O'Connor Damien: Biosecurity Law Reform Bill — Second Reading 
O'Connor Damien: Biosecurity Law Reform Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:675;Page:20638] 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) 
: 
 It is indeed a pleasure to rise in the House to speak on the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill. It is interesting that in a recent KPMG report—a survey of all of the key agribusiness leaders across the country asking them what were the issues ahead of them into the future—the No. 1 issue all of them identified was biosecurity. So it is important that whatever changes we make we improve the system because this economy still relies on biological production for its wealth. Any threat to that production has to be taken seriously. 
This bill has been in the development stage for a long time; it goes right back to when Labour was in Government. When there was the incursion of varroa mite we identified a lack of planning and coordination between industry and Government. So the concept of a Government-industry agreement was developed then and that concept has been carried forward into this bill. What concerns us of course is that the first Budget that the incoming National Government put in place cut $2 million from the MAF Biosecurity New Zealand front-line budget. 
Hon Steve Chadwick 
: How much? 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: It was $2 million and 58 to 60 front-line jobs. We thought that was pretty dumb I have to say. The Government put up the argument: “Well we’re facing a recession and the number of imported goods is reducing.” In fact because of the value of the dollar a fairly steady stream of imported goods was coming into this country—in fact far too many—at the same time as the Government had cut front-line border security. The Government has relied on— 
Dr Ashraf Choudhary 
: Cut out 55 of them. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: It was 55 exactly. I think there was some debate at the time as to how many would lose their jobs. We had assurances from the Government that things were OK and that we had less volume of goods. Well the Government has said for some time that the recession is over and the economy is on an upward trend. But we have not heard of one more person being appointed to front-line border security services. Since that time the Minister of Tourism who is also the Prime Minister has put forward SmartGate which is a passenger clearance system between New Zealand and Australia. So people can just walk off the plane from Australia straight through into New Zealand the theory being that there has been a risk assessment done while those people are on the plane; the officers have even worked out whether their bags should be checked. So those people can walk off the plane and straight into New Zealand. 
There have been major concerns in areas like Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty where the new air services into Rotorua could potentially bring a fruit fly straight into Rotorua over the hill and into some of our key regions. The fact that they are facing another huge biosecurity risk through  
Pseudomonas syringae pv. Actinidiae  
(Psa) does highlight the fragility of our economy and the Bay of Plenty is reeling under the threats and the reality of Psa. We are not quite sure how far that threat might go. 
The Minister in his speech went through the bill and identified a number of key areas. I also acknowledge the chairman of the Primary Production Committee Shane Ardern—who I have always said should be the Minister. He did a very good job and there was non-partisan analysis of this legislation. The one thing we agreed on was that in too many cases the legislation that came before us was very very permissive—that is in my simple assessment the trade boffins in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry had ruled over the biosecurity boffins. So we had to tidy up a number of areas. The Minister acknowledged that changes were made by the select committee and that is great; that is the way the process is supposed to work. My question though to the Minister and to his biosecurity boffins is why did they put before the select committee a bill that without amendment would have seriously threatened front-line biosecurity in this country? We have made some adjustments and improved the bill but my suspicion of the thinking behind it begs the question of how they will interpret this legislation when it is applied. There is much left to interpretation. 
We come back to the question of what is driving biosecurity thinking under the National Government and under that Minister. I would say it is a softly softly “touchy-feely” approach. They do not want to offend the Australians because they want to let them in. They do not want to check their bags and they do not want to ask them the hard questions. So they do some kind of risk assessment analysis on some computer screen. 
We need the toughest highest level of biosecurity of any country anywhere in the world because we rely on biological production for our well-being. God help us if foot-and-mouth got into New Zealand. We would be struggling as an economy for so long. We have already faced a very serious threat with Psa in the kiwifruit industry. Foot-and-mouth would be that threat times 10. Fruit fly would be that threat times five. In fact we have identified a fruit fly larvae in this country and who knows how it got in. We have identified honey that has not been checked. It was found right inside our economy available to bees that might fly in and out and it is potentially a serious risk. We do not have the best front-line system in the world but the Minister and his officials say that we do as they go around the world. They say we have a very high level of control but if we identify the incursions that we have on a regular basis one would have to say that all is not well. Although it is impossible to have an absolute position—that nothing will come in—we have to try harder. 
Although supporting the legislation into the House and voting for it at this particular time the Opposition flags that we will continue to talk with industry people to make sure that any amendments if necessary can be put back into the House in the Committee stage and improvements made. We do not believe that this bill is as good as it should be. We do not believe that Government-industry agreements—GIAs—will provide a fair go for small sectors of the primary industries whose total gross export earnings are not huge but have the potential to grow. It might be feijoas avocados small industries perhaps at this point but with the potential to really grow. A risk assessment by MAF Biosecurity New Zealand under this bill might deem them to be insignificant and therefore the obligation of the Government to step in and help fund measures to combat an incursion might disappear. The Government might walk away. We do not want that. 
We need to ensure that we have a robust system but without changes this bill would not be robust. I think it is better but it still has some way to go. We are in active consideration of the bill as reported back by the select committee. We will be working with industry players and bringing some amendments to the Committee where we think that improvements can still be made. One of the industry players emailed me and said they would like to slow this down and anything we could do to hold it up would be great because they still want to go through a double and triple-check. 
If it takes longer for the bill to go through the House I make no apologies for that. I do not think that anyone on the select committee—although I am not sure about those within biosecurity or about the Minister—would want to make a mistake with this legislation. I do not want to get into the technical details of outcomes objectives and who an importer is—all of these little things the committee changed to make the system more robust. The overarching question that arose from that was why the officials put up such limp legislation in the first place. Why could they not see the dangers that each and every one of us on the select committee saw? We made changes and that is great but maybe we missed something. I for one do not want to be held responsible for passing legislation that leaves open the door to a major biosecurity incursion in this country. Although supporting the legislation at this point the Opposition flags its intention to investigate amendments that might improve the bill even further and we lay at the feet of the Government the challenge to put more money into biosecurity.