Prosser Richard: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: General Debate[Sitting date: 03 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4264. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): Last week I received an answer to a written question to the Minister for Primary Industries regarding the number of possums that have been found to be carrying TB—bovine tuberculosis—which the Animal Health Board now known as TBfree New Zealand is attempting to eradicate using aerial 1088 poison. It turns out that over the last 9 years or so TBfree has autopsied something like 124213 possums and of those 54 were found to have TB. So that is 54 possums out of more than 124000 which works out at a touch over 0.04 percent.David Bennett: Ha ha! What’s the percentage?RICHARD PROSSER: Four one-hundredths of 1 percent of the possum population.David Bennett: Oh good on you.RICHARD PROSSER: Mr Bennett be quiet the adults are talking. From that number we are invited to believe that the humble possum is putting our dairy and deer industries in some kind of deadly peril.So I got to wondering whether in fact any of the other justifications that are given for the continued use of 1080 poison are actually capable of holding water—and holding water is a very valid argument because next month Auckland Council is planning to drop 1080 poison 50000 kilograms of it about 50 tonnes of 1080 poison baits over the Hunua Ranges in what is explained as an attempt to target possums and rats not for the purpose of eradicating TB but because the rats and possums are blamed according to Auckland Council’s website for harming native plants and animal life and their habitats. Maybe they are. Possums eat plants—this we know. Possums live in the bush and they eat the bush and one could be forgiven for asking how after 150 years of possums eating the bush we still have bush. The Hunua Ranges are covered in lots of nice green lush bush and that is the way we want them to stay. The possums do eat the bush so we kill the possums and that is the way everybody likes it.But how much of this is actually based on reliable data? I ask because if the farming sector and TBfree New Zealand and the Animal Health Board can justify carpet bombing thousands of hectares of New Zealand with 1080 in order to wipe out a problem that is present in just 0.04 percent of possums how can we be sure that Auckland Council has good data to back up using 1080 over what just happens to be its single largest and most important drinking water catchment? It is targeting rats as well of course and rats do eat native birds and we need to do something about that. But do we need to do it by dropping tonnes and tonnes of deadly poison over the most important water catchment of our biggest city?We know there are better ways. There are better ways and we know that because all the initial survey work that is done to ascertain what the pest populations are and what the native bird populations are before a poison drop and after it are done on the ground. It is all groundwork. It is all trapping which is used to establish what those numbers are beforehand and then again afterwards to see how successful the drop has been. So it can be done and it can be done even in the rough country in the steep country. This is important because quite a lot of the ground in the Hunuas is rough and steep. It is just this sort of country where if something is going to go wrong it will go wrong there. In steep country there is no way of guaranteeing that poison pellets are not going to bounce and slide and end up in places where they are not meant to be like in the reservoirs and in the creeks that run into the reservoirs.The thing about Watercare Services which is the arm of the Auckland Council that runs the water services is that it does not control the catchment itself. It has control of the dams and the access roads and a wee strip about 20 metres wide around the outside of the dams. The rest of it Watercare Services has no say over.Tim Macindoe: This member has a future as a racing commentator.RICHARD PROSSER: It all looks very good on paper Mr Macindoe and the presentations are all very slick and professional. We have got all sorts of reassuring technology like GPS maps with their pretty coloured lines and exclusion zones and all that sort of thing. But as anyone who has ever been on the ground will tell you as soon as the choppers start flying a lot of that stuff goes out the window. They cannot take account of the vagaries like wind gusts and so forth.We know that Watercare Services which looks after Auckland’s water has some very strict protocols in place. It is very concerned about the safety and security of its dams. Watercare Services would also very much rather that no one messed around with the potential safety of Auckland’s water supply. It is very professional and it is very worried.Maybe the people of Auckland need to be worried as well because have they been told? Has anyone actually taken the time to explain properlyto Aucklanders what is going to be done in their water catchment next month and what might happen if something goes wrong? The Auckland Council website says very reassuringly that “Each hectare will receive around 2-3kg of cereal pellets containing 0.15 per cent of the active 1080 ingredient. That’s about one teaspoon of 1080 per hectare.” Well just to put that into perspective. A lethal dose of 1080 for an adult is about 200 milligrams which is about a twentieth of a teaspoon. So that is enough poison to kill 20 people per hectare which over 17000 hectares is enough poison to kill 340000 people. No one believes it is going to go anywhere near that wrong but it does show us just how dangerous this stuff can be. There are sub-lethal effects that can be very nasty as well.But all that aside it is a very great concern that this operation will require half of Auckland’s Hunua dams to be taken out of commission two at a time for an unspecified period until the poison drop is over and the tests have all come back clear. That is if nothing goes wrong. Never mind the cost to the Auckland ratepayer—$500000 roughly and that is on top of the cost of the drop itself. It might all be based on faulty inaccurate or massively overstated data just like with TB. Thank you.