Hutchison Paul: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hutchison Paul: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:609;Page:6994] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (NZ National—Port Waikato) 
: In speaking to the schedules of this very important bill I thank the Minister for his explanation but unfortunately I do not think it is sufficient. However I will first just concentrate on the schedules because they are somewhat voluminous and encompass a lot of the international obligations that we as a sovereign nation will have to make sure that we comply with. For instance the objective in article 1 states: “Mindful of the precautionary approach set forth in Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development the objective of this Convention is to protect human health and the environment from persistent organic pollutants.” The National Party certainly supports that sentiment and supports this bill. But we are deeply concerned about the way that this Labour Government has forgotten to look at the detail. 
It is always the detail that is hugely important in legislation—and in this case the consistency between the bill and the principal Act. If we look at article 11 we see a heading: “Research development and monitoring”. There is nothing about small-scale research there. Highly relevant to the schedules is the fact that the amendments I have put in suggest that as we have no definition for small-scale research it would only be consistent with the schedules of this bill to omit small-scale research from both the bill and the principal Act if they are to be consistent with the schedules that we have before us. 
After all one of the most important submissions on this bill came from the National Council of Women. Members of that council said how important it was from their point of view to ensure that New Zealand as a country is promoted as being clean green etc. although the image and reality do not always match and we have many sites contaminated with persistent organic pollutants. Because of that it is important to ensure that ongoing research is carried out in order to make sure that the problem we have at present is remedied. But it is also important to explore alternative measures of mitigating the problem such as using phytoremediation and also to ensure both financial support for research to be able to be carried on and that hurdles are not put in the way by means of legislation. 
We have a problem in article 11 of these schedules and I am very concerned that this Labour Government has not been prepared to look at the detail. We have individuals such as those in the Green Party who from time to time are concerned about detail—and quite rightly so. Sometimes I find that somewhat tedious but here we have a problem in that we have reference to small-scale research in the bill and the principal Act and the convention refers to research in general. For the sake of consistency it is absolutely important when we are dealing with international conventions such as the Stockholm convention to make sure that we as a sovereign nation are very thoughtful and pay attention to detail. We should make sure that there are no traps in signing up to this convention which we heard earlier on today could and may change without this Parliament having the opportunity to comment on it. So it is hugely important that we have consistency between our legislation and the convention.