Swain Paul: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Swain Paul: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:615;Page:11619] 
Hon PAUL SWAIN (Minister of Corrections) 
 on behalf of the 
 Minister for the Environment 
: I move  
That the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill be now read a second time 
. The bill was referred to the Education and Science Committee on 18 November 2003. The committee received submissions and undertook a thorough consideration of the bill. The committee reported back to the House on 27 February and recommended that the bill be passed with amendments shown. I thank the chairman and the committee for its timely work on those rather technical matters. 
Generally submitters expressed support for the intent of the bill and several cited examples of substances for which the bill is necessary to provide practical and cost-effective controls. Other submitters raised issues outside the scope of the bill. Those issues are being addressed under the Government’s hazardous substances strategy. The strategy was developed in close consultation with industry leaders and focused on improving workability to enable the Act to serve its purposes better—that is to protect the environment and the health and safety of people and communities by preventing or managing the adverse effects of hazardous substances. 
The strategy identified a number of prioritised actions with the most critical actions delivered first. Enactment of the bill will complete the delivery of those critical actions. The bill’s primary objectives are to enable the practical application of controls to all hazardous substances and to provide for practical management of the transitional period. The bill in providing for those outcomes reduces costs to the Government and industry reduces barriers to innovation and better protects the environment and health and safety of people in communities. 
The select committee made changes to clauses 4 5 10 and 11 as a result of submissions received. It has also inserted new clauses 6A and 6B. The changes to clause 4 include hazardous substances and new organisms enforcement officers among the potential delegates who may decide any application for a licence or permission applied for under the new sections 95A and 95B introduced by clause 6. The changes the committee made to clause 5 clarify that the authority must find that control variations made using the clause result in better risk management outcomes. New clauses 6A and 6B make it explicit that a breach of a condition imposed by a licence or permission introduced under new sections 95A and 95B is an offence subject to enforcement action. 
Clause 10 has been changed to clarify that when transferring substances in groups the authority may assign and vary controls to the groups of substances. That will be vital in assigning effective risk management controls to the 70000 notified toxic substances. Several minor and technical changes have been made to clause 11. The select committee members are to be commended for their efforts. The amendments they have made improve the bill—there is no doubt about that. 
In conclusion the bill includes a number of provisions that though individually modest collectively will provide meaningful reductions in costs to industry and the Government and will reduce barriers to innovation. Importantly the provisions will do so without compromising the level of environmental and health protection afforded by the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. The changes in the bill will ensure that the processes of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act work better without compromising what the Act originally set out to achieve which is a healthy environment for all New Zealanders. I commend the bill to the House. 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Port Waikato) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill—a bill that National supports and that certainly has a good intent. The bill amends the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. It is important to realise that the purpose of it is to protect communities and the environment from the adverse effects of hazardous substances. There are in the order of 80000 existing hazardous substances present in New Zealand and only about 8000 of them have previously been regulated. Because of that this bill is necessary. 
I was quite fascinated when we heard the submission made by the Ministry of Health to look at the extent of the hazardous substances that are present in everyday life in New Zealand. By definition they are dangerous substances and they must be manufactured used stored transported and disposed of properly. Hazardous substances can obviously cause harm to people in the environment. They may be explosive flammable oxidising corrosive toxic or eco-toxic and they can generate a hazardous substance on contact with air or water. Many hazardous substances are used in everyday life. They include everything from solvents to printing inks and dyes paints adhesives and cleaners and of course they go on to the more obviously hazardous ones which include explosives poisons pesticides and industrial chemicals. Given that in the order of 70000 hazardous substances need to be regulated it is indeed appropriate to do that. 
The reason we support this bill is that its intent is to minimise the cost to business and the Government and to reduce the barriers to innovation by a variety of mechanisms. It is refreshing that the Government has a bill here with the intent of minimising the cost to business. We have seen bills time and time again from this Labour Government that have done the very opposite of that. We only have to think of the Resource Management Act and the absolutely incredible situation that has arisen in New Zealand under it. Beca Carter Hollings and Ferner tells us that organising the planning of a road in New Zealand can take up to 7 years under this Government’s legislation whereas for a similar road in Singapore it takes only in the order of 3 months to get the bulldozers in. That Act is just one example of the many pieces of legislation this Labour Government has imposed on New Zealand that have been very inefficient and very bad for business—the Local Government Act the Climate Change Act and the earlier hazardous substances and new organisms legislation. 
Undoubtedly we want to see predictability transparency and best regulatory practice. Certainly the intent of this bill is to minimise the cost to business and there are three ways that it is being done. Firstly this legislation enables the application of cost-effective controls to hazardous substances; secondly it facilitates the transfer of hazardous substances from transitional controls to the controls under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act by changing the legal processes; and thirdly it broadens the way that exemptions work in order to provide for a smooth transition to the controls under that Act. 
I believe there were 11 submissions on the bill and nine of those certainly supported the intent of the bill. There were some isolated concerns and the Education and Science Committee has worked cooperatively to get most of the concerns sorted out and to make appropriate amendments to the bill. It is important to mention that the submitters included not only the Ministry of Health and various industrial companies but also Federated Farmers. Farmers deal with a lot of hazardous substances in their everyday work. Federated Farmers believe that the current system generally results in a higher level of regulation for using hazardous substances and that this bill is likely to lead to much less in the way of compliance costs for farming businesses. Hence they certainly supported the bill. Federated Farmers believe this bill focuses on assigning more cost-effective controls and allows the Environmental Risk Management Authority much more flexibility to change or remove inappropriate controls. There is no doubt that one of the most difficult things in the situation that the Environmental Risk Management Authority faces is a lack of flexibility so it is worthwhile that that flexibility is being incorporated within the bill. Federated Farmers are confident that the bill will improve the system by enabling use-related controls to be applied when they are considered to be a cost-effective and practical way to manage the risk of using a hazardous substance. 
For all those reasons National is firmly in support of this bill particularly so when there has been an outstanding number of hazardous substances that clearly need regulation—in the order of 72000 of them. In fact in the future we expect there to be something like 100 new substances per year that will need sensible regulations requiring the most cost-efficient way of dealing with them that is appropriate to business. 
There were three particular things that the select committee felt it was worthwhile to comment on. 
Darren Hughes 
: What were they? 
Dr PAUL HUTCHISON 
: I am glad that Mr Hughes is interested in that because they are very important. It is very important that the Labour Government takes note of this bill because finally it is doing a small thing to assist the business community rather than the usual thing of putting up obstacles for it. The three matters that the select committee particularly reported on were the assignment of cost-effective controls enforcing permission and licensing controls and varying the controls for substances that are being transferred and finally making some amendments in relation to the transfer of non-hazardous compressed gases. Certainly substances that are not classified as intrinsically hazardous under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act regime can be hazardous in their compressed gas form. 
This is a highly technical bill. It has as one of its aims the minimising of the cost to business; hence National supports it. We look forward to discussing the bill further during the Committee stage.