O'Connor Damien; Carter DavidHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): I would like to acknowledge the Minister of Education and her announcement today I think on her NCEA 5-year report. That is no comprehensive educational achievements report; it will have I guess: Tries hard a poor listener but has potential." I cannot blame the Minister for the lack of comprehensive achievement because she is a Minister in a Government that is effectively arrogant and out of touch. It is out of touch on housing it is out of touch on child poverty and it is out of touch on policing. If ever we wanted to see an example of that it was just over 2 weeks ago when we heard that there was a ship lying off the Port of Tauranga with 23000—we were told 27000—tonnes of palm kernel expeller (PKE) on it. At a time when study after study report after report has said that agribusiness leaders and farmers say biosecurity is their No. 1 concern—that biosecurity issues are the biggest single threat to this economy—we had off the Port of Tauranga palm kernel expeller from a non-registered plant with who knows what biosecurity risk included in it. And the Government was considering letting it in. If ever there was a clear example of arrogance and this Government playing roulette with our economy it was to let a high-risk biosecurity material—in fact 23000 tonnes of it—into this country. I think it is actually an indictment on the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) under the instruction of course of the Government. There are a number of questions about how and why this could have occurred. MPI refuses to say who the company was. Well I will name it in this House. I believe and was informed that it was Archer Daniels Midland Company—a big multinational company that trades commodities around the world. I have no idea why MPI will not disclose who it is. Why would that company have thought of bringing to this country high-risk biosecurity material and trying to flog it off when we have in place strict criteria? If it trades commodities in palm kernel it should have known this. It brought it to this country and thought it could negotiate its way through the border. Unlike some poor person who brings in an apple and will get shut down and fined immediately this big multinational company thought it could negotiate its way through. Why? Because it had done it before. I am informed that it had done it before. It had brought to this country PKE from unregistered plants and got it through because MPI no doubt at the instruction of the Government had caved in. There is no excuse for reducing the standards that we have in biosecurity around our border. We were given an assurance that our standards have been lifted. After the efforts of two farmers in 2013 who off their own backs went to Malaysia and exposed some shocking plants that were delivering palm kernel to us MPI firstly denied that there was a risk—firstly denied it—and then finally gave in and put in place a higher set of standards. We have then had—well we assume—safer PKE coming into this country and there is I think up to 2 million tonnes a year. It is a lot of threat. We believed that MPI under the Minister's instruction was doing the right thing. We now know and it has taken 6 weeks for MPI to finally come to the conclusion and to say that "No we will not accept this."—6 weeks. In my view instead of the Government fining that company I am guessing that that company has almost a right to come back and sue the Government for procrastination. Why did the Government on day one not say to that company: "Get out of here. Get out of here. We don't want your high-risk product."? But no for some reason it thought it could wiggle its way through the National Government through the Ministers and get MPI to accept this. I am not confident that we have a robust biosecurity system. This has exposed some of the shenanigans that are going on. So what happens in other areas of biosecurity? We have as an example the list of incursions from 2008 until 2015. There have been 123 of them not including velvetleaf and not including pea weevil. The system is not working. Why? Because firstly the Government cut funding for biosecurity in its first Budget and cut 54 staff and then put some more money back in. We do not have a robust biosecurity—Mr SPEAKER: The member's time has expired."