Eckhoff Gerrard: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Eckhoff Gerrard: Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:7041] 
GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT NZ) 
: It is always a pleasure to speak on issues on which there is a huge degree of unanimity within the House. Unfortunately the Government brings far too many bills before the House that do not have any common sense and do not reflect the wishes of the entire select committee but this surely is one that does. Who amongst us here would deny the value of biosecurity to this country? No other issue is more important to this country. I will not bore the House or the public by going through the figures again. I think it was Dr Paul Hutchison who gave the House a very good indicator of the impact that a major outbreak of a disease such as foot-and-mouth would have on this country. 
I want to turn my attention to the practicalities of biosecurity—that is the way that things work outside this ivory tower out in the real world. I want to give the House a couple of examples. The bill states that there is an obligation on members of the public to inform the authorities if they have cause or reason to suspect that an organism they come across is one that is not wanted. Let me tell members of an instance of that. Some years ago in the Maniototo a well-known farmer discovered what he thought was nassella tussock. He swore his employees to secrecy because if it had been notified to the authorities it would have cost him a lot of money. He did nothing about it in terms of informing the authorities but did a lot of work in terms of trying to grub that particular nasty tussock out of our environment. He did so for about 15 years only to discover by chance that it was not nassella tussock but was in fact a thing called Australian sedge. The guy just about broke down in tears to think of all the work he had done for all those years in grubbing out something that was not really a problem. I tell that story to make the House understand the importance of people in New Zealand failing to recognise and report those sorts of plants or what could be potential incursions to the appropriate authority. It should not be a threat to do so. 
I would also like to talk about one of the more recent and highly publicised biosecurity threats. It even got me on the Mary Lambie show. A man cannot aspire very much higher than that! It was the Mary Lambie show at 10.30 in the morning—about the appropriate time for all good farmers to be in for their lunch or morning tea and not breakfast as is the case with the Green Party farmers. That show was about the introduction of rabbit calicivirus disease as it was then known which is now known as rabbit haemorrhagic disease. What a marvellous result that disease has had for this country and for the environment. We hear so much about this Government being very concerned about the environment but it did nothing about introducing that disease. I will touch on another issue a little later on that the Government is studiously ignoring. But rabbit haemorrhagic disease was only brought into this country—and illegally—because the authorities would not recognise the benefit of myxomatosis before that. 
 The Government had virtually promised for years that it would introduce those organisms to protect our environment. Who amongst us can stand in this House with a hand on his or her heart and say the introduction of rabbit haemorrhagic disease has been a disaster for this country? It has been an absolutely outstanding success and it was brought in illegally. 
Yet there have of course been huge failures. I think back to many many years ago when the early settlers brought things like gorse and broom rabbits stoats weasels and those sorts of organisms that have produced enormous harm to our economy. 
Brent Catchpole 
: Red deer. 
GERRARD ECKHOFF 
: Red deer have almost become indigenous. They are just like brown and rainbow trout. Now there is an issue. The Fish and Game Council would say those trout species provide a fantastic recreational opportunity for the people of this country. The rabid “greenies” and there are one or two of them in the Minister’s office would say we should get rid of those unwanted organisms brown and rainbow trout because they are—let us wait for this—introduced species so they are not welcome in this country. Yet each one of us is an introduced species. I include my Maori colleagues in that statement. Each one of us was introduced to this country one way or another. Some of us are more wanted organisms than others and we have to live with that I guess. 
But there have been very very significant biosecurity breaches that have been devastating and I mentioned a few of them before. The most recent devastating one was the varroa bee mite. I suspect that the full impact of the varroa bee mite coming into this country is not understood to this day in terms of the impact it will have on our native flora and fauna. Wild bees pollinate much of our native flora and that could well be lost. The Government sat on its hands for months before it decided to give control of the varroa bee mite a go. 
We have a disease that seems to permeate this Labour Government and it is called procrastination. Labour members thought that was a big decision. That does not surprise me because Government members are so unused to decision making that they struggle to know which side of bed to get out of in the morning. They toss a coin and ask what they should do today and then ask what will happen if they make the wrong choice. That is just a reflection on the Government. It desperately needs the experience of people from the Opposition side of the House who have had experience out in the real world the real environment and who know how to react. [ 
Interruption 
] 
I would like to ask that rather vociferous-sounding individual the chief Government whip why this Government will not make a very simple introduction into this country in order to enhance our biosecurity enormously. I am talking about the gamma radiation of fruit which would have an immediate impact on anybody bringing product into this country—and we have heard that over 8 tonnes of meat product comes into this country illegally. 
Stephen Franks 
: Radiate them with their fruit. 
GERRARD ECKHOFF 
: My colleague is absolutely right. But why do we studiously ignore the huge opportunity that gamma radiation gives to the biosecurity of this island country of ours that is so dependent on ensuring that we do make sure that unwanted organisms do not come into it? 
I along with all members of the Opposition deeply lament the total lack of research and development that has gone into biosecurity in this country. Yet again the Australians have beaten us. I see a blank look on the face of my colleague Ian Ewen-Street who is wondering how they have beaten us again on this issue. Technology developed in Australia just recently has shown that if nitrogen gas is bubbled through the ballast of ships it will kill virtually all the organisms that exist in that ballast. That is a huge problem because ships come into New Zealand constantly for trade. We can even export water out of Deep Cove for example but there is concern about the ballast brought in from the Far East or anywhere else in the world. Ships remove the ballast and introduce the fresh water out of our wonderful pristine environment in its place. 
Technology and science—dare I say those words in this House in the presence of Government members when I know how they hate science and dismiss it? I say that we have huge opportunity to upgrade the security of our borders by just listening to scientists and spending more of our resources on the things that matter like science technology and introducing chemists to study the problems that we do face and must solve. We will not solve the problems just by burying our heads in the sand and pretending that gamma radiation is not really the major advance that it is. We have the opportunity right now to introduce it—in fact it is old technology—and we could move forward quite rapidly to introduce new technology.