Hutchison Paul: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Hutchison Paul: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:822] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Some people are finding the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill somewhat droll. Indeed it is a very technical bill. New clause 8A “Prohibition of storage of persistent organic pollutants” set out on Supplementary Order Paper 5 in the name of the Hon David Benson-Pope reads: “Section 25B(2)(a) of the principal Act is amended by omitting the words ‘(other than polychlorinated biphenyls)’.” I have no doubt that it is wise and appropriate that those substances are included on the list because they indeed pose both environmental and personal hazards. That is the sort of thing we have to listen to; it is typical of the detail of the bill. 
National has reservations about the bill for certain reasons which are particularly associated with the compliance costs. But when we looked at issues such as clause 12 which inserts new section 49L “Rapid assessment and approval of other hazardous substances in special emergencies” we saw that like most of the submitters we were in absolute agreement that that is appropriate in a variety of situations particularly when the biosecurity of our country is threatened. There have been a variety of examples where that has been a major problem. The other night I commented on the bee varroa mite which is endemic in New Zealand and which was not detected by anyone until it had become thoroughly entrenched in New Zealand. The Labour Government decided to abandon any eradication programme and the beekeepers then realised that they were absolutely dependent on the availability of a miticide to protect their hives. Unfortunately due to the existing legislation it was impossible for them to bring anything in so in the words of Federated Farmers they had to “eyeball the Minister” very hard and solidly before special agreements were made to bring in the appropriate miticide. 
The other point about new section 49L is that if we were to have a major outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease or have a similar biological catastrophe it is absolutely vital that we in New Zealand have access to the world’s best available treatment for such conditions and this provision would make that possible. That sort of thing is relevant to the reason why we in the National Party support this bill. 
Of course the bill does have considerable limitations and for once I am in agreement with Jeanette Fitzsimons that there are some worries about the fact that the transferral will mean that something like 110000 toxic substances are registered in perpetuity without any provision for a review—as there would be for instance under the Resource Management Act after 35 years. What happens when the substances are transferred in groups is that many of them have never undergone any risk assessment whatsoever. Although a clause in the bill allows for the revocation of the registration of a substance I understand that the Environmental Risk Management Authority has pointed out that it simply does not have the resources to undertake a full risk assessment of some of the more complicated toxic compounds. In fact it has said that to do a thorough risk assessment would cost in the order of $1 million given that there are 110000 toxic substances. Even if only 40 or 50 of those substances required an appropriate risk assessment the authority simply does not have the resources to do that.