Prosser Richard: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5624. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am pleased to rise to take a call in this Committee of the whole House as we debate the Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill. Before I start berating the Government and the Minister in the chair the Hon Nathan Guy I would like to just take the opportunity to hand out a bit of a bouquet along with the brickbats.I want to say a word in support of the Primary Growth Partnership scheme. It is a bit of an anomaly. I really cannot understand why colleagues on this side of the Chamber are so opposed to the Primary Growth Partnership scheme. It is pure socialism. It is absolutely wonderful venture capital from the Government into the primary sector. There is certainly more that can be done with it and over time I have no doubt that there will be more that is done with it and the Primary Growth Partnership will be extended through other schemes. But notwithstanding Mr Nash’s passion I do not accept that criticism of the Primary Growth Partnership. I think we have barely scratched the surface of what we can do with it.But I do want to pick on a couple of areas a couple of line items in the estimates. The first is in the multi-category section of the appropriations for primary industries which includes safety and it is the appropriation allocated to border and domestic biosecurity risk management. That stands at just under $179 million. As we examined through the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill which was one of the enabling pieces of legislation for the appropriations for the primary sector in this Budget we discovered through that process that that amount includes the revenue forecast to be collected from international passengers arriving in New Zealand on airlines and cruise ships. And I say “forecast” because it will take a while for the levy to be designed and a while longer for it to be instituted and then a while after that for the money to start coming in. Then over a period of time that money from the levy will replace the funding that is currently allocated to biosecurity from general taxation.We know this because the Minister very slowly and grudgingly admitted quite tortuously over a period of some time through gritted teeth—he finally admitted that this new levy was not actually going to amount to any increase in funding for biosecurity but in fact was only ever going to be a replacement for the current funding arrangements.So this appropriation is not actually doing any favours for biosecurity. We are not going to see a return to 100 percent screening of all incoming passengers we are not going to see the implementation of 100 percent screening of incoming mail and freight and we are not going to see an improvement on the present rate of about 25 percent as far as the inspection of shipping containers is concerned. We are not going to see an increase in resourcing for border security officers so that the green lane can be done away with. In fact this Government is increasing the number of SmartGate entry points rather than reducing them. So we have no more money for boots on the ground no more money for additional sets of human eyes and the brains and intuition that goes with them but we do have more robots—and SmartGate is not a clever robot; it is just a passport reader. It is quite a dumb robot in fact. This robot is not the “Six Million Dollar Man”.So we do not have the “Six Million Dollar Man” but we do have the $3 million possum. I say that because there is a line item in the non-departmental output expenses column of the appropriation for primary industries that relates to TB vector control. TB vectors are animals that can carry and spread bovine tuberculosis. We need to eradicate bovine TB and keep it out of our cattle and deer herds and that is a good thing and the single most important TB vector we are told is the possum. Feral deer can carry and spread bovine TB as well of course and so can ferrets and pigs and hedgehogs. No one in officialdom seems all that worried about hedgehogs just yet. Rather it is the humble possum that is tarred with being the single most important TB vector and this appropriation allocates $30 million to controlling it.Well we know from answers that the Minister has given in reply to written questions that over the past 10 years TBfree New Zealand has autopsied more than 124000 possums in its search for bovine TB. Of those more than 140000 possums 54 were found to have TB so that is 54 out of more than 124000—0.04 percent—or to put it another way an average of five and a half possums per year. So going by the averages of the last 10 years we can reasonably expect that this year there might be another five or maybe six possums out there with TB. And they are not the only vector as I mentioned—TBfree New Zealand has autopsied a number of feral deer as well. Since 2007 it has autopsied a total of 1751 deer and found that 34 of them had TB.So we have had 54 possums over 10 years and 34 deer over 8 years. That works out to an average of a little under 10 wild animals a year that we might expect to be carrying TB and this Government has allocated a nice round $30 million in order to control them. That is $3 million per animal. We cannot have our shipping containers inspected but we can go chasing the $3 million possum. I am sure—I am absolutely certain—that if the Government were to announce a bounty of $3 million a head on any possum dead or alive found to be carrying TB it would get knocked over in the rush of trappers and ground control operators wanting to take on the job. Instead we are going to carpet bomb thousands of hectares of bush with airdrops of 1080 and kill thousands of native birds and insects and pollinators and lizards and snails—