Browning Steffan: Biosecurity Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Browning Steffan: Biosecurity Law Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 July 2012. Volume:681;Page:3790. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
STEFFAN BROWNING (Green) 
: 
 As I was pointing out with the neo-liberal approach which is saying more and more free trade and sell out biosecurity for free trade John Lancashire was absolutely correct in pointing out that that is actually the critical thing the philosophical thing that is allowing biosecurity risks to be increased. As I have said the Minister has repeatedly said that we need to be open we need to be accepting more and more stuff coming in and more and more risk if we want to be trading freely. But just today the World Trade Organization (WTO) came out and has pointed out that for just that material that is coming in there are actually gaps around it in terms of how it is being managed. The WTO is saying that that needs to be looked at. The different agencies internationally the WTO and the other agencies need to be working better to make sure that biosecurity works and that it is not seen as that trade barrier. Instead of taking the approach that it is always a trade barrier we actually need to look at biosecurity almost first. We definitely do need to look at it first but this Government has been saying: “No no. We want to open up let more in and take more risks.” So it is very interesting that that came out today while we have got this bill the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill in front of us that is quite shaky in terms of looking after biosecurity here.  
The other thing that has just happened of course—and a colleague mentioned this before—is the four new dogs which is very very good because he and the Green Party had been repeatedly saying that there are not enough decent inspections at our ports so it is good to see that there has been a media advisory out to say that there are four new dogs out and the breeding programme is expecting to see 11 new Labradors graduate from training this year as part of a move to bolster biosecurity in this country. That is absolutely fantastic. There is no doubt about it. There are some major gaps and they are being filled. But I would ask how many more staff are going to be coming back into MAF Biosecurity New Zealand. How many more dollars and how many more resources are going to go into making sure we can do an adequate job? Will the increased staffing assuming there is a handler for each of those dogs because there needs to be exceed the successive losses from successive Governments in successive years of backtracking around biosecurity investment in this country?  
I will just point out some of the losses that we can expect to get if we carry on down this track of liberalising and loosening biosecurity by not resourcing it properly. Horticulture New Zealand a couple of years back did a look at what would happen if fruit fly got into various regions and pointed out that in the Bay of Plenty the loss would be $820 million and 3430 jobs lost Hawke’s Bay $390 million and just over 3000 jobs lost and in Nelson $265 million and 1945 jobs lost. Yes the Government did jump when a male fruit fly sprung up in Auckland. We also know what the cost was of that. That would not have happened if we had better port controls. Pysllids are another one affecting the spud industry tomatoes capsicums and tamarillos—the  
Solanum  
family industry. It has cost the industry already something like $250 million in lost production markets and production costs yet there is no more money and there is nothing happening really in terms of reducing those risks. Yes there are some dogs—that is a little bit of catch-up—but there is no more loot going in there to make this better.  
I come back to the aspect that I touched on earlier in terms of the prioritisation of biosecurity in New Zealand. Instead of a serious blanket approach of dealing with biosecurity fully from a Government approach we have got a bundle of industries that will all suffer significantly. We have got the forestry industry which is incredibly vulnerable particularly with its monoculture.