Fitzsimons Jeanette: Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 18 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7805. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Green) 
: 
 I am proud to rise to support the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill and to congratulate my colleague Catherine Delahunty on the huge amount of work she has done on this issue. It is one that has been important to the Green Party for many years. We have put a lot of work into it. We have tried to get previous Governments to take the action set out in this bill. We did get some engagement from the previous Labour Government but although there were some discussions and sympathy in the end it did not take any action either. That is why this bill is necessary. 
Let us be clear about what we are talking about here. New Zealanders as consumers are supporting the destruction of old-growth tropical forests home to a vast richness of huge trees luxuriant shrubs the remaining orang-utan and other mammals and invertebrates not yet even described by science. We have seen the pictures of the slaughter of 50 orang-utans a week in Indonesia. We cannot pretend as parliamentarians that we do not know what it is we are supporting. These forests are the lungs of the world producing our oxygen storing carbon holding soil together and cleaning the air and water that flows through them. They are the home of millions of forest peoples who depend on them for their food shelter medicines building materials and in fact for their whole sustenance. Those who are not killed in the deforestation end up living in urban slums where they are unlikely to survive and probably wish they had not. We are supporting their destruction by buying furniture and decking made from that timber that makes that logging economic. 
Often we are doing it without knowing. We are buying kwila ramin yellow balau Asian mahogany and Burmese teak which used to be the home of countless people and endangered wildlife. We are supporting the destruction of these forests by providing a market for the palm oil grown in place of these forests. We have just persuaded Cadbury’s to stop using it in chocolate but there are countless other food-related uses and there is nothing stopping it coming into the country being made into bio-diesel and getting a Government subsidy. The Greens have a bill at a select committee to set some standards around that. 
We are supporting these forests’ destruction by providing the main world market for palm kernel expeller the solids left when the oil is extracted and we are using that to make our dairy industry more and more unsustainable. My colleague Kevin Hague has demonstrated that there are severe biosecurity risks for New Zealand in that practice. 
Let us be clear: those who are speaking and voting against this bill tonight propose that we should go on doing all those things. They are voting for accelerated climate change because 20 percent of that is now coming from the destruction of old-growth forests. They cannot be put back. Once they are gone they are gone for ever—for eternity. 
Let us look at the rather pathetic arguments that have been raised tonight such as compliance costs for foresters. This bill places absolutely no compliance costs whatever on foresters. It does not require New Zealand foresters to do anything; it simply prevents these products from coming into New Zealand. Of course the Government is concerned that under the World Trade Organization this might be an interference in free trade. So are we in favour of free trade in blood? Two-thirds of our forestry industry is already certified sustainable; the rest could get there very easily. 
I take offence at the suggestion from Shane Ardern that we in the Greens are urban people who have never planted a tree. I have planted thousands of trees along with the natives I have watered and released and the timber trees I have thinned and pruned. It is an insult to suggest that we do not have practical experience of what we are talking about. 
Those members talked of difficulties for importers. I ask how that compares with the people who are losing their lives and their homes. We have beautiful timbers growing sustainably in this country. We stopped logging our own native forests and we have a range of other species that are fit for beautiful furniture and decking but those who are voting against this bill want to see those New Zealand businesses undercut by imports of tropical timber because it is always cheaper to get timber that one did not have to plant and where there are no rules about how to treat the local people or about what happens to the wildlife the soil and the water.