Hague Kevin: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Hague Kevin: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:658;Page:7616] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party supported the Biosecurity Amendment Bill in its first reading and will continue to support it in its second reading. 
Biosecurity seems to have four different phases. One is prevention of biosecurity risks occurring in the first place; the second is detection of those risks typically at or around the border; the third is stamping out incursions where they have got through our detection process; and the fourth is mitigation where the incursion cannot be stamped out and we are instead looking to ameliorate the worst effects. It is obvious that just as in my field of health where we look at exactly those same phases in trying to intervene in a person’s disease progression our emphasis must be on the first phase—on prevention. So we do everything that we can to prevent the biosecurity risk in the first place; if that fails we then throw as much resource as we possibly can into the detection process. 
This bill deals largely with the detection process but the Government believes that the increased fines that the bill provides are an important element in the prevention process. It is really those first two phases of the biosecurity process that I want to focus on tonight. 
In relation to prevention of biosecurity risks I begin by giving praise to MAF Biosecurity. I had the privilege of being able to join the Primary Production Committee—and I thank Shane Ardern and the members of the committee for the opportunity to do so—during the consideration of this bill. During that time we heard from MAF Biosecurity about the processes it uses to educate travellers about biosecurity risks. I was impressed by the lengths to which MAF Biosecurity is going in that regard. 
Travellers coming into the country are just one aspect of the biosecurity risk that we face. There is a very much larger risk that we face around goods and freight coming into the country through shipping containers and shipping holds. It is much more difficult to prevent biosecurity risks in that regard because many of the operators have commercial incentives to skimp on the processes that might be used to reduce or eliminate biosecurity risks to this country. 
I point out the unnecessary risk we often pose to ourselves by our needless importation of goods into this country. I have spoken in the House several times about our importation of palm kernel. It is a classic example of a product that we have absolutely no need to import into New Zealand. The biosecurity risks that we import with that product are substantial. I have spoken in the House as has Damien O’Connor about the risks in relation to insect infestations of palm kernel shipments that arrive here. I have also spoken about the risk of foot-and-mouth disease from palm kernel. We are importing this stuff from a region of the world where foot-and-mouth disease is endemic. The stuff is coming into the country and being fed out and farmers are reporting soil contamination. That soil contamination can occur only after the point in the process where the palm kernel is exposed to heat. In other words the contamination is occurring after the only process that might have done something about foot-and-mouth disease. We know that foot-and-mouth disease is viable in soil and water for extended periods of time. This is a massive risk that we are taking and we are taking it entirely needlessly. 
This is the kind of madness that can result in particular from free-trade agreements. I raise the topic because it is timely. We have just signed another free-trade agreement with Malaysia which is incidentally a country in which foot-and-mouth disease is endemic. Free-trade agreements encourage the import of goods to contribute to a consumption-led economy the very kind of economy we do not need; the kneecapping of local industries—in the case of palm kernel the grain farmers of New Zealand who are suffering very badly as a result of this trade—and the taking of entirely unnecessary biosecurity risks. In the prevention phase there is a whole bunch of risks that we are taking that we do not need to take. 
In relation to detection these increased fines are effectively a trade-off that the Minister for Biosecurity proposes. They are proposed as a disincentive for travellers to bring in with them biosecurity risks on the basis that travellers will pay closer attention to their luggage and weed out those risks. We are making this trade-off because the Prime Minister wants the travelling time from Australia to New Zealand to be 8 minutes shorter. The goal is the saving of 8 minutes on a trip of multiple hours. For that we are sacrificing our approach of universal screening to one that is based on risk profiling. 
I want to raise in the House some figures that the Primary Production Committee heard from MAF Biosecurity about that issue. I hesitate before doing so to point out that the select committee itself as Shane Ardern has noted and I thank him for that has indicated to this House that it is not convinced by the risk-profiling approach. More work needs to be done on that and the select committee is absolutely right. MAF Biosecurity found in its trial of the risk-profiling approach that those passengers who were deemed to be low risk and went through the low-risk trial lane nonetheless yielded some 51 items of biosecurity risk. So out of the 1186 seizures of biosecurity risks most of them were from passengers deemed high risk but 51 came from passengers deemed low risk. If we screened only those passengers deemed to be high risk those 51 risk items would have entered New Zealand. Of those 51 items—I will not run through the whole analysis—some 17 of them for example were fruit fly host material. Well I have spoken in the House before in my first reading speech about the catastrophic impact of a fruit fly infestation in the Bay of Plenty in just the first year. 
Another 18 of those 51 risks were around footwear that had not been properly cleaned. What is the risk around improperly cleaned footwear? Well it is the importation of soil which can contain pathogens. I have spoken about the risk of foot-and-mouth disease from soil but also in the news in this last week or so I have talked about the risk to our iconic kauri species from another soil-based pathogen. 
These are risks that the Government proposes to take in return for saving 8 minutes. I have spoken in the public domain in the last week about the Government being asleep at the wheel on biosecurity. The Minister for Biosecurity has accused me of being alarmist. Well I am alarmed. I am alarmed at the risk and so should this House be and all New Zealanders. This is a massive risk; we do not need to take it. The Green Party will support the bill.