Ewen-Street Ian: Budget Debate 
Ewen-Street Ian: Budget Debate 
[Volume:626;Page:21065] 
IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) 
: 
 It seems slightly inappropriate following a speech about the twilight years and the Zimmer frame to talk about something as important as “rock snot” but that is what has fallen to me today. There is an algae called  
Didymosphenia 
geminata 
 which rejoices in the nickname of “rock snot”. It is an algae that inhabits rivers. It forms rat’s tails. When it is dry it looks like toilet paper. It feels like wet cotton wool. It chokes everything in the river. It destroys the whole river ecosystem. We have an infestation of “rock snot” in New Zealand. In Southland 200 kilometres of the Waiau River and the Mararoa River are infested with this algae. One might say that Southland is an awful long way away it is only two rivers it is not a problem. However I am sorry there is a problem because it takes only one or two cells of that algae to spread to another river system. What is even more pertinent is that although it is widespread in the Northern Hemisphere it has never ever been eradicated from anywhere in the world. 
The Government knows well about “rock snot” but it is not trying to eradicate it it is simply trying to control it. Why is that? Is it too hard? Maybe it is too hard. It is difficult to eradicate and as I say it has never been eradicated anywhere else but the question is: why are we not trying to eradicate it? What happened with the foot-and-mouth hoax—and thank goodness it was a hoax—on Waiheke Island? The Government spent $1 million a day to deal with that. Why is it that the Government spends tens of millions of dollars spraying the people of west Auckland to get rid of the painted apple moth; more millions of dollars spraying the people of Hamilton to get rid of one dead Asian gypsy moth; and millions of dollars before that to get rid of the white spotted tussock moth but it does not spend money to get rid of other things that infest this country like the mosquito carrying the Ross River virus the fall web worm and perhaps more pertinent the varroa bee mite? 
Where does that line get drawn? Who makes the decision about what gets eradicated and what does not? I put it to the House that the line is drawn on economic grounds not environmental grounds—on whether something looks as though it would cost the economy as foot-and-mouth certainly would. Foot-and-mouth would bring the economy to its knees in a week if it really did become established here. So things that look like they are a long way away like two rivers in Southland just get controlled. But what happens if “rock snot” does get away on us if it does infest more rivers if it does get into Lake Manapouri and if it does start clogging TrustPower’s turbines or whoever the generator is down there? Then it will become an economic problem. Then we will say: “Hey whoa perhaps we had better spend some money on this.” But by then of course it will not just be two rivers it will be a whole network of rivers. It will be too late but it will still be a huge economic problem. 
The question we have to keep asking ourselves is: do we need to allow these things into the country and then try to eradicate them or do we stop them at the border? I have been a critic for some years of border control biosecurity but I have to say that in the last 2 years in particular border control has actually become very good. I am very happy with airport control with international mail centre control and I am pleased to say that after about 3 or 4 years of harassment from me and many other people the Government has moved from 24 percent container inspection to 100 percent. 
The problem with the 100 percent container inspections is that a lot of them are done at what are called devanning centres. These centres are where the containers are shipped to opened and unloaded. The people who do the inspections are the people who run the devanning centres. Now there is a conflict of interest if ever there was one. Why does this Budget not have money to put into independent inspectors going to each of the devanning centres to open each of these overseas containers to check for biosecurity threats?