Delahunty Catherine: Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 18 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7798. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker. He mihi nui ki te Whare Paremata. I am proud to introduce my very first bill the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill and I would like it to be referred at the appropriate time to the Local Government and Environment Committee. The bill has a clear purpose which is to regulate the import of timber and timber products at our border. Only products that are both legal and certified to be sustainable by a robust certification scheme will be accepted. Deforestation of the planet requires countries to do more than invent voluntary codes and labelling schemes. We must stop wasting time and must set up a regulatory framework before we have lost the rainforests and the other old growth trees of the world for ever. 
As we stand on the brink of the Copenhagen talks we have this opportunity to take a specific action to reduce world climate emissions by saving forests. The carbon storage capacity from these forests which are often described as the lungs of the world is vital to the whole of humanity. Daily forests are being logged and that land is then replanted as palm oil plantations. We are the customers for these unsustainable products from countries such as Malaysia Indonesia West Papua Papua New Guinea and Myanmar as well from the old growth forests from Tasmania and across Africa. Regulation can help us end a war against the natural world against the forest peoples and ultimately against ourselves. This could sound like an exaggeration but it is worth thinking about the 137 different species of plants animals and insects becoming extinct every day as a result of forest destruction. This collapse in biodiversity includes our remarkable second cousin the orang-utan of Borneo and Sarawak. It includes the colourful cassowary of West Papua and all those tiny unique unknown species that are lost as a direct result of our refusal to see the bloodstains on the barbecue furniture and decking in our very own backyards. 
But primarily I am motivated by the statistic that 60 million forest peoples globally depend on the forest for their survival. The forest is their entire world. It may not literally be genocide to cut down their forest but it is within a hair’s breadth. I came to understand the extent of this loss when I met a West Papuan woman who is now living in exile in Melbourne. Paula Makabory showed me recent pictures of the citizens of West Papua who had tried to resist illegal logging and who were macheted to death for their courage. As their kwila forests are devastated and sold into our retail outlets the people in the way who are standing up to the Indonesian military and the corporate forestry companies are literally risking death. In that country which is not far away no foreign journalists are allowed there is no International Movement of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent and people can be jailed for 15 years for raising the Morning Star which is the West Papuan flag. Illegal logging is steeped in blood and in phoney certification paper trails and we need to cut the link that fills the pockets of the people who are controlling the trade. 
One other exceptionally good reason for stopping this devastation is to help our own forestry industry which is undermined to the tune of $270 million per year by the effects of illegal and unsustainable logging. While cheap and nasty timber is widely available and can cross all borders our own bona fide products are undermined and can be seen as being expensive by comparison. There is a 2008 Cabinet paper based on research undertaken in 2007 to assess the economic impacts of illegal logging on our forestry producers. The total revenue by 2020 to the New Zealand forestry sector could be around US$178 million per year if cheap illegally logged wood products were removed from international markets. 
Not surprisingly this bill has the strong support of forestry organisations environmental groups and the tropical timber importers group. Those groups have a legitimate self-interest in ending this trade and in supporting good wood products. They include the New Zealand Forest Owners Association the Wood Processors Association of New Zealand the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association the New Zealand Pine Manufacturers the Forestry Industry Contractors Association the Douglas-fir Association the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society Greenpeace the Environment and Conservation Organisations of New Zealand the World Wide Fund for Nature New Zealand and the Ecologic Foundation. 
But why legislate? Why not just educate the consumer the importer and the retailer? At this time it is extremely difficult for all these parties to even identify where timber products have come from. Trees logged in West Papua or Borneo may be processed in Viet Nam and marketed from China. How can we be sure without any border regulation where these items have been logged? A great deal of dedicated work has gone into educating retailers and consumers and I particularly commend groups such as the Indonesia Human Rights Committee the Green Party members the Auckland Rainforest Action Coalition and the leadership of the Ecologic Foundation—Guy Salmon—on these issues. I also commend the totally dedicated Wellington rainforest activists who have worked with me on the bill since it was drawn from the ballot. I have also been inspired by the campaign led by Russel Norman nearly 2 years ago that named and shamed the ANZ for investing in companies whose involvement with rainforest destruction is legendary. 
But my special thanks must go to a man who was born on the denuded Hauraki Plains and who has given so much of his life to forest protection in the Pacific. Grant Rosoman is a champion of robust forestry certification. Thanks to Grant and to Greenpeace forestry certification has stayed on the agenda through years of Government inaction and denial. Grant is the first to say that education is not enough. It has lifted the performance of companies such as the Warehouse and the BBQ Factory. It has led them to recognise that robust certification must meet the standards of the internationally rigorous Forest Stewardship Council certification scheme known as FSC but that is not enough. 
In the new schedule 11 proposed to be added to the Customs and Excise Act by clause 7 of this bill that scheme and other robust schemes would be listed so that customs officers can be sure that any product entering the country meets the schemes’ requirements. These requirements are that a product is ecologically economically socially and culturally sustainable and not something made up in the offices of dodgy corporate raiders. However if the timber outlets can start taking steps—and I have visited many of them and many of them I have congratulated on starting and they have expressed their confusion—we have to ask why the Parliament of New Zealand cannot help them out and save the rainforests. 
I acknowledge the support of the Maori Party and Labour on this matter. It is high time that we took action to protect the climate from change to protect biodiversity and to protect indigenous people’s rights as well as to protect our own forestry industry. As somebody with some vague political influence was once heard to say: “Yes we can.” 
I am asking everyone in this House to do the right thing tonight and to please support this bill. We need it to go to the select committee. We need it to be improved. We are not saying that this bill is perfect in its form; we are saying that we need to support our industry without the competition of the bloodstained trade. It is an opportunity for this House to do something that the consumer already wants. The Prime Minister already knows about it because more than 700 people through Greenpeace and through our e-card have been writing to him and to the Minister of Forestry about this issue. It is high time that people listened to this issue and stopped using excuses such as world trade. We already have opportunities under the World Trade Organization for acknowledging environmental issues so it is high time that something was done about this. 
I am horrified to see on the World Wide Web that one can still buy kwila that is not certificated and one can still buy mahogany and teak from Myanmar. We know for sure that most of this product is being logged at the point of a gun. We know for sure that what happens after the logging is the planting of palm plantations. We know for sure that we are colluding with this trade if we do not legislate. We cannot wait; we must take action now. I would not have been so motivated about this bill which I inherited from the Green Party if I had not met the people of West Papua whose lives are on the line while we sit here and decide whether we think it is possible that we might be brave enough to make a decision in favour of the climate and the people. It is high time that we took that stand. I ask members to please support this bill and to remember as Barack Obama said: “Yes we can.” Thank you.