O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Hey look pleased to take a call on this rather long-titled bill but an important one. Because everyone starts their speeches this way I will: it's called the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Hazardous Substances Assessments) Amendment Bill in its third reading.Despite the tone we are very supportive of this bill; I had better assure Minister Parker of that. Humour aside this is actually a good example of a Government bill which attracts the support by the sound of it of everyone across the House. For those watching and certainly locals in my electorate I often will point out that about 80 percent of legislation goes through this Parliament certainly with the support of the two major parties National and Labour and this is a really good example of that.The third reading of course—we are bringing this to a conclusion. As others have rightly noted the select committee led by Eugenie Sage has done a very good job teasing this out and it's a very practical example of a select committee I'd suggest working strongly confidently and producing a piece of legislation that is pretty straightforward. And what it's doing fundamentally is updating New Zealand's legislation to allow the classification of hazardous substances to be done much more quickly and efficiently.I'm not a chemist; in fact I'm not a lawyer not a doctor—not a whole lot of things. I can in fact fill out 3½ minutes telling you what I'm not. However importantly around hazardous substances we're talking things that are explosive things which are flammable things which are toxic things which are eco-toxic corrosive and oxidising. And unbeknownst to me the likes of hydrogen peroxide is actually an oxidising agent.So long and short—which is possibly a little bit long Mr Speaker—fundamentally we are talking a grade of chemicals that are used day to day in New Zealand or explosives of course. I think that's mainly in the mining and quarrying side but it'll also have elements within our defence forces. These are substances used each and every day to make our lives easier and what this bill seeks to do is to speed up the process of how they're assessed. And the fundamental change is to actually look overseas and see what other jurisdictions do and importantly this bill makes it clear that those have to be if you will nominated countries nominated agencies that we have trust in. And I think that makes a lot of sense. I would make the suggestion to the Government and it's been a policy idea of mine—and certainly discussed with my own colleagues on this side—that we should apply this thinking also into the health sector when it comes to the likes of pharmaceutical products or therapeutics.I'm always amazed; with no offence to the likes of Pharmac and Medsafe it would also be good to look at overseas jurisdictions and take a bit of a lead for what they do—you know a drug in Afghanistan America or Algeria works just as good as it does in New Zealand in my opinion and we should take heed of what other countries do in other words to speed up the process and that's fundamentally what this one is doing here.So people wanting to import or use hazardous substances—as I say those which are explosive or oxidising eco-toxic—will now be able to look overseas and provide that information to the EPA or the Environmental Protection Authority here in New Zealand. So I think it's actually just a very pragmatic idea. It'll be interesting to see how this beds in I suppose. Like anything it looks good and it is good I think; the little rub could potentially be who or which countries which agencies get nominated. It would be my hope that New Zealand's relatively generous in those interpretations. I would hate to see that the legislation which is intending to make this more—I don't know—malleable; is that a bad chemical-type pun? It could be I don't know—I'll have to ponder that. Sorry—it's one of those mornings! But hopefully this makes the system more malleable. I wouldn't like to see it run down bureaucratically where all of a sudden in terms of jurisdictions like I don't know the United States or Canada or the United Kingdom we say Well actually even though we respect these authorities we shouldn't use them." I would hope we'll be quite generous in that space.So again very pleased to recommend this bill to the House—good to see it moving through the third reading and look forward to seeing it implemented practically soon."