Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. ACT generally agrees with the problem definition set out in this bill but what is the opportunity that's being left on the floor of the Minister's office? There is an Environmental Protection Agency which is tasked with administering the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act and the regulations under that Act. The Environmental Protection Agency is simply an aspirational title. Imagine if New Zealand truly had an environmental protection agency then we wouldn't be having this ongoing discussion about why rivers and streams are polluted with sewage from council waste-water systems whose contamination it is in the river or which council or which agency is tasked to clean it up and about how come local government gives itself 25-year consents to pollute and to discharge waste water into our urban environment because nobody is actually protecting the environment and enforcing the existing rules we have. So an environmental protection agency currently is in name only but they do have this important task to regulate hazardous substances and new organisms. It wasn't that long ago that New Zealand engaged in a social cultural and political debate about this original Act and the genies that might be let out of the bottle that were new organisms. Now what we know is that at the time there were genuine concerns about biotechnology and about what would happen if a dangerous new organism escaped a lab infected people or animals and spread around the world and caused great harm and potentially millions of deaths. Well I can tell you that the kind of biotechnology that New Zealand needs is actually good. It is the technology that's going to allow us to solve the climate crisis by allowing grasses that when cows eat them they produce very few emissions and when the cows decide it's time to let one go and what they've let go ends up in the paddock those discharges do not end up in rivers and streams. These solutions are available in laboratories and they're being used in our competitors' farming and yet they're not available here because New Zealand still has social and cultural objections to the use of this technology and these systems that other countries that we compare ourselves to that were got over decades and decades ago. So while ACT generally agrees with the problem definition in this bill we believe there's a huge opportunity left on the floor of the Minister's office and that is actually to address how difficult it is to get consent for new biotechnology to be made available to actually solve some of our worst environmental problems. When you think about the problems of didymo a contamination in our beautiful freshwater streams it's algae and slime that's transported easily by fishermen and by boats. Using conventional chemicals and physical clean-up techniques it's impossible to clean that stuff up. That is where biotechnology has an answer potentially and yet it's next to impossible to consent that and to release it from outside research facilities. New Zealand needs to grow up and to accept that some of these things sound scary but actually they are good. Now it's important to streamline regulations and yet one question that we have for the Government is: where actually is the ambition to reduce compliance costs and improve efficiency? Because while this proposal actually describes a simplified process what we've heard from the previous speaker actually sounds like a desire to impose more rules more restrictions on what you can do with basic products and materials that are incorporated into hundreds of thousands of manufactured products that we use in our home and in our businesses every day. And while the aspiration is laudable the ACT Party does believe there's a real risk during this regulation reform process that actually the compliance costs will increase and the compliance process will be opened up. Rather than having experts carefully assess the information the process will be opened up to all and sundry to object. Now we know what that means when it comes to land-use consents and resource management consents when there are a whole lot of organisations that have no skin in the game but have their own axe to grind—activists Extinction Rebellion climate activists—who might want to protest or object to a particular product that they feel doesn't meet their social test and are climate shaming and fearmongering about products that are used every day by people with no evidence of risk. It's important that any regulation very clearly sets out what risks need to be evaluated who are the people qualified to evaluate them and which voices while well-meaning will not be considered in any look at hazardous substances. Because it's no good saying Well we need to adopt a precautionary principle." actually we need to be not just thinking about protecting our environment and human health. We need to be ready to accept that there are many new products coming on the market much faster at a much more rapid rate than previously developed to deal with some real real problems. When we think of varroa mite that was killing our beehives and our bees it took a very significant amount of courage for the Government at the time to actually agree to allow that insecticide to be used in our beehives with all of those risks that it would reduce the number of beehives and the status and quality of our honey that's produced in New Zealand because we had to use a dangerous chemical pesticide. Well as far as I'm aware apart from a very small number of teething troubles there has been no effect on human health recorded from allowing the pesticide used to control the varroa bee mite but we still have beehives; we still have pollinators; and our farmers our pastoral and our horticultural producers can still rely on bees because the alternative based on the fearmongering campaign that was run at the time about that particular pesticide would have been no pollinators. So it's important to recognise that while there are many well-meaning people who have genuine concerns about hazardous substances it's not necessary to take account of everybody's concerns when we're actually talking about some very limited risks that are well understood and that decisions can be made relatively quickly to allow new products and new substances to enter the market. In terms of regulatory reform ACT supports this bill to the first reading for some very simple reasons: we are seeking regulatory reform that simplifies and reduces compliance costs. We believe that Government should respond quickly to new information about existing substances where hazards and risks to human health are found and that a process should be applied to low-risk products in a timely and efficient manner. And that is the key: "timely and efficient". Now this is the same Environmental Protection Agency that's been tasked with fast tracking consents. And what we know is it doesn't appear that they are any faster than your local council. So of course in any reform process we hope that the Government adequately resources this agency and sets some very clear targets and goals for what efficient processing cost-effective processing looks like to the businesses that will be applying for permits and applying to use new manufactured substances in the course of making products and delivering services in New Zealand. For that reason ACT supports this bill at first reading. Thank you very much Madam Speaker."