Browning Steffan: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Browning Steffan: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:1806. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
STEFFAN BROWNING (Green) 
: 
 I note that the new ministry is now the Ministry for Primary Industries and now includes the Ministry of Fisheries and the whole works. In fact unfortunately some of the parts of what was the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and what were the New Zealand Food Safety Authority MAF Biosecurity New Zealand and all that are even losing their identities into this new super-organisation that effectively is a “develop for trade” organisation maybe rather than being focused on the New Zealand consumers and communities. But this particular report is pretty specific. We have got biosecurity and forestry in particular that came up in there but there were also some issues that came up during the questioning of the then ministry’s personnel of both organics and genetic engineering so I would like to cover two or three items.  
One thing that stood out and does stand out with both the old and the new bodies is that there is no holistic approach to agriculture forestry and fisheries in New Zealand. There is no overview as to why you might go down a particular path in terms of sustainability because of the interconnections with the environment and the community. It is all about milk powder and beef it would seem primarily. I wondered and I have asked and will continue to push as to why the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and this Government dropped any effort towards the organics sector in New Zealand. The organics sector is showing best practice in terms of sustainability in this country which can actually resolve many many of the issues that we see in our environment which the community at whole is effectively propping up for the primary producers who are doing a bad job. There are plenty who are doing a good job but unfortunately there are a hang of a lot who are doing a very very bad job in terms of our environment. But this Government chose not to reboot the Organic Advisory Programme and the ministry is doing nothing effectively apart from a dribble occasionally with a Sustainable Farming Fund application if we are very very lucky. But at the same time we are still seeing money going into genetic engineering. 
John Hayes 
: Great! 
STEFFAN BROWNING 
: It is definitely not great in any sense of it. We have a fantastic brand and we had one before our current Prime Minister sold it out as Minister of Tourism—“100% Pure New Zealand”. He went to “New Zealand 100% Pure You”. There is no aspiration in there and I have talked on that in this House before. Genetic engineering has no part in Brand New Zealand. It will do us no good in terms of Brand New Zealand and the export of our primary produce. We are very very fortunate at the moment. We only have one field trial—that is the only legitimate genetically engineered material existing in New Zealand at the moment—and that is through animals at Ruakura. No doubt there will be some pine trees replanted when Scion gets over its last breach. That is a really good opportunity for New Zealand. We can actually remove that last field trial and New Zealand will be GE free like so many places in the world at the moment are trying to become again after seeing the problems with GE in their countries.  
Another thing we spoke on and looked at was around biosecurity and the problems we are having with biosecurity. Again we have seen it with this Government allowing border control staff to drop by 60 because trade had dropped off and it did not see the need. Yes we have got some smart new systems in terms of risk analysis but in fact what we are doing is dropping the game big time. We have had the strawberry seed incursion and it will be very interesting to know just how bad that was because I suspect there was an issue in terms of contamination of that because so much of that was suppressed. I have just been talking with the pork industry.