Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Speaker. Well it is a pleasure to actually speak on the bill. I didn't sit on the Environment Committee on this the hazardous substances and new organisms amendment bill—I won't go through the whole name—but it is really important. I think that this bill will make life a lot easier for people and improve the availability by either making it available or not available of hazardous substances in New Zealand. We are a small market and drawing from my past life I know the difficulty of getting new chemicals into New Zealand that can be utilised in the wine industry is a long and torturous process. The costs are enormous and the chemical companies see this as a very small market. The hoops that have to be jumped through to get chemicals which are accepted in markets that we would align ourselves with—like Australia for example—are often very difficult to get into New Zealand or other markets like the US or Europe. And so those hoops are very hard to get through expensive and it simply doesn't happen. And we're all worse off because the chemicals that they are replacing are often much more invasive or dangerous to the environment and do a better job at controlling whatever it is that they've been brought in for. That's the reason we do bring in new chemistry because that chemistry is offering a service or an end that we want. So it's great that this allows the Environmental Protection Authority to adopt research and validate the claims that are from other similar jurisdictions as my colleague said albeit that there'll be select jurisdictions—not just anything goes. I actually hope this is a sign of things to come because the genetic engineering (GE) subject is something that we all need to have a discussion about and perhaps we could come through with a cross-Parliament bill like this that we could end up having that conversation—I think it would be very timely. Given that we've all talked a lot about climate change today that's absolutely apropos to that GE discussion. So it's good to see that that's on the radar of people across the House. The select committee—as I said I wasn't there but I note that some of the things it's doing are really quite important like requiring the authority to publish their decisions and when it gives its decisions in writing it's to also notify every person who made a submission. I think that's a very good thing. I wonder why we don't do this anyway—I think that's a very sensible thing to do. If people have taken the time to go to select committee and contribute to the process of approving or not a particular chemical they should have the courtesy of a notification that it's either been approved or disapproved. This is a very iterative process. I notice that clause 4 is to require the authority to develop a work plan and to give priority to certain hazardous substances that are either prohibited or restricted during a reassessment under section 64 amended by clause 24A and that it will be made freely available on the internet—I think that's a great idea. But I think the whole purpose of this is to allow chemicals and substances to be assessed and if they are no longer appropriate to be used in New Zealand they are dealt with very quickly. If they are chemicals and substances that will be coming in and substituting other ones and we've got good science for it we make that simple and easy—I shouldn't say science"; I should say evidence or data because science isn't something we'd be looking for; it would be actually evidence and data. Scientific evidence and scientific data but not "the science"—because that's a nonsense term. But I think this is a very appropriate piece of legislation and I have great pleasure in commending it to the House."