics prove otherwise. Since 2008—the time National has been in—1100 new agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines were registered but only 239 were cancelled or expired. During that time industry could have applied for new ones MPI or the EPA could have pulled them. We are getting a gross increase in pesticides—there are some other products in there; it is not all pesticides but a lot are—and this is meant to encourage more of them.There is the Covec report—and I will have to read this: Considering the widening [use] of existing products" ahead of this bill "the fact that most innovative agricultural compounds were eligible for a 20-year period of patent protection meant that a 5-year period of data protection did not appear to have a significant impact on the registration of new products." So what is this about? Why are we doing this? It is actually to increase the monopoly for those big corporates. I call it a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) bill. It is listed as one of the bills to give effect to the TPPA because it goes right to it. It changed from an extension to 8 years—5 plus 1 plus 1 plus 1 to get to the 8 years and new uses—up to 10 years' data protection to go in sync with the TPPA. In fact the Law Society did that in its submission and said we should do that to match the TPPA. It is a TPPA bill looking after those big corporates that do not give a toss about the community health of New Zealanders. All those kids with endocrine disruption all those cancers that we are seeing in our friends and relatives—how many of them are from these pesticides? We know that some are.Covec went on: "Companies' apparent reluctance to carry out the extra testing to add other uses to innovative compounds for the New Zealand context is therefore more likely to reflect the small size of the market rather than the lack of data protection." Here we are doubling data protection to give these guys even more protection. We think it will lead to more monopoly by the large companies. Yes there may be two or three small companies in New Zealand that may see some gains. There may be some intellectual property that some innovation in New Zealand has seen to be an advantage. Overall there will not be an advantage and it will not be an advantage for our producers because the costs will be held up—less competition—and if they want to go down the pesticide route they will still be paying more for their pesticides because of the monopolistic outcome of this bill.The regulatory impact statement from MPI focused on the cost of new innovative or non-innovative products to the market to the users. It at no time reflected on the real externalities of these pesticides. It did not look at the cost to the environment the cost to human or animal health. MPI will be leaving that to the EPA under the Hazard Substances and New Organisms Act and its ability to assess properly. It has no ability to do a decent job and I will go into some of that in the few minutes that I have left. I will mention glyphosate—Hon Members: Oh!STEFFAN BROWNING: —and hear the orchestra over here—because they are not addressing that properly in this country. Glyphosate-based herbicides are the dominant herbicide used in the world. In New Zealand we have 91 different formulations—91 formulations—and I cannot find out what the adjuvants are—those stickers those penetrants and whatever is in those—because of data protection.Europe has just banned a dominant one called "POEA" for short—something like polyoxyethylene tallow amine. It is a big name—POEA. They have just said to their countries "Ban it." Guess what? It is in 69 of our 91 glyphosate-based herbicides and I cannot find out even with writing to the Minister which ones they are. So POEA should be pulled in New Zealand. Has our EPA got the presence of mind to reassess it and kick it out of use in New Zealand? What this Government is doing—and unfortunately is supported by some in the Opposition—is that it wants to double that data protection so that people like myself people in the Pesticide Action Network the Safe Food Campaign and others who have the vested interest of the community's health cannot get that information. They cannot get that. They cannot find that out. They cannot tell the New Zealand community: "Steer away from that product. The EPA is not doing a good job for you." The EPA was also saying: "Hey roll on with the use of it in our streets and our parks and our kids' playgrounds. We think it's OK because we're only looking at industry science."Ian McKelvie: What about Monsanto?STEFFAN BROWNING: Industry science provided a lot by Monsanto—thank you Ian. Monsanto has given the biggest dump of information to our EPA around the safety and risks of glyphosate. It is a good example—yes I talk about glyphosate a lot because it is a clear ready example and it is in our streets our parks and our playgrounds and we need it out of there. I went to Europe in the last major adjournment to look at pesticide reduction strategies and some other policy issues and I went and met with officials and the like. Denmark has a strategy to protect water nature and human health. It has a strategy to reduce pesticide use by 40 percent in a very short time. We will be opposing this bill still."