Rich Katherine: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Rich Katherine: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:7047] 
KATHERINE RICH (NZ National) 
: The member who has just resumed her seat is quite correct; this is a very very important amendment bill. I would like to start by paying tribute to some of the members on the Primary Production Committee for the work they did. First of all I pay tribute to the work done by Gavan Herlihy Shane Ardern and of course my colleague Phil Heatley who has just resumed his seat having given a rather humorous if not novel but also very full and practical speech about the implications of this bill. 
 Biosecurity is one of the key problems facing this economy because frankly if we get an incursion we do not want the economy could more or less come to a halt within a very short space of time. I used to work within the agricultural industry so things like foot-and-mouth disease scrapie mad cow disease— 
Phil Heatley 
: Marian has all of those! 
KATHERINE RICH 
: I am not sure about that but if any of the problems that are faced around the world were to come here we would certainly have problems. One commentator from the agricultural industry said that if foot-and-mouth disease were to come to this country the economy could potentially shut down within 3 months’ time such is our dependence on agriculture. Such is the concern about an incursion of that nature. 
It is interesting to go over a bit of the history of this portfolio because it is a very very important one and when things go wrong in this area the impact can be huge. What did this Government do? It gave the portfolio to Marian Hobbs. She was the previous Minister for Biosecurity and during her time as Minister we saw a number of incursions a number of uninvited guests that the rest of the country was not very keen on—for example the yellow flower wasp the kentia palm seed borer the southern saltmarsh mosquito the avian pox virus the lettuce aphid the eastern flower thrip and the Asian kelp not to mention the varroa bee mite which many bee-keepers got for Christmas from that particular Minister. Because of her inaction and inability to act in a timely manner the whole problem became very out of control and now is threatening the entire honey industry. 
But let us also mention the painted apple moth. So far the cost has been about $90 million to try to deal with that particular problem. If money had been spent on biosecurity in the first place the country would not have to fork out such a large amount of money now. That moth should not have got here in the first place. It was interesting listening to Mr Ian Ewen-Street talk about the spraying in Auckland. Initially I was very supportive of that spraying as I understand the importance of the agricultural industry to this country. But as a parent I am concerned about the continual spraying of children the elderly and others who do not know what is being sprayed on them. I am beginning to accept that people up there have some real concerns. I too would be livid if my family was being continually sprayed with something and I did not have a clue what it was. Certainly we are seeing some unwanted outcomes within the community. 
This bill has some technical amendments but also some quite important ones. It reduces the time frame required before the ministry can act in relation to newly discovered pests. It also tidies up what the public need to do to inform the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of any biosecurity incursions that they become aware of. Not to do so would be an offence and the guilty person could be fined up to $5000. I think it is quite important that we understand the impact of that. It sends a quite clear message that biosecurity is important to this country and that if people do not play their part by telling the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry when they come into contact with incursions a penalty may apply. 
It is important also to look once again at what the potential impact could be if we have problems in this area. Let us look at the value of some of the industries that are very much dependent on our keeping a lot of bugs and pests out of New Zealand. Horticulture and fruitgrowing for example are worth $847 million to the national economy. Livestock and cropping are worth $1757 billion. Dairy cattle farming is worth $1832 billion and other farming is worth $332 million. Unwanted pests and diseases coming into this country could potentially have an impact on such major industries. One sees why biosecurity is something that this side of the House takes extremely seriously. 
I was concerned when I read a recent story about the way the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry goes about reviewing containers as they come into the country. Last year the ministry inspected about 24 percent of high-risk containers and randomly selected another 5 to 10 percent for internal inspection which means an officer basically just shoves his head inside the container and has a wee look. I had expected that inspections would be far more thorough than that but I was wrong. The ministry did a survey. For the first time the ministry did a thorough check and containers that had already been “door inspected” were inspected once again. The results of that particular investigation were very worrying. The officers found five live alien spiders and three insects in 1517 containers. That goes to show that once-over-lightly—a head poked into the odd container—does not pick up all the pests bugs and incursions that potentially can come into this country. Obviously a far more thorough investigation needs to be made of containers when they come into this country. 
As we know that will have a cost but what we are facing now in dealing with one particular incursion the painted apple moth shows that if incursions are not dealt with before they are established here we face the cost of eradicating these pests and diseases. So in a way a biosecurity policy is very much an insurance policy. It is an insurance policy for the agricultural and horticultural industries—an insurance policy against potential economic disaster should scrapie mad cow disease or a number of other real problems around the world threaten our country. 
So I am a great supporter of quarantining. I am a great supporter of ensuring that there are more stringent requirements both at the borders and in terms of the importation of goods. At the moment trying to track down incursions is very much hit-and-miss. It does rely very much on the general public. I think the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry sometimes hopes that it has a bit of luck and that somebody will discover something before it goes too far. But it relies very heavily also on having a Minister who will act in a timely manner and make decisions when those decisions are needed. The previous Minister—thank goodness there has been a change—did not really inspire great confidence in the hearts of the New Zealand public particularly amongst those in the rural community. 
Increased biosecurity does mean increased costs to the public but as I have said it is an insurance policy and something that very much protects our economic prosperity and our ability to pay for the things we hold dear like health services education etc. If we were to have a major incursion such as foot-and-mouth disease potentially our economy could shut down within 3 months and certainly we would go from being a First World country to being a Third World country in a very short amount of time. So I look forward to the Committee stage of the Biosecurity Amendment Bill so that I can look at some of the individual clauses that members on this side still have some concerns about. We will be putting some amendments to make some improvements to what we think are holes in this legislation. 
Bill read a second time.