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:824] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 I am grateful for the opportunity to take another call on Part 1 of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Approvals and Enforcement) Amendment Bill. As I said earlier on this is indeed a very technical amendment bill. 
I must congratulate my colleague David Bennett who is a farmer of considerable experience—not only a farmer but also a lawyer and an accountant. He has pointed out the hugely important concerns that Federated Farmers have in respect of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. That Act in itself has a total set-up cost for compliance as estimated by the Federated Farmers of about $105 million. That leads to about $3000 per average arable farm and I believe about $2230 per average farm. The claim however is that this bill will save in terms of the transfer of the 70000-odd notifiable toxic substances about $2 million. 
It is good to see the Minister the Hon David Benson-Pope is in the chair. He will be able to explain to us whether he agrees that this amendment bill will actually achieve the savings that the Labour Government purports it will. There is absolutely no mechanism anywhere in this bill to suggest that the Government is interested in monitoring the outcomes of its efficacy. That is typical of the Labour Government’s lack of consideration of costs that affect New Zealand’s small medium and large businesses. The Government goes in makes an amendment thinks the amendment is wonderful and talks about it in glowing terms comes up with a very superficial impact report and then fails to ensure that the amendment is monitored for its efficacy. I hope that Minister Benson-Pope will take a call to tell us what mechanisms this Government has in place to ensure that the transfer of substances is done successfully and in a cost-effective way that will in future save businesses farmers and manufacturers throughout the country an appropriate amount of money. 
We received Supplementary Order Paper 5 just yesterday—as always the Labour Government brings in important legislation at the last minute. The Minister is shaking his head. This legislation has been an issue for the last 2 to 3 years and here we are in the last 48 hours of the parliamentary calendar for this year suddenly bringing through a very important bill of a highly technical nature that has huge implications for the environmental sustainability of New Zealand. The Minister has come up with a Supplementary Order Paper that for example proposes new clause 8A “Prohibition of storage of persistent organic pollutants” which states: “Section 25B(2)(a) of the principal Act is amended by omitting the words ‘(other than polychlorinated biphenyls)’.” I ask the Minister whether he can describe to me in detail the concerns around polychlorinated biphenyls. It certainly sounds to me as though it is sensible that those substances are on the register but does the Minister know the details of this legislation? 
I think that the Minister probably does not know those details because with this transfer he is placing all those toxic substances—110000 of them—on a register in perpetuity. There is certainly a clause that provides for the revocation of registration but we understand that it would cost in the order of $1 million to carry out an appropriate risk management assessment. The Environmental Risk Management Authority just does not have that $1 million. I challenge the Minister to tell us whether the authority is worried about ensuring when some of those toxic substances prove to be of concern and it thinks a risk management assessment should take place the resources for that will be available from the Government. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 5 in the name of the Hon David Benson-Pope to to insert new clauses 8A and 12A be agreed to.