Kedgley Sue: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Transitional Provisions and Controls) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:11810] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I would like to speak very briefly on this third reading to reiterate like other parties that we will be grudgingly supporting this bill. We support it grudgingly for a number of reasons. The first is because of the process that has been outlined and the fact that there was virtually no time to consider it. It has not had proper due process. There was not really time for proper consultation. The rushed hasty manner in which the bill went through makes our support very grudging indeed. We hope this will not be a precedent for other bills of equal importance that are to come before this House. 
We also find it odd when we look at the purpose of this bill which deals with hazardous substances—70000 notifiable toxic substances which one would have thought was a major health and safety concern for New Zealanders—that there is no mention of health or safety or concerns about the effects of the 70000 notifiable toxic substances that are not currently controlled in New Zealand. The bill does not even mention health and safety. All it talks about is trying to minimise the cost to business and the Government of regulating these substances. So the entire purpose is simply to make it easy for business. It is not to protect ordinary New Zealanders and not to protect consumers but simply to make it easy for business. I find this quite astonishing in a bill of this importance. 
The other extremely interesting thing is that the bill draws our attention to the fact that there are 70000 notifiable toxic substances in New Zealand that are not currently controlled. Most of us are having some difficulty getting our heads around this. There are so many—70000—that it is hard for us to work out how this could be and what these substances are. So I have been asking some of my colleagues who were on the select committee whether they could try to help us resolve the mystery of these 70000 notifiable toxic substances that are not even controlled in New Zealand. We can only assume that saying they are not controlled means there are no safety controls no controls on how they are disposed of and no controls on how they are used. 
So what are these 70000 notifiable toxic substances? None of my colleagues whom I have been asking who have sat on the committee can help me to resolve this mystery. They do not seem to know what these 70000 notifiable toxic substances are. We are about to pass legislation in this House that relates to 70000 notifiable toxic substances and nobody in the House seems to know what we are dealing with or what this bill is all about. Maybe before we finally pass the bill the Minister can enlighten us as to what on earth we are talking about and voting on. It is quite astonishing not only that there should be so many toxic substances that are not controlled or regulated in New Zealand but that we do not even know what they are. Some have suggested they might be industrial chemicals. That is a bit of a punt. We are wondering whether this means flea powders and fly sprays. That is a punt; we simply do not know. Quite frankly it is quite extraordinary that we are passing a bill when we do not even know what it is about. 
 It is also quite extraordinary that in New Zealand we have so many of these mysterious toxic substances that we do not control. The Government asked the Environmental Risk Management Authority to regulate them and the authority has apparently been so busy doing whatever else it does that it has not got round to it. I think the Hon Nick Smith said that the Environmental Risk Management Authority had managed to regulate something like 100 substances over the last 10 years. It is extraordinary. 
I would like to make one further point. We have a Government that is seemingly unconcerned about 70000 notifiable toxic substances that are not controlled or regulated yet the same Government is trying to introduce what seem to be completely unnecessary bureaucratic and over-the-top draconian regulations for dietary supplements. Could this Government get its priorities right? To my knowledge I do not think that anyone has died from taking dietary supplements. For the most part dietary supplements are based on herbs and so forth that have been used by humans for millennia and are of extraordinarily low risk. Yes we need to make sure that they are safe but we do not need some draconian regulation. So could somebody please explain why the Government is putting this huge effort into developing these draconian regulations for dietary supplements which people take on a voluntary basis—they take them to improve their health—and which as far as we know no one in New Zealand has died from yet it is doing absolutely nothing about 70000 notifiable toxic substances? Could we get our priorities right here? Could we suggest that the Government focus first of all on trying to put some regulation on these 70000 notifiable toxic substances—which we assume are toxic? The substances have known health effects or they would not be considered toxic. Could the Government get its priorities right and focus on getting proper regulation for these toxic substances? 
What about building materials? I was at the hearing on the Building Bill today. We have all these building materials—thousands of them—and none of them are even accredited. They are not even assessed for their health effects. We know that particle boards and all sorts of things are off-gassing—as in the case of formaldehyde—and causing problems for those of us who spend 80 percent of our time in indoor environments in our homes but the Government is not bothered with regulations. It sees no need to worry about the health effects of the building materials that are in our homes no need to worry about 70000 notifiable toxic substances—we are not even sure what they are—and no need for urgency. The Government sees no need to worry about these things that we know are toxic and have significant health effects but at the same time it is trying to rush through some draconian legislation on dietary supplements. I wonder whether the Government could get its priorities right and explain to us why it is doing nothing about significant serious toxic substances and is going over the top with excessive draconian regulations on dietary supplements. I think it would be very helpful if somebody from the Government could think about those priorities think about other things like building materials—which have no regulation—and leave dietary supplements to basic simple New Zealand legislation that will ensure consumers are safe but will not involve draconian and expensive bureaucracy that will decimate the dietary supplement industry in New Zealand. 
The Green Party reluctantly and grudgingly will vote for this bill because it hopes that somehow the bill may galvanise the Environmental Risk Management Authority finally to do something about all these notifiable toxic substances. Green Party members are deeply disappointed that the bill focuses only on minimising the cost to business and completely ignores the health and safety issues involved in all these unregulated toxic substances but we will vote grudgingly for it in the hope that we may finally begin to get some action from the Environmental Risk Management Authority on this serious issue.