Turei Metiria: Biosecurity and Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Legislation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Turei Metiria: Biosecurity and Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Legislation Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15196] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 I do not know what Jim Anderton is talking about; those kinds of criticisms are ridiculous and pathetic and they do not get us anywhere in the debate. This debate is about the protection of the New Zealand environment and of the primary sector from the incursions and damage that known organisms brought in as passengers on other kinds of goods or products may pose to those sectors and about how to best manage and control the risks of those known organisms. I am aware that we are speaking about the commencement clause. The Greens support the proposal to impose a sunset clause on this legislation because the public have not been made aware of those issues which have been kept from the public on purpose. 
I want to refer to some comments that were made by my colleague Jeanette Fitzsimons in her second reading speech in terms of the conspiracy theory proposed by Jim Anderton. We know that draft discussion documents were prepared in February 2006 and November 2006. So 2 years ago those documents were prepared about how to manage the control of these kinds of organisms. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Minister have been waiting for an opportunity to bring this legislation forward. They found it in the court case and they are using that as an excuse to do what they have been preparing to do now for at least 2 years. Those draft discussion documents of 2006 were entitled “Fixing problems in new organisms including genetically modified organisms unintentionally introduced in New Zealand”. What is meant by “unintentionally” is not “unknown”; what is meant is “not purposely or deliberately brought into the country”. 
It is quite clear from those papers that the intention was always that genetically modified organisms should be included in this legislation. It is quite clear that they have now been excluded from this legislation which has been in preparation for some years because it is an election year and the Government knows that it simply cannot allow a process that would let known but unintentionally imported genetically modified organisms come into New Zealand through a very core process that is run by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and not by the Environmental Risk Management Authority which is responsible in law for managing these issues. 
Of course one can expect that once this bill has passed and the election is over if Labour gets back into any kind of Government it will then have the opportunity to amend this legislation and allow the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to consider using a very poor very low-risk assessment process for genetically modified organisms not deliberately brought in but knowingly and unintentionally brought in as passengers on other imported goods. That was the intention when this legislation was first proposed in 2006. The policy behind this legislation was to enable genetically modified organisms to be brought into this country using the biosecurity legislation to allow them through. 
Now the Government is using the issue to do with  
Paenibacillus alvei 
 and the bee-keepers and the court case surrounding that as an excuse to bring in this legislation knowing that if it gets back into power—and perhaps this is National’s intention too—it will then be able to modify the legislation in order to allow in genetically modified organisms. That is not a conspiracy theory; modifying the legislation in that way was proposed in the draft papers produced by the ministry responsible for this legislation. This is not some crazy conspiracy theory of Jim Anderton’s; this is his own ministry’s work and is clearly his and his ministry’s intention. 
Again I say the Green Party fully supports the clause that will kill this legislation dead in a defined period of time so that the Government and the ministry have to work on a new set of provisions and have to talk with the New Zealand public about their true intentions around genetically modified organisms. Otherwise this measure will sneak through under the public eye. That will mean that the public will not have a chance to truly know what is happening. There will be no transparent process and no real opportunity to assess the risks of allowing Biosecurity New Zealand to do this—that is the problem.