Hague Kevin: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hague Kevin: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:657;Page:6260] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 The Biosecurity Amendment Bill has presented the Green Party caucus with quite a problem. How should we vote on a bill that has an intent we support but where the process applied has been poor? This bill has been introduced under urgency when no good reason for urgency exists. Neither the Leader of the House in introducing his urgency motion nor the Minister for Biosecurity in introducing this second reading debate has given a good reason for urgency. 
What is more the wording of the “Alternative options” section of the regulatory impact statement makes it clear that this legislation was prepared in June at the very latest. In other words this bill has been written for months at least and there is no conceivable reason why it is now necessary to deal with it as urgent. One is reminded of the management or parenting rule that says “Lack of organisation on your part does not constitute a reason for urgency on mine.” None the less the Green Party will support the bill at least being referred to the Primary Production Committee because we cannot bring ourselves to vote against legislation that has an intention we support. 
What makes urgency for this bill all the more extraordinary is that although its content essentially reflects relatively minor administrative and technical changes the catalogue of missteps and disasters that the Government has been visiting on the crucial area of biosecurity has been largely shielded from scrutiny by this House. 
I expect that all members of this House would subscribe to the view that biosecurity is important and indeed every speaker so far has subscribed to that view. Typically we hear about the threats of incursions to our primary industries of agriculture horticulture forestry and aquaculture. I will speak tonight about some of those risks but I will also draw the attention of the House to the threats posed to our natural environment and to biodiversity. It is worth pointing out too that there is also an indirect effect of incursions on our food export industries and on tourism because of our trading on that clean green “100% Pure New Zealand” image. For example we are about to start international flights into Rotorua. The cost of a fruit fly outbreak from just a single piece of undeclared fruit in a passenger’s hand luggage has been estimated at $800 million in the first year and 5000 jobs in the Bay of Plenty alone. The current size of the horticulture industry is $5 billion and it is rapidly increasing. A foot-and-mouth incursion could cost 20000 jobs and reduce GDP by $10 billion over 2 years. The stakes are high. 
The Greens think the system of airport-based instant fines for passengers coming through with undeclared biosecurity risks has generally been working well. In general we believe that the penalties in the Biosecurity Act have been set too low and that is why we welcome the increase proposed in this bill. 
It is a pity that the bill did not extend this to other penalties. The recent case of a man who deliberately imported tarantula spiders from the Philippines and was caught and fined a pathetic $5000 illustrates the fact that the penalties are clearly insufficient to deter behaviour that creates risks and are inadequate to communicate the seriousness of those risks. A better bill would also tackle the time limits on prosecutions that for example have seen a company recently escape scot-free after introducing South African mussels into Tasman Bay from its oil rig because of a 6-month limitation on prosecutions. 
New Zealanders need to know that this increase in fines comes at the same time that this Government is taking the axe to biosecurity services which sustained an 11 percent reduction in funding in this year’s Budget. Then the Prime Minister announced last month that trans-Tasman travel was to be 8 minutes faster on average for most travellers because the border control processes were being streamlined. In biosecurity terms the cost of those 8 minutes is that only incoming passengers who meet a particular risk profile will now go through biosecurity screening. That will inevitably increase risk because some people posing risk will not fit the profile. Fewer staff to perform the screening fewer people screened and just one fruit fly in a forgotten piece of fruit is all it could take to decimate a multibillion-dollar industry. The increase in fines is the Government’s half-pie approach to creating something to part-balance this increased risk and it is totally inadequate. 
But this focus on individuals is also misplaced. The biggest risks are posed by the biggest importers and 90 percent of incoming freight arrives in shipping containers. Our processes for assessing and dealing with the risks from these sources are plainly failing. How about the importation of poorly sterilised coconut kernel compost from Sri Lanka a couple of years ago for use in garden centre potting mix that introduced more than 30 new species of weeds? How about the 17 out of 200 shipments of palm kernel imported in the 2008-09 year for New Zealand dairy farms that also failed biosecurity standards? Federated Farmers knows about many other hazards. How about the 77 percent of imported shoes containing fungi bacteria and plant material? How about the imported cars infested with tropical spiders and disease-bearing mosquitoes? How about the shipments of imported roses from India only 10 percent of which are inspected and virtually all of which prove able to be propagated despite supposedly having been treated to absolutely prevent that from happening? Currently about 104 incoming loaded containers are checked for biosecurity risks each day. That is about 9 percent of the incoming loaded containers and leaves approximately 386850 loaded containers unchecked each year. The high rates of biosecurity hazards detected in the sample of incoming containers that are inspected make it certain that significant biosecurity risks are undetected. 
These risks are compounded further as a result of the free-trade agreements to which New Zealand has committed itself over the past several years bringing about a flood of imported goods that New Zealand might very well otherwise grow or make itself with no risk to biosecurity. Examples include the shoes I have already mentioned or Chinese garlic infested with fungi. Our biosecurity measures need to be tougher. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and Biosecurity New Zealand need more power and more resource. 
The most recent outrage in biosecurity is the Government’s intention—having hacked into its own biosecurity budget—of now sharing the cost of inspection and managing incursions with the industries being protected from threats. The Government intends that the costs will now be shared with those industries according to who principally benefits. This barmy proposal was apparently developed in consultation with an industry working group but I note that it has been roundly and rightly condemned at least by Federated Farmers and Horticulture New Zealand. 
What is more this attempt to cost-shift to industry is certain to bias biosecurity vigilance still further away from protecting conservation and biodiversity values. We have already seen a glacial response to the fire ants incursion in Nelson with nobody taking responsibility for managing a relatively small incursion and the complete failure to deal with  
Undaria 
 when it first arrived in New Zealand. Those are just two examples. This will become worse. Will there be any hope at all of rescuing our rivers from didymo or our kauri heritage from  
Phytophora taxon Agathis 
 or kauri dieback disease? 
To recap the Government has cut its investment in biosecurity is not adequately inspecting imported goods and is proposing to screen even fewer incoming travellers. It now intends to shift the cost on to the very industries we are trying to protect in our national interest. Would it not be interesting if countries adopted the same approach to defence? Frankly the minor adjustments we are considering in this bill under urgency seem pathetic in the face of the disaster unfolding before us in this portfolio area. 
Somehow it seems appropriate to debate this bill today—a day that has been dominated not by simplification and streamlining but by the evisceration of New Zealand’s environmental protection laws. I am surprised that we are not also seeing today the bill to enable low-value coal mining in national parks; that would somehow have been appropriate. This bill does not make matters worse but the Minister can rightly be charged with fiddling while Rome burns. Our economy our environment and future generations deserve better and the Green Party would be relieved to help achieve this. Thank you.