Browning Steffan: Urgent Debates — Biosecurity Incursions—Report of Auditor-General into Ministry of Primary Industry’s Preparedness and Responsiveness 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Browning Steffan: Urgent Debates — Biosecurity Incursions—Report of Auditor-General into Ministry of Primary Industry’s Preparedness and Responsiveness 
[Sitting date: 12 March 2013. Volume:688;Page:8401. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
STEFFAN BROWNING (Green) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Speaker. I am pleased to be able to stand to speak to the Auditor-General’s report into the primary industry’s ability to deal with biosecurity incursions. That was a very very damning report on biosecurity agencies over this last while. However I would like to tell the Minister for Primary Industries and those associated in National that we look forward to working on biosecurity with them because there needs to be significant improvement—and very very fast at that. The Government needs to front up. It needs to show where it is actually going to do new spending on biosecurity and it must be very quick about that too. We have got a Budget coming but we need some very strong signals not just working within the current Budget framework. 
We completely agree with the Auditor-General’s assertion that our country is more dependent on biosecurity than any other developed country and that biosecurity is fundamental to New Zealand’s economic health and its natural heritage. I have got a few examples to speak of in a moment or two. However the problem with it is that this National Government is continuing to put international trade ahead of biosecurity time and time and time again. We have seen that over the issue with the porcine disease—the “pork age” you might call it—where it wants to bring in raw meat that will risk our New Zealand industry. Why? It is just to protect major trade agreements. We know that with honey it wants to bring in honey from Australia where there is disease we do not have here. Why? Just for some trade agreements. It seems to think it is worth the risk to sell off our biosecurity our children’s futures— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: What about fire blight in Australia? 
STEFFAN BROWNING 
: —our farming families’ futures for some short-term trade of unsustainable products which you seem to be totally focused on Mr Smith. I will just carry on with what this Auditor-General’s report comes up with. She focused primarily on foot-and-mouth disease. What did it show? That we are totally unprepared and what did she add in there or what do we know about this? That the cost to New Zealand in 2 years if that went ahead would be $10 billion and 20000 jobs. This is a Government that reckons it is creating jobs; this is a Government that through biosecurity alone is costing jobs. 
We can go into some more such as Psa and Psyllid. We have got a number of them there to consider. 
The Auditor-General said that there was a risk that the inadequately resourced surveillance strategy has damaged the ministry’s reputation amongst stakeholders such as local government. I would include the public importers and producers. Within New Zealand we have issues of biosecurity about what is happening. It is not even just the incursions. We have Chilean needle grass that the Government looked the other way at as it spreads further into Canterbury. We have also got Kauri dieback up north towards which this Government has decided it is not going to do any Budget funding. It is not going to go for any new funding on Kauri dieback another part of New Zealand’s natural heritage. Is this going to be the next Maui’s dolphin? It is not. There is no new Budget money. It has said that. The Ministry for Primary Industries said it to the people up north—the people who are having real concern about that. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: That’s not true. 
STEFFAN BROWNING 
: It is. Well that is really good Dr Smith and I am really looking forward to seeing new Budget money on Kauri dieback. It will be fantastic because the research is not happening there. It is a  
Phytophora 
taxonAgathis 
 disease that is really really difficult to sort out and the Government seems to be looking the other way. There is no money for operations just public relations stuff. We need better from this Government around biosecurity. 
Getting back to what is happening at the border we know that there are very very lax import standards or management around containers. We know that. Successive Governments have been part of that but this particular Government ongoing is allowing for lay people to effectively be biosecurity inspectors in warehouses of imported goods. So goods come in—a business or a wholesaler or whatever that has imported a container—and who inspects it? Somebody who has done something they can pretty well do online to get the tick for being an inspector. That very same wholesaler has got a bundle of customers waiting for the products in their shops or their businesses around the country for the products out of that container and that layperson that business person opens it up and a moth or something crawls out of it. And what happens? What they are meant to do is get hold of the Ministry for Primary Industries which may if it feels it is important enough come out there and fumigate it or do something. It may do that but that person who has opened up that container and seen that insect spider or whatever come out of there has got a conflict of interest. They have customers waiting for product yet they are the ones who are meant to do something about it. That is a hell of a lot of good faith in somebody who has a very very big vested interest. 
We need to change our systems. We need to be doing far far more inspection at the ports and you cannot do it on current budgets. You have to lift the game for that. I want to ask the Minister how much new spending he is going to do on biosecurity this year—new spending very clear spending not robbing Peter to pay Paul but new spending. The other question is whether the Minister or any of the Ministers including the one barking from over there can have confidence in the New Zealand biosecurity system after this. Can they have confidence after this Auditor-General’s report? Can they have confidence considering Psyllid is costing huge money? The Psa outbreak is potentially costing the country $800 million over 15 years. Add that to the Psyllid and we are talking over a billion dollars there. That is less than foot-and-mouth but is that the trade-off to flog off a bit of unsustainably produced milk powder and logs through our wharf? It is not value-added. It is fouling up our reputation fouling up our waterways and we sell off future generations’ incomes through poor biosecurity. There is significant cost. It is not just the dollar value of that; it is what that does to communities. We have seen what it has done in the kiwifruit industry and we have seen what happens in the primary production world every time. 
We also have to think about what this flow-on is to the New Zealand community. Psyllid comes in—we had fantastic control in our glasshouses using non-toxic methods of control even for conventional growers. Bio-controls were in there. What do they do now? They pour on chemicals to kill psyllid in those hothouses. Thankfully we are looking at new bio-controls. There is a big cost to the community when you get more and more of a chemical cocktail being poured into the community’s stomachs. 
There is another issue. The Minister has just had a briefing for incoming Ministers. In there there is something that I would like to see the Minister work out. The Auditor-General says through the report that the preparing for and responding to security incursions is basically really flawed. Yet the briefing paper by the Ministry for Primary Industries to him says: “New Zealand has a biosecurity system that retains a sufficient”—note sufficient—“level of protection while encouraging economic growth.” This is the same ministry the Ministry for Primary Industries. I am not saying that people in biosecurity in the ministry cannot do a good job as individuals. I think they are probably striving very hard. I would say their morale is way way down because of the lack of support from central government for them. So we very much support the report from the Auditor-General and we will do our best to help the Government do something about this. Thank you.