Browning Steffan: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 21 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18238. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I note in this Budget in the vote for primary industries that there seems to be very little extra for biosecurity and yet consistently we have new incursions in New Zealand of pests that are costing us hundreds of millions of dollars. I will point out that through these recent years there have been pests that we will recognise by name like western flowerthrips guava moths—[Interruption]—the National Party varroa mite lettuce aphids tomato and potatopsyllid. It has cost a huge amount to our horticultural industry already. There is theHadda beetle which the Government gave up on eradicating and varroa mite which it gave up on eradicating.The Greens have a different vision. This Budget has no vision for primary industries that we can see in there at all. There is cost-cutting all over the place and minimal increases in any area at all. We would have smart green agriculture and we would be preserving the future for our farming families. We would be using organics more and more. We would be concerned about climate change in a real way and in having resilience in our farming systems—diverse farming systems. Biosecurity is integral to that. It is integral even to agriculture and horticulture as we see it right now today in this country.TheHadda beetle which the Government gave up on in 2010 is expected to cost New Zealand $100 million over 20 years. Yes the cost of eradication was going to be expensive—$200 million over 4 years and that was why the Government came to that conclusion—because it let it inin the first place and then did not nip it in the bud. The painted apple moth cost the Government $65 million and I suppose that that was a bit of a fright. Varroa mite cost $20 million and then that eradication was aborted. Then there are the other ones that have been given up on like Dutch elm disease potato spindle tuberviroid a leaf miner in eucalyptus and the lettuce aphid as I have mentioned before. The fruit fly incursion has been jumped on quite quickly.However what are these pests doing getting in in the first place? The systems are letting us down in terms of what is getting in. I had a look in the Budget to see where I could find the figures for an increase in border control and I could not find any. There is a limited increase—a very limited increase—in some money around biosecurity but when you put it into real terms there is no real increase at all.If fruit fly really got going it would cost $800 million in the Bay of Plenty in the first year. But there is something else I want to put to members which is that eradicating foot-and-mouth would cost $8 billion in the first year if that got in here. This time last year the Auditor-General said that we are not foot-and-mouth disease ready; we are not prepared. Then on April Fool’s Day this year the Government came out—yes on April Fool’s Day; 1 April 2014—and through the Ministry for Primary Industries said: “We reckon we’re ready.”I do not believe that the country is ready because at the same time the Government has let a particular strain ofTheileriaorientalis or Ikeda go loose and even today in our newsroom we hear that the big movement of cattle is about to be undertaken and the Government is saying: “Look farmers try to make sure you don’t share it around.” This should have been nipped in the bud and it could have been nipped in the bud if the Government had used the system it has got National Animal Identification and Tracing and proved that we are foot-and-mouth ready. Thank you.