SpeechSTEPH LEWIS (Labour—Whanganui): Thank you Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to rise and take a call this afternoon on the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill. Before I begin I just want to join my colleagues from across the House over the last few days who have expressed their sympathies in acknowledging the family and friends of the student who passed away in the tragedy in Whangārei. I would also like to add to that that my thoughts are with the families who were affected by the tornado that touched down in Awatuna in South Taranaki earlier this week as well. I know that the community is wrapping around them.With that I'd like to begin my contribution on the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill today by acknowledging the work of the Minister the Hon Peeni Henare to bring the bill here through Parliament. I want to acknowledge my colleagues on the Primary Production Committee from across the House—we're a very collegial committee and that was definitely the case in working through this bill as well. I'd like to thank the submitters who took their time to submit on the bill. As a result of those submissions we did see improvements in this bill as it was reported back to the House in the second reading. And then further improvements were made at the committee of the whole House stage as well following further reflection from the select committee on the suggestions made by some of the submitters. So it's really good to see that the Minister and officials took up the committee's recommendations and we've seen those improvements made. On that note I do want to thank the officials from the Ministry for Primary Industries for their work on the bill and the drafters as well.So as the Minister said this bill is about ensuring that our log traders our primary processers importers and exporters are registered that they're doing due diligence on the timber that they're handling to make sure that it has not been illegally harvested. Why is that important? Because ultimately it's a reflection on Brand New Zealand Inc." We want to make sure that hand on heart the timber we are exporting has been legally harvested that those who are harvesting it and trying to export it have a legal right to do so. Likewise we want to make sure that the timber that we import and bring into New Zealand to use is also legally harvested. We want to play our part in the international community to reduce the flow of illegally harvested timber throughout the world. This bill is a tangible step that we can take to support those international efforts to reduce the trade of illegally harvested timber and timber products.It is also a bill that will bring us into line with our trading partners. So several of our trading partners in the APEC communities including Australia the US Indonesia the Republic of Korea Japan Vietnam and China—they are countries that we trade with; we trade about 85 percent of our timber products with these countries. These countries have either already implemented a similar regime in their respective countries or they're in the process of doing so. So it's important that we ensure for our own timber exporters and importers that we are bringing our system into line as well to protect the trade that we have and protect our exporters.I want to touch on the definition of "legally harvested" because this is something that we as a committee spent a long time considering. It's also—as we heard from Mr McKelvie across the House there—something that we had a number of submissions on. So the definition of "legally harvested"—it is the core component of the bill and under the bill it will see that trees or woody plants are legally harvested if they are harvested by a person who has the right to harvest the trees and the person does not contravene the relevant harvest laws that apply in the place where the harvest occurs. So that can either be harvesting here in New Zealand or harvesting overseas. There are two exceptions to that in the legal harvest system: so it doesn't apply to a person who trades in indigenous timber as that timber is already regulated under Part 3A of the Forests Act. But a person who does deal with indigenous timber may opt in dealing in the domestic supply chain—they can voluntarily opt in to this legal harvest scheme if they can see commercial benefit to doing so. So I think it's great that they've got that choice. The other thing that we spent a long time considering as a committee is the harvest information. So the bill has been designed so that harvest information is generated from the person at the source of the harvest and then it flows the whole way through the supply chain to the exporter to give that certainty that the timber or the wood product is legally harvested. With that it is my pleasure to commend this bill to the House."