Smith Nick: Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Smith Nick: Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:606;Page:3654] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (NZ National—Nelson) 
: 
 I was amused that in the closing comments from Mr Clayton Cosgrove he wanted to congratulate the Minister on the management of this legislation. I refer him to the explanatory note of this bill we are to consider and ask him to read it very carefully. The House should take note. It says that the enactment of this bill will enable New Zealand to ratify the Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in September 2002. By my calculations September 2002 was about a good 6 months ago and the enactment of this legislation will enable the Government to do something 6 months ago. If that is what Mr Clayton Cosgrove says is great management of legislation I say it is a truly Houdini act.  
I do though want to make a serious contribution not because I am an expert on any of those conventions but I have spent a great deal of time both as a Minister and chair of the legislation on hazardous substances on these issues. First I want to say that National welcomes an international approach to the regulatory environment for chemicals. One of the shocks I had in the process of addressing some of these issues was to find out just how many different chemicals are used and pivotal to the New Zealand economy. Under that new hazardous substances and new organisms legislation we already have over 48000 different chemicals registered. The idea that we as a country of 4 million people can have a rigorous system to ensure that they are not a danger to the health and safety of our population is simply not correct. In a global economy we need to take a global approach.  
The second reason we need that sort of global approach is that our air and our sea particularly are truly global resources. If one country does it fine; if others do it poorly then we all pay the price.  
Some of the motivation behind the conventions that we seek to ratify through this Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Amendment Bill is around the concern of dumping dangerous chemicals and ratbag regimes. There have been a large number of tragedies where First World countries with dangerous chemicals and that are keen for cash have sold them off to ratbag regimes and they have been stored and have been a danger to both the populations and to the environment of those countries. So the core value behind this bill and those conventions is to say that we need to have some rules about that. For instance in my own area at Mapua and Nelson we had a large number of chemicals stored and it would have been very easy to put them on a boat and ship them off to some ratbag regime where they would present a danger to someone else’s health. While that might be financially advantageous for New Zealand and for that company it would certainly be to the world’s detriment. That is why we have these sorts of conventions and New Zealand should be part of those.  
I also have a challenge for the Government. Huge compliance costs are associated with the labelling of chemicals. At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg there was the report on the end of the trial on the international labelling regime. It just makes such common sense when a country is using a particular chemical that the world community—Europe the United States New Zealand Australia and Canada—actually adopt a common labelling regime rather than every single country developing its own rules. There has been a good international standard developed and I urge the Government to adopt that as quickly as possible because it makes good sense.  
There are legitimate issues around these two bills that we are debating this afternoon with regard to compliance costs. That will be one of the issues that National members will be looking to. In meeting those environmental objectives quite properly we will be making sure that as well as taking account of health and safety issues New Zealand companies are taking a responsible approach to the use of such chemicals in a way that minimises the cost for business because that makes sense for our country.  
National will support the introduction of this bill. We will be asking a series of questions at the select committee about its operation. We do have some concerns about the broadness of the export controls that may be required to do it but the principle behind the bill and those conventions is sound.