Fitzsimons Jeanette: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6938] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: The Greens of course are happy to see any progress in getting rid of some of the worst environmental contaminants anywhere in the world. Persistent organic pollutants particularly the organo-chlorine family have already contaminated human beings and wildlife around the world including accumulating in the fat of polar bears in the Arctic many thousands of kilometres from where they have actually been used. They are in food chains and it will take a long time before that contamination eventually declines. They are in our soils and it will take a long time before they eventually break down so this legislation is not before time. The Greens have been pushing for Stockholm convention issues to be addressed for a long time so we of course support this bill. 
However there are a couple of things about it that give me concern which I want to draw to the attention of the House. A change that was made by the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee in the definition of environmentally sound disposal was not just an uncontroversial and technical matter. In relation to the disposal of hazardous materials the committee changed the wording “complies with article 6 of the convention” to “are not inconsistent with article 6 of the convention”. If there is no difference between those two forms of wording why did the wording have to be changed? If there is difference between them it is pretty clear that “are not inconsistent with” is a much looser standard than “complies with” so there is some respect in which the New Zealand Government wants to do something rather lesser than what is in the Stockholm convention in terms of environmentally responsible disposal and this clause is meant to allow them to do it. There is no other possible explanation for that change of wording and there is certainly legal precedent that “complies with” is a stronger and higher test than “are not inconsistent with”. 
Secondly in the change of that interpretation the words “environmentally sound disposal … does not include diluting the substance with another substance before discharge into the environment” have been struck out. It is a pretty sensible environmental principle that if our environmental standards are expressed in the form of concentration levels it is not appropriate simply to dilute a given quantity of a hazardous substance with lots of something else in order to meet concentration levels. The same amount of that substance is still discharged into the environment and one of the key characteristics of these persistent organic pollutants is that they re-concentrate up food chains. They bioaccumulate at a rapid rate so diluting them is not the answer to anything. That provision has been taken out and the explanation we are given in the committee’s report is that it was taken out because a new technology of phytoremediation may require mixing a substance with some other substance in order to then deal with it. 
I do not find that explanation very convincing because the committee also says that it is expecting that if phytoremediation works out the convention will adopt it as one of the technologies that can be used to meet environmentally sound disposal. Surely when that happens we will have no problem with the wording of the convention and the wording of the bill as it originally went to the select committee. So there is clear evidence here that there are proposals underway to dispose of those hazardous materials in ways that are not entirely as the convention foresaw and I have difficulties with that. We have not really had any adequate disposal for them and I would certainly invite the Minister—in the Committee stage or in the third reading—to give us a more adequate explanation than we have had so far about why that change had to be made. 
Thirdly I note that there is nothing in the bill that implements article 5 of the convention itself which relates to dioxins. Let us not fool ourselves that getting rid of the scheduled list of persistent organic pollutants is taking a great step forward in terms of what actually happens on the ground. Most if not all of those substances have not been used in New Zealand for years. We are putting a law in place after the fact and it will not make a difference to what happens on the ground. It is simply to make sure that no one can start using those substances in the future. The issue that is really difficult for New Zealand to address concerns the by-products created in manufacturing or combustion processes not as a deliberate manufacture of a material for use but as unintentional by-products. 
Dioxins and furans are in that category. They are highly toxic highly accumulative and highly persistent and their effects are of the same nature as other chemicals that are deliberately created. They are much harder to deal with because they are unintentional by-products. We can change our manufacturing process to minimise them or change our combustion processes to minimise them. We can get rid of the low-quality incinerators that we still have around New Zealand. Those incinerators ought to be closed down in favour of much better disposal facilities because we are currently spreading dioxins and furans into the New Zealand environment and that will continue for some time. 
It is true that it is possible to implement article 5 of the convention without putting anything in this legislation to do so but it leaves open the question about how serious the Government’s intentions are on dioxins. We have provision in the law for national and environmental standards under the Resource Management Act to control things like dioxins. There are no such standards. What exists now are criteria that are used for soil and for the clean-up of contaminated sites based on the acceptable daily intake of dioxins for a human being. That tolerable daily intake is set at 10 picograms per kilogram of body weight per day. It has now been pretty universally agreed that that level is far too high. It needs to come down to one picogram per kilogram of body weight per day and I understand that the Government accepted that level last year. The trouble is that all the standards for soil and air discharges are based on the old tolerable daily intake and that they therefore need to be redone according to the new tolerable daily intake. So there is a great deal of work to do on dioxin standards and we still do not have anything much for water. They are the least developed standards of all. 
I talked earlier about bioaccumulation and biomagnification up the food chain. Dioxins are the worst offenders in that respect. Simply one step up the food chain—one trophic level—can magnify dioxins 5000 times so dilution in the environment is no help at all. We urgently need some tight dioxin standards. We urgently need to implement all of the measures in article 5 of the convention which talks about how to do it. I will be watching very closely to see whether the Ministry for the Environment proceeds with the dioxin standards or whether that will be allowed to gradually trickle away.