Roy Eric: Biosecurity and Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Roy Eric: Biosecurity and Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Legislation Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:646;Page:15154] 
ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 I would like to take a call on the Biosecurity and Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Legislation Amendment Bill as well. I am a member of the Primary Production Committee and I would like to think that I played my part in some of the solutions that came out of it. In fact I passed a note to Shane Ardern at the very first meeting and said: “We need to deal with the aspect of retrospectivity and of review.” and that is exactly what we have ended up doing so I would like to think that I have certainly contributed to the solution. 
I begin by responding to the remarks of Jeanette Fitzsimons. I just need to say we do not live in utopia and the only basis upon which we can operate trade is on the basis of science. We have a number of known zoonoses in New Zealand for which we would be subject to a similar countervailing activity if we did not do that on the basis of science. 
The rules of world trade are simply not fair. We might want to stop let us say $2 million worth of import honey out of Australia on the basis of this bill but the World Trade Organization means they can choose any product as a reciprocal reaction on a similar basis. So we could lose out to $500 million going the other way. Those are the rules of world trade. The only basis is science and I will come back to that in a minute. It is important that we get the science right. When we are selling our produce we want absolute assurance that importers will trust our science on various zoonoses from which there could be a significant impact. We know we have them and under Codex Alimentarius and the various sanitary and phytosanitary regulations we have that assurance. We support that and that is the basis we come from. Let us stick precisely to science. 
The other thing I could say in response is that the Environmental Risk Management Authority and the hazardous substances and new organisms legislation are not set up to deal with every single item. What the member is saying is we should put all the responsibilities for importation to the hazardous substances and new organisms legislation. That is where the conclusion to those statements comes to. It is not simply set up to do it in that way. 
The previous speaker Lindsay Tisch gave the example of racing whereby 3600 horses a year cross the Tasman. They are sitting there now; they cannot be moved not because of equine flu as the member rightly said but because the import health standard cannot now be issued. That is following on in a whole lot of ways. So we come to the situation where there is a stalling of activity and potentially that will mount up as each month goes by. So the select committee said we need to do this and what we are actually doing with this bill actually locks in what was the practice beforehand. It is only this court case that has sought to change that practice for however long. 
I share the member’s concerns in every respect about keeping our borders clean and stopping unwanted things coming in. I am as passionate about that as anybody else. But we have to trade and we have to trade within World Trade Organization rules or we are taking ourselves out of the play. 
So let me deal now with the two substantive issues that I mentioned right at the beginning. The first is retrospectivity and the second is the review process. We said quite clearly that the bee-keepers have had their day in court and they have won. They won on a matter of process not on a matter of science. So in order that they might have the opportunity of validating that decision on science we sought assurances from officials that the honey import standards from Australia would be held up for 90 days and that process whereby they can have that scientific review of the import health standard is under way. It is not a case of happening when the legislation is enacted; it is under way now. 
In terms of review for everybody else yes it will take a while to get those protocols in place and again I say it is on the basis of science. That is the only way it can be. So we have new section 22A in clause 5A but members ought to be aware that although we have this new provision—and this needs to be said for further interpretation—it is not a “get out of jail” card to hold up stop or prevent trade from occurring unless there is a bone fide reason. 
Members ought to look at the Biosecurity Act 1993 for an interpretation of “standard” because under section 22(6) of that Act there is a provision that I think needs to be read into the record of the House. It states that the director-general must “consult with those persons considered by the chief technical officer to be representative of the classes of persons having an interest in the standard.” So it does not mean that any individual can enact this review process; it is the umbrella organisation. That is my interpretation. It is quite important that the umbrella organisation of anybody with a concern needs to be able to set up that review process. 
So this is a very fine balance. Yes the science is important. It is the only basis on which this can happen. But we cannot have every single individual triggering or attempting to delay for 90 days every single import health standard that comes in. So I think we got the balance about right on this. It is quite important that we have the mechanism that it is fair and that is based on science. Those are the principles this review panel allows. 
The Hon Tariana Turia talked about Colony Collapse Disorder and I saw the DVD that was handed to us. I think we need to say that at this point that disease is not known to be in Australia and the import health standard that brought about the Court of Appeal decision is about an import health standard to Australia. Bees are important and the bee-keepers have a justifiable gripe about how things are going. They are in the middle of a drought right now and there is nothing for the bees to make honey or pollen out of so these people are under more pressure than almost any other sector of the primary industry. As was mentioned they have had a lapse of varroa and that is something they have to contend with. Probably the crucial issue is  
Paenibacillus alvei 
 and this is why the select committee cannot make this decision on the basis of science as I understand it on the presentations we had before us. If that comes into the country what it will actually do is stop the markers of other alvei like American foulbrood disease which we might want to be able to trace. Is this a justifiable reason? Quite frankly I am not equipped to make that decision. That is why we set up an august robust scientific process to assess whether that is a justifiable reason for that import health standard not to be enacted. 
There are a lot of delicate issues here in the balance of this legislation. In reality it puts us back to the practice that was occurring before but beefs up the ability to have a process to look at those import health standards. I have received a lot of communication from a number of those people who put in submissions and who have an interest saying that we have actually done the job pretty well in terms of getting the balance right on all of those delicate issues. So I recommend that the House supports this bill as National does. I think the select committee works well together. There are some issues that by and large the Parliament—certainly the two main parties—has in common and both parties have a desire to make our biosecurity as robust as possible. The other issue is trade—there is a linkage between those two things. I support the bill.