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:826] 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Certainly Part 2 is really the nub of this amendment bill. It deals with group standards. As section 96A inserted by clause 20 states: “The purpose of this Part is to enable the Authority to issue amend and revoke standards (known as group standards) for groups of hazardous substances … that have a similar nature are of a similar type or have similar circumstances of use so that the risks of the grouped hazardous substances can be effectively managed by 1 set of conditions.” In many respects that concept has been supported widely by the industry. I understand though I was not on the Education and Science Committee that the 26-odd submitters to the committee certainly agreed that the concept was quite appropriate. 
It is important to point out what the general policy statement in the explanatory note of the first copy of the bill brought to the House stated regarding that concept. It stated that the bill complements the amendments passed in March 2004 that addressed the urgent workability issues relating to the transfer of hazardous substances and that it offers a means to reduce costs to businesses and the Government and to reduce barriers to innovation while not compromising appropriate management of risks. That is where the Labour Government needs to be taken to task because of its track record. We know that this Labour Government has over the last 5 to 6 years an abysmal record in terms of adding costs to businesses and individuals right throughout the country—not only in terms of taxation and through the Resource Management Act but certainly through the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. 
This group standard provision is indeed one of the mechanisms by which the Government is hopeful that costs will be minimised. Once again I ask the Minister in the chair David Benson-Pope to take a call to tell us what mechanisms he has in place to ensure that the standards will be effective that costs will be lower and that the New Zealand public will be safe under the mechanism of transference in groups rather than as individual substances when many of these substances have never had an appropriate risk management assessment. I hope the Minister is listening to this. I hope he will stand up and state whether the Labour Government will assure New Zealanders that transferring these substances in groups will indeed be good for the environmental sustainability of New Zealand. 
 Can he also tell us just how much it will cost the Environmental Risk Management Authority to make the appropriate risk management assessment? Will it be up to $1 million as we are led to believe by the authority? How many substances potentially may require risk management assessment per year—is it five is it ten or is it 15 which would mean $5 million $10 million or $15 million? And will the Government make sure that those funds are indeed available to the authority? I hope the Minister takes note of those issues and can indeed reassure the New Zealand public that those questions will be answered. 
I think one of the other points that it is important to focus on is the submission brought to us by the Sustainability Council. In the submission the council said that New Zealand had not learnt sufficiently from its historical mismanagement of hazardous substances. It went on to say that failure to regulate adequately in the past had left a billion-dollar bill for the clean-up of contaminated sites that should be acting as a burning incentive to implement best practice for future activities. The council said that that issue had not been squarely confronted and I am led to believe that the Labour Government once again has not squarely confronted that hugely important issue. Instead of agreeing that it will be the one to ensure the clean-up is paid for it has put the cost on to individuals.