O'Connor GregINCREASED PENALTIES FOR BREACH OF BIOSECURITY BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed.DEPUTY SPEAKER: When the House adjourned we were on the second reading of the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill. The next caller is—STEPH LEWIS (Labour—Whanganui): Steph Lewis.DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's been a long day.STEPH LEWIS: It has been a long day Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to take this call on the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill a call I'm somewhat surprised to be taking this evening but alas—Hon Michael Woodhouse: Not alas"; we're all looking forward to it.STEPH LEWIS: We are looking forward to it and as the chair of the Primary Production Committee I'm really excited to talk about this bill that we very very carefully scrutinised through the select committee process with thanks to our advisers from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). They were very diligent and thorough in their advice to the committee.Angela Roberts: Even though it's a member's bill—great officials!STEPH LEWIS: They are great officials.I would like to acknowledge and commend the idea of the Hon Jacqui Dean to find ways to support our biosecurity system here in Aotearoa. It's something that I wholeheartedly agree with as someone who comes from a primary industry background because in the primary industry sector we are so reliant on having strong protections at our border to prevent and catch preventable biosecurity incursions and that's why last year I took through the House this very House the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill which is now the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Act.Just to slightly digress a wee bit the fundamental premise of that bill was to make sure that passengers coming into New Zealand are being provided with excellent top-notch easy-to-understand easy-to-digest information about our unique biosecurity arrangements here in New Zealand. At the time the bill was introduced that was optional. It is now mandatory and will come into effect in October of this year. The reason that I bring that up—and bringing it back to the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill—is because unfortunately we on this side of the House although we support Jacqui's desire to see stronger protections at our border are not supporting this bill through to the next stage. Because the advice that we have received from officials is that this bill will not achieve the desired result—and that is to add another layer of protection at our border and prevent individuals coming here to New Zealand from bringing in your apples or your beef jerky or something that they've put in their bag before they hopped on the plane or on the cruise ship and then when they disembarked here in New Zealand they'd forgotten was left in there. So what our officials from the Ministry for Primary Industries did tell us though was that education is one of the three things that makes the biggest difference in preventing people bringing in—accidentally or otherwise—goods with them when they disembark the plane here in New Zealand. That is exactly what my bill last year—now Act—aims to do to provide that education to passengers arriving here in New Zealand. What the MPI officials advised the committee was that data they collected between May 2009 and April 2010 which is the last time that the fees—or the penalties rather—were increased under the Biosecurity Act for incoming passengers. At that point they were increased from $200 to $400. But the data that they collected between the time that those penalties were raised showed a very negligible impact on the number of people bringing stuff accidentally in their backpacks through the border. It showed that offending only decreased with the increase in fine by 0.01 percent. And yet the administration costs and burden of increasing the actual fines and notifying passengers etc. weren't worth the decrease that we then saw. What the officials did tell us is that the three most effective motivators for encouraging passengers to remove prohibited items from their bags—or preferably not even pack them in the first instance—is to make sure that they understand why items are considered a biosecurity risk. We here in New Zealand as we all know are bordered by water so we are free from many of the pests and diseases that we see in other countries across the globe. So that is why it is crucial to our native ecosystems our wildlife our ecosystems as I said that we do protect them and we do prevent those pests from coming into New Zealand. So that's why we need to be informing passengers—as they're on their way here to New Zealand and again right before they hop off the plane and set foot on New Zealand soil—that we have a different set of biosecurity requirements here in Aotearoa and it's really important that they help us protect what we hold so dear here. Also coupled with that though we can't make our system so cumbersome that we've got passengers waiting in line for hours and hours and hours. We need to make sure that passengers still understand how they can pass through our border quickly. So that as I said is what MPI has said is the biggest factor for making sure that passengers don't bring in prohibited items to New Zealand—you know like we said the apples with the Queensland fruit fly etc. We don't want those here in New Zealand. We need to make sure that they are removed from their bags before they set foot on New Zealand soil. I thank all of the organisations and the individuals who took time out of their busy days to submit to the Primary Production Committee; we really appreciated your considered submissions. What some of those submitters and in fact MPI officials also alerted us to is that if you're a traveller who has been on a plane—a very long journey potentially; you've got tired hungry kids with you as well and you're feeling a bit scratchy yourself—you get here and you've packed the kids a little snack pack before you hopped on the plane and you forget to take it out of their backpack and then you get to the biosecurity desk and ping you're fined. What that would do in terms of Brand New Zealand Inc. in people's perception of New Zealand and the feeling that they get when they travel here is that that will diminish our reputation and that is absolutely not something we want. We want every traveller who comes here to Aotearoa to have the best possible experience when they arrive here.I'd like to touch on a couple of other discrepancies. So we did talk about in the select committee the options of increasing the fee by the amount of inflation but that would have created a very strange discrepancy with the other fees and penalties within the Act. The bill also proposes to allow biosecurity officers to deny entry of a passenger to New Zealand if they are found with prohibited goods in their bag and that is inconsistent with current legislation. Currently the only officers who have the power to restrict people from entering New Zealand are immigration officers. So again that would create another discrepancy that we as a committee or the members of the committee on this side of the House didn't think was appropriate and would create uncertainty where there wouldn't as advisers told us be any increased benefit. In fact as I said there would be potential for passengers to have a worse experience coming to New Zealand and getting pinged for something that is an accident. So unfortunately I am unable to commend this bill to the House. We do not support this bill advancing. Thank you."