Ewen-Street Ian: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Ewen-Street Ian: Financial Review Debate — Procedure In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:616;Page:11880] 
IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) 
: 
 I note that almost half the actual expenditure for the last financial year by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry was for biosecurity services. I want to start by applauding the Minister—I feel quite weak at the knees I am applauding the Minister—for the biosecurity strategy that was published in August last year. It is an excellent document. It gives us a scaffolding to take into account the increasing pressures on our biosecurity in the future. It is really good to have a framework for planning a risk management strategy. 
I also want to give the ministry officials a bouquet. Theirs after all is a thankless task. It is an ongoing job where if everything goes perfectly nobody notices but if something goes wrong everybody notices. I know exactly how they feel—I used to be a party whip. I have noticed and I am sure other people have noticed that MAF Biosecurity by and large does an excellent job in a very difficult environment where things can always go wrong—well done! 
At the top of my list of bouquets is the ministry’s move to 100 percent sea-container inspection. Sea-container inspection has been a gaping hole for many years. The 24 percent inspection rate that we had up until recently was diabolically bad. Only 14 percent of those were targeted inspections and another 10 percent were random inspections. Given that we have in excess of 400000 containers a year entering New Zealand containers are a significant pathway for the incursion of pests. 
However with all the bouquets there must inevitably come some brickbats. The first of my brickbats this evening comes with regard to the accreditation process for inspectors of sea containers. The plan the ministry had was basically a good one. It was to accredit inspectors who would go to the devanning centres and the distribution warehouses and inspect sea containers as they were opened. If the inspectors found something awry they were to notify the ministry and it would swing into action—so far so good. The problem was the ministry did its accreditation by means of a multiple-choice questionnaire on the Internet. One of my researchers did the test in about 10 minutes and he became an accredited sea-container inspector without ever having seen a container and probably without knowing how to get into one anyway. The inspection of sea containers is an enormously practical process but there was not a single item of practicality in the test. It was such a simple test that there was a fully accredited inspector who turned out to be a Forest and Bird Protection Society member’s cat. So we have a cat that is an accredited inspector. I sincerely hope that some sanity has since prevailed. 
The second brickbat I have concerns my old friend the spraying of Foray 48B on the residents of Auckland and Hamilton in order to eradicate the painted apple moth and the Asian gypsy moth respectively. My criticism takes two different streams. The first is that the ministry took so long to properly appreciate the severity of the painted apple moth infestation and the implications of it. For instance it took ministry officials 2½ years to publish photos of the painted apple moth so people knew what it looked like. It took 2½ years to restrict the movement of garden waste and other biological material. It also took 2½ years to set traps to delimit the infestation and worst of all the ministry refused to let independent researchers have access to viable females in order to develop pheromones. I will not go into the details of that now but there does seem to have been an element of personal jealousy in that process. To be honest that is not good enough. 
My second stream of my concern is with regard to the spending of $90 million on aerial spraying. In retrospect I accept that the spraying seems to have been quite effective—leaving aside the need for it in the first place. The problem that I have has been the ministry’s attitude all the way through in respect of human health concerns related to the spraying which has left a lot to be desired. Ministry officials have to bear in mind that the problem arose because of their inaction and delay in addressing the issue.