Ardern Shane: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Ardern Shane: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:606;Page:3664] 
SHANE ARDERN (NZ National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 I rise in support of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill. I recommend that it goes to the select committee for a number of reasons but not for the reason that is obvious and that most have already spoken about—that the Government have the ability to ratify the Stockholm convention by August-September 2003 because clearly that is going to be pretty hard to achieve. I congratulate Clayton Cosgrove on suggesting that I would have some learned comments to make on this because he is absolutely right. Even the Rt Hon Helen Clark will struggle with the spin on being able to get this convention ratified in that time frame.  
I suggest that the underlying reason this bill has suddenly been given urgency by the Government to come up the Order Paper and be in the House today is so the Rt Hon Helen Clark can once again stand on another world stage as a signatory to something that will give her an opportunity to promote herself in a job beyond being the Prime Minister.  
The bill does a few things that I think are essential. Schedule 2 lists hazardous substances that should not be dumped disposed of or used willy-nilly in pastoral New Zealand. The one that particularly sticks out as far as I am concerned is DDT. As someone who has been involved in farming for a long time I understand the reason that DDT was used extensively in the 1940s and 1950s. It was used to control grass grub a highly invasive insect that used to wipe out pastures and drop production in pastoral farming by up to 50 percent at times. But there is an irony in the fact that the Green Party strongly supports this process. It was through the use of gene technology and the development of pasture species able to resist insects like grass grub that we have been able to move away over years from using some of these chemicals that were clearly detrimental and still are. The residues are still there. They are still an issue in the dairy industry because they can be detected in milk and milk products and create problems for our clean green image in terms of exporting our products around the world.  
I come back to the point that in this country we could have either extremists on the right or extremists on the left given that the Green member spoke of extremists on the right and this type of science and technology development would be stopped if we let them have their way. That would have meant that chemicals that are obviously not ideal would continue. As far as I can tell and without a helluva lot of knowledge about them on the surface the Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions seem to be a very well-principled concept. I suspect that most Western nations will sign up to that. But that is the reason this whole process should be subject to a very robust select committee process. I hope the Government resources that select committee with the scientific knowledge it will need to make a decision on this. The chemicals listed in the schedules such as Aldrin and Dieldrin were used extensively in farming in my youth. As far as I know they have had no detrimental effect on me but who knows? There will be members on the other side of the House who will have a different view of that I am sure. I would not be sure that some of those members have been on something much more toxic than these chemicals. But I can be sure that the use of those chemicals over the years has reduced substantially because of technological advances. That is a good thing and long may it continue. The clean green image that we have in terms of our trade is an absolute essential.  
The other issue that has been raised in this bill in the commentary and in the research notes and so forth that I have that go with the bill is having consistency of labelling around the world. Different chemicals can have a different name in a different place. Nobody actually knows what is being talked about unless there is some consistency. I congratulate any moves that the Government may be taking in that regard but I do have some concerns that cost may be loaded on to the end-users of these substances. There will be reasons that some of these substances should be used—that is medical reasons and a whole range of other reasons. I ask the select committee to make sure that it gives fair time—and that the Government gives the select committee the opportunity to have fair time—to exploring some of those issues and making sure we do not have preservation at all costs and with no regard for business.  
The final point I would like to make and this is very significant relates to introducing a convention that bans the exporting or manufacturing of a listed number of substances and the connection between that and biosecurity. The fact is that there is an overlap in these things. We will intercept this at our borders through customs through our biosecurity checks and through the personnel in the various departments that are involved and detect these substances if they are coming in. If somebody wants to import them illegally then that is how it will be found.  
I hope that the Government recognises the importance of this particular interest in biosecurity because up until this point in time there certainly has not been a great deal of evidence of it. We have breaches of our biosecurity all over the show and it is not only by people who are illegally importing stuff. I have heard that as much as 800 tonne of raw meat products were intercepted. It is good that we intercepted that amount. But how much did we actually not catch at the borders? One has to wonder how much of this type of foreign substance—if that is what we want to describe it as—could be imported into this country undetected in a range of ways. I suggest to this Government that it should give some real teeth to biosecurity on a range of issues but in particular to hazardous substances as this is the bill we are discussing today.  
I suggest to biosecurity Ministers—there have been a number of them in this portfolio already—that they go back and have a look at all the options there are for people to import hazardous substances along with other types of biosecurity breach and have a thorough investigation as to what might be done there. We are talking about an insurance policy here. In my view the security of biosecurity is more important than any other type of security and it needs to be given the attention it deserves. I do not believe it is getting it at the moment. I certainly do not believe that the Minister—the Minister for Trade Negotiations the Minister for Rural Affairs the Minister of Agriculture and the “Minister of This That and Everything Else’—can honestly give the time necessary for all these important portfolios. I know that the Minister is fairly earnest in his work but he is not a miracle worker and he will not be able to do it. This Government needs to give the resources to those different areas.  
When we look at the reasons the Government has decided that the legislation dealing with the prohibition of import manufacture or use of persistent organic pollutants is so important—other than the fact that it is now about 6 months past the time by which the Government was to ratify the Stockholm convention—one really struggles to find what the potential major breach was that brought this legislation to the House today for the debate that it is getting at the moment. The only conclusion I can come to is that it will give the Rt Hon Helen Clark an opportunity to travel overseas once more stand on the world stage present her credentials to the world in terms of a potential future job once she finishes as the Prime Minister of New Zealand in a very short time and take up some grand role where she can tour around and drink lattes.