Brooking RachelRACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker for this opportunity to speak on the second reading of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Hazardous Substances Assessments) Amendment Bill. We've had some big discussions in the House this morning. We've been talking about how to reform the whole resource management system climate budgets—how do we decarbonise our country and society—and then we've had the constitutional issue of parliamentary sovereignty with the legislation for the declaration of inconsistencies. There's been very good debate in the Chamber this morning in my opinion about these really important issues. But now we come to an amendment bill on hazardous substances. As the former speaker just said I think it's dull but worthy." and I concur with that assessment. Even in the title of the bill we have hazardous substances which is the bit we're talking about today and new organisms. New organisms—that gets people excited. I had dinner with a number of members last night with the Royal Society and mentioned we've got a bill coming up on hazardous substances—or HSNO hazardous substances and new organisms—and they were very excited that we might be doing something around new organisms. But in fact this bill is about making the regulation of those hazardous substances the chemicals better. So as we've heard the EPA the Environmental Protection Authority is the regulator of hazardous substances of these chemicals that we've been hearing about. The purpose of this amending legislation is to enable that EPA the regulator to use information from international regulators. So this is for the assessment and reassessment of whether or not chemicals should be in New Zealand and how they should be used. We heard from the Minister the "why"—why do we want the EPA to be able to use this information from international regulators? It's because there can be benefits from regulating new chemicals. It may be that there is a new chemical rather than one that's currently regulated that has fewer environmental impacts or it may be more economic or there might be fewer health risks. Currently it is a fairly slow and costly process. In 2001 to 2019 the EPA did 51 reassessments and at 2019 there were 39 remaining in the queue. That goes to the Minister's comment about how we're a bit stuck with the status quo and hopefully this will be a prompt to change things. Very quickly I just want to go to clause 11 of the bill which has a new section 76E. This is a key provision about the role of these—how we're going to use information from the international regulators. So first of all it's good to note or important to note that there must be a notice in the Gazette to say whether or not an overseas body is one of these international regulators. We heard just then from the Hon Scott Simpson that we want to avoid what he termed "fringe jurisdictions" so this is the part of the bill that deals with that. Then there are some criteria for what those international organisations might be and they include that "the body operates in a manner comparable to the Authority"—that's the EPA—"in regulating hazardous substances;" that "the legislative regime regulating hazardous substances in which the body operates is comparable to this Act;"—to our HSNO legislation—and that "the information from the body is readily accessible by the Authority."; the EPA. At the Environment Committee we had 28 submissions and 12 oral submissions. The changes being made or recommended by the select committee that the Minister has just said that he agrees to they were all unanimously in support across the table which is always a good thing. It means that you come into the House speaking after the Hon Scott Simpson and agree with what he said.Hon Member: You do anyway!RACHEL BROOKING: Ha ha! So like the Hon Scott Simpson I do want to thank the submitters for taking that time out to explain to us the issues that they have and why it's so important that particularly the chemicals that they might use in agriculture or manufacturing or extractive industries or science—that the regulation of that is timely and is cost-efficient as well. I commend the EPA for the work that they do with us and note that they are an important part of our Public Service. Like the Minister mentioned—he talked briefly about the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment having a recent report on chemicals and so I look forward to that coming to the Environment Committee and commend this bill to the House. Thank you."