Hazardous Substances and New Organisms(Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill

, on behalf of the Minister for the Environment: I move, That the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. This bill amends the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act in order to give effect to the requirements of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Enacting this bill together with the Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Amendment Bill will enable New Zealand to ratify the convention.

The purpose of the Stockholm convention is to protect human health and the environment from persistent organic pollutants, or “POPs”, as they are commonly referred to. The current list of 10 persistent organic pollutants listed in schedule 2A of the bill includes DDT, Dieldrin, Aldrin, and Chlordane. Apart from limited exemptions recognised in the convention, New Zealand does not use these chemicals and does not need them. They are environmentally persistent, toxic, bioaccumulative, and can be transported great distances from their original place of release by the movement of air, water, and migratory species.

This bill will protect the health of New Zealanders and the environment by prohibiting the import, use, manufacture, and storage of persistent organic pollutants, with only the specific and limited exemptions permitted under the convention. The export-control requirements of the convention are addressed under the Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Amendment Bill, which has been given its second reading in this House. This bill is a welcome addition to New Zealand’s regulation of hazardous substances, and it signals our international commitment to ensuring the global prohibition of these toxic and bioacccumulative substances. I thank the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee for its careful checking of the provisions of this bill, and its constructive improvements to it.

I now turn to some of the issues arising from the committee’s consideration of the bill. Only three submissions were received and heard by the committee, but the concerns raised by the submitters did lead to significant drafting improvement in some clauses of the bill. First, the definition of “environmentally sound disposal” has been amended, and new clause 4A has been inserted. That new clause requires the Environmental Risk Management Authority to provide directions regarding the collection and disposal of waste persistent organic pollutants. Importantly, disposal must now be consistent with the convention’s requirements. Second, changes to the bill will permit the continued use of polychlorinated biphenyls for holders of current use-of-storage exemptions granted under the Toxic Substances Regulations. Existing exemptions can be extended by the authority until the end of 2016. The convention recognises that polychlorinated biphenyls are still used in some countries, particularly in the electricity industry, but their replacement with more environmentally friendly substances must be undertaken in accordance with managed replacement plans.

Another issue worth noting is that the bill contains an Order in Council mechanism to allow for the updating of the list of persistent organic pollutants in schedule 2A. As new substances are designated as persistent organic pollutants under the convention, they can be added to schedule 2A. Similarly, any specified use for a persistent organic pollutant substance can be amended if the convention is so amended. Importantly, any new Order in Council must be consistent with New Zealand’s obligations under the Stockholm convention. I must stress that before any new substance is listed in the Stockholm convention as a persistent organic pollutant, or any other change is made to the convention, it must pass through a rigorous and internationally pair-reviewed process of assessment. The parties to the convention then need to agree to it, and, finally, New Zealand can agree to, or decline, the change.

The Stockholm convention will come into force following ratification by 50 countries. Thirty-three countries have ratified it to date. New Zealand is committed to being in the first 50 countries that ratify and are hence responsible for bringing the convention into force. The bill will enable that, and I recommend it to the House.

I am pleased to speak in the second reading debate on this bill. It is interesting legislation, because it provides for an absolute prohibition on the manufacture, import, or use of persistent organic pollutants. It is obviously a very strong measure, and therefore one does need to be absolutely satisfied that it is necessary.

It is interesting to look at schedule 2A, which identifies the 10 currently listed persistent organic pollutants. I have to say that they are not nice things, and I think most people would have to agree with that in respect of some of these substances, like Dieldrin and Aldrin. In my earlier life I had a fair bit to do with those chemicals because, of course, sheep dips used to contain them. Those of us involved in the agricultural industry will know what those substances can do to the ground. They turn it into a bare patch pretty quickly. Although some people might be concerned at legislation that is as draconian as this—it absolutely bans the importation, use, and manufacture of certain substances—I think we all have to accept that the process that is gone through for substances to be added to the Stockholm convention is a powerful and robust process. I think that any concerns people have can be eased in that regard.

The legislation mentions one group of chemicals in particular, and that is the polychlorinated biphenyls, which I mentioned a moment ago in relation to the Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Amendment Bill. They are in fact produced here in New Zealand. The select committee had a look at this issue in some detail, because, whether or not we like it, polychlorinated biphenyls are currently widely used in the electricity industry, inside such things as transformers and light fittings. Although I think everyone, including the electricity industry itself, is in agreement that, over time, polychlorinated biphenyls should be removed from electrical equipment, it is obviously going to take time to do that.

The bill as introduced included in schedule 2A a requirement that the extension of the expiry of the exemption being given to polychlorinated biphenyls be 2014. The select committee looked at that in some detail and came to the conclusion, after listening to evidence from Transpower New Zealand Ltd in particular, that 2014 was too short a time to impose on the electricity industry to get rid of polychlorinated biphenyls from its products. So the select committee has recommended in schedule 2A that the date be extended to 2016. We consider that to be a sensible amendment because it does enable a sensible time frame for the replacement plan that Transpower New Zealand Ltd has in place to complete the replacement of polychlorinated biphenyls in those electrical products. The way the bill is now, those 10 substances that form schedule 2A will be banned from use, storage, or manufacture in New Zealand. One substance, the polychlorinated biphenyls, has an exemption to continue to be able to be used in New Zealand, and the expiry of that exemption has been extended out to 2016.

There are, of course, some other small exemptions in the legislation. I think it is important that people understand that some substances are used in research and there is the need for their use in research to continue. The legislation does not ignore that. In fact, clause 8 appropriately covers this issue. Clause 8 provides that as long as small-scale research on hazardous substances does not create or involve a persistent organic pollutant, there is the possibility of an exemption from the Act.

Most issues that were of concern to those who appeared before the select committee have been covered. I think that the bill in its final form, as it comes back to this Parliament, is satisfactory. The final thing I would say is that when further substances are added to the Stockholm convention, we will be able, with the way the provisions in this bill are drafted, to include those substances without any further amendment to this legislation. The National Opposition is totally supportive of this bill. The fact that it is moving through the House in conjunction with the Imports and Exports (Restrictions) Amendment Bill is sensible. We will be supporting this bill as it progresses through the House today.

I rise on behalf of United Future to speak in the second reading debate of this bill. The bill as reported back from the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, is not substantially different from how it was for its first reading, although a few changes have been made, and those changes were addressed very ably by the speaker before me. They are largely uncontroversial, and technical in nature.

The bill amends the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act to give effect to the requirements of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, by prohibiting the manufacture, use, and importation of such pollutants unless a specific use is permitted or an exemption is granted. The convention lists 10 persistent organic pollutants, including polychlorinated biphenyls and DDT, and has a requirement to reduce emissions of two by-product dioxins. The bill contains an Order in Council procedure to add further persistent organic pollutants to the regime if necessary. The bill allows for an application to the Environmental Risk Management Authority for approval of small amounts of persistent organic pollutants to be imported or manufactured for use in containment, but only as analytical standards—that is, for the comparison of a known concentration of the substance with an unknown concentration, or for the purpose of laboratory research.

Nine of the 10 substances covered by the convention cannot currently be approved for manufacture or import in New Zealand, because they were deregistered under the Pesticides Act of 1979, and no applications for import or manufacture have been submitted under the principal Act. The import and manufacture of polychlorinated biphenyls, the final persistent organic pollutant, has been prohibited from 1 January 1994 under the Toxic Substance Regulations 1983, Amendment No 4. The Government is already addressing the issue of dioxin emissions through the work programme of the Ministry for the Environment. However, the current legislative framework does not guarantee that New Zealand will meet its obligations, because it is possible that regulations could be altered, or approval could be granted, under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act as it currently stands. The costs to the economy of these measures are expected to be nil, given the current lack of use of those substances, and, given their toxicity, it is unlikely that New Zealand would ever wish to approve their wider usage. In any case, the convention allows for the country-specific exempted use of a substance. United Future is happy to support this legislation.

The Greens, of course, are happy to see any progress in getting rid of some of the worst environmental contaminants anywhere in the world. Persistent organic pollutants, particularly the organo-chlorine family, have already contaminated human beings and wildlife around the world, including accumulating in the fat of polar bears in the Arctic, many thousands of kilometres from where they have actually been used. They are in food chains, and it will take a long time before that contamination eventually declines. They are in our soils, and it will take a long time before they eventually break down, so this legislation is not before time. The Greens have been pushing for Stockholm convention issues to be addressed for a long time, so we, of course, support this bill.

However, there are a couple of things about it that give me concern, which I want to draw to the attention of the House. A change that was made by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee in the definition of environmentally sound disposal was not just an uncontroversial and technical matter. In relation to the disposal of hazardous materials, the committee changed the wording “complies with article 6 of the convention” to “are not inconsistent with article 6 of the convention”. If there is no difference between those two forms of wording, why did the wording have to be changed? If there is difference between them, it is pretty clear that “are not inconsistent with” is a much looser standard than “complies with”, so there is some respect in which the New Zealand Government wants to do something rather lesser than what is in the Stockholm convention in terms of environmentally responsible disposal, and this clause is meant to allow them to do it. There is no other possible explanation for that change of wording, and there is certainly legal precedent that “complies with” is a stronger and higher test than “are not inconsistent with”.

Secondly, in the change of that interpretation, the words “environmentally sound disposal … does not include diluting the substance with another substance before discharge into the environment” have been struck out. It is a pretty sensible environmental principle that if our environmental standards are expressed in the form of concentration levels, it is not appropriate simply to dilute a given quantity of a hazardous substance with lots of something else, in order to meet concentration levels. The same amount of that substance is still discharged into the environment, and one of the key characteristics of these persistent organic pollutants is that they re-concentrate up food chains. They bioaccumulate at a rapid rate, so diluting them is not the answer to anything. That provision has been taken out, and the explanation we are given in the committee’s report is that it was taken out because a new technology of phytoremediation may require mixing a substance with some other substance, in order to then deal with it.

I do not find that explanation very convincing, because the committee also says that it is expecting that if phytoremediation works out, the convention will adopt it as one of the technologies that can be used to meet environmentally sound disposal. Surely, when that happens, we will have no problem with the wording of the convention, and the wording of the bill as it originally went to the select committee. So there is clear evidence here that there are proposals underway to dispose of those hazardous materials in ways that are not entirely as the convention foresaw, and I have difficulties with that. We have not really had any adequate disposal for them, and I would certainly invite the Minister—in the Committee stage or in the third reading—to give us a more adequate explanation than we have had so far about why that change had to be made.

Thirdly, I note that there is nothing in the bill that implements article 5 of the convention itself, which relates to dioxins. Let us not fool ourselves that getting rid of the scheduled list of persistent organic pollutants is taking a great step forward in terms of what actually happens on the ground. Most, if not all, of those substances have not been used in New Zealand for years. We are putting a law in place after the fact, and it will not make a difference to what happens on the ground. It is simply to make sure that no one can start using those substances in the future. The issue that is really difficult for New Zealand to address concerns the by-products created in manufacturing or combustion processes, not as a deliberate manufacture of a material for use but as unintentional by-products.

Dioxins and furans are in that category. They are highly toxic, highly accumulative, and highly persistent, and their effects are of the same nature as other chemicals that are deliberately created. They are much harder to deal with because they are unintentional by-products. We can change our manufacturing process to minimise them, or change our combustion processes to minimise them. We can get rid of the low-quality incinerators that we still have around New Zealand. Those incinerators ought to be closed down in favour of much better disposal facilities, because we are currently spreading dioxins and furans into the New Zealand environment, and that will continue for some time.

It is true that it is possible to implement article 5 of the convention without putting anything in this legislation to do so, but it leaves open the question about how serious the Government’s intentions are on dioxins. We have provision in the law for national and environmental standards under the Resource Management Act to control things like dioxins. There are no such standards. What exists now are criteria that are used for soil and for the clean-up of contaminated sites, based on the acceptable daily intake of dioxins for a human being. That tolerable daily intake is set at 10 picograms per kilogram of body weight per day. It has now been pretty universally agreed that that level is far too high. It needs to come down to one picogram per kilogram of body weight per day, and I understand that the Government accepted that level last year. The trouble is that all the standards for soil and air discharges are based on the old tolerable daily intake, and that they therefore need to be redone according to the new tolerable daily intake. So there is a great deal of work to do on dioxin standards, and we still do not have anything much for water. They are the least developed standards of all.

I talked earlier about bioaccumulation and biomagnification up the food chain. Dioxins are the worst offenders in that respect. Simply one step up the food chain—one trophic level—can magnify dioxins 5,000 times, so dilution in the environment is no help at all. We urgently need some tight dioxin standards. We urgently need to implement all of the measures in article 5 of the convention, which talks about how to do it. I will be watching very closely to see whether the Ministry for the Environment proceeds with the dioxin standards, or whether that will be allowed to gradually trickle away.

I am happy to stand and support this legislation. I think it is very important legislation to give protection from the persistent organic pollutants that are a risk to our environment and the health of our people. I am happy to support the legislation.

New Zealand First supports this legislation. It is an example of New Zealand First’s continuing care and concern for the environment. The major legislation that this bill is amending was passed in 1996, and today we are just updating it.

I was interested in a comment made by the Minister when he spoke to the bill today. He indicated that about 50 countries were needed to ratify this bill for it to have international effect. He suggested that we were still in the 1930s in terms of around-the-world support, whereas I note that when the Hon Marian Hobbs introduced the bill, she said that we were up to “the late 1940s”. On the face of it, New Zealand is giving effect to legislation for a convention that is not yet complete international law, because until 50 countries ratify it, this bill will not have that international effect. I raise that point to emphasise that until the procedure set out for international law is given effect to, the convention does not apply. That is confirmed by Principles of Public International Law, 5th edition, by Ian Brownlie. On page 611, he indicates that the second point for ratification is the international procedure that brings a treaty into force by a formal exchange or deposit of the instrument of ratification. I am just making that point to show that this convention is not yet international law.

Similarly, the Kyoto Protocol is not yet international law. That requires 55 percent of the parties named on a percentage basis to give effect to it. As yet, the United States, at 36 percent, and, I believe, the Russian Federation, at 17 percent, have not ratified it. So the Kyoto Protocol is not yet law, and I am disappointed that the Government should be taxing farmers in respect of an international convention that does not yet have international effect. If the Government adopts that approach to the Kyoto Protocol, what approach will it adopt to other international conventions—such as the Stockholm convention, which is not yet accepted internationally by the ratification procedures set out in the convention and in international law? On the international application basis, I think all those farmers who are protesting against paying for the Kyoto Protocol are quite justified in doing so.

In respect of this particular legislation, once again New Zealand First is concerned that the Government is given Orders in Council procedures. It is all very well for the Greens to say that they are concerned about the environment, but sometimes the most important clause in legislation of this kind is the Orders in Council provision, which occasionally gives the Government excessive powers to do things that might not have been contemplated at the very beginning. I notice that it is proposed to have an amendment at the Committee stage along similar lines as Orders in Council. That amendment will have a delegation-by-authority provision. The Minister could have told us a little bit more about that at the second reading stage, but I expect he will tell us a bit more when he takes the chair in the Committee stage.

New Zealand First is fundamentally opposed to Orders in Council and sub-delegation of authority to officials—in this case, the power to grant an extension of exemption order to any employee of a person specified in section 97 or, if there is no employee with relevant experience, to any other person with relevant experience. That provision seems a bit wide and sweeping, but it is there because of the constitutional provision that one should never delegate anything to another person without having a specific delegation power in the legislation—delegatus non potest delegare, if I can throw off a useless Latin phrase that I learnt during my law degree. However, we need some explanation for this delegation to a law official. Before we can support it, we must have a clearer indication that it is a good way of implementing this convention.

Generally, many of the things referred to in this bill do not get used in New Zealand now anyway. The overall view of all members of Parliament and all political parties with a concern for the environment—a concern that goes back over 100 years, and is not necessarily something that has just been invented in the last 25 years—has made sure of that. New Zealand First supports the bill and looks forward to it proceeding through the select committee shortly.

I wish to support this bill on this reading and the introduction of the Stockholm convention. Can I assure the member who has just spoken that any Order in Council must be consistent with New Zealand’s obligations under the Stockholm convention.

ACT New Zealand will be supporting this legislation. It will allow New Zealand to ratify the Stockholm convention addressing the global problems of persistent organic pollutants. This country has had widespread use of some of these substances, with our agricultural base: dieldrin, widely used in sheep dips through New Zealand, and the residues of that are still in our soils; DDT, used very extensively in this country to combat grass grub and other applications; and the polychlorinated biphenyls, widely used in the electricity industry with transformers, etc. It is not many decades since we drained transformer oil on the side of a road or into a ditch, without recognising that we were releasing concentrated polychlorinated biphenyls, and there are substantial sites around New Zealand that hold serious levels of that.

Most of these substances are no longer in use. We are really talking about passing laws to stop them being reused. I think in most instances that that is most unlikely. But let us not be too harsh in beating up on them. If we look at DDT, yes, it is persistent, but it is not particularly toxic. People do not actually die from DDT. It just hangs around for a long time. It does not hang around as DDT; it degenerates to DDD and then DDE, which I understand has a half-life of about 20,000 years, so it does stay about for a while. That is the problem: its persistency and its accumulation in food chains and the like.

But also, let us remember the role that DDT has played in combating malaria globally. Millions of people have died from malaria. More people died from malaria in the First World War than died from the fighting. A lot of people forget that. It is the use of DDT on a global basis that has saved the lives of millions of people—we must remember that at all times, when we tend to get harsh and judgmental on the use of these chemicals.

Jeanette Fitzsimons mentioned her concern with regard to dioxins and furans as the products of combustion, and the bioaccumulation and biomagnification of those substances. I am always a bit curious, though, about our Minister for the Environment, because I believe that the solution is high temperature incineration. That does break down these substances. It removes them and destroys them utterly, yet our Ministry for the Environment seems to be constantly opposing any proposal for high-temperature incineration to dispose of them. Instead, it seems to favour landfills. Landfills are actually a major source of dioxins in this country, yet the Ministry for the Environment seems to choose that option in preference to high-temperature incineration. I always find that rather curious.

ACT will certainly support this bill. Generally, we are very careful when we look at ratification of United Nations conventions and at importing those into our law, but this one is really consistent with what has become practice in this country. There are alternatives to the use of some of those synthetic substances. We have phased them out in most instances and we now have the safeguards in this bill, as it came back from the select committee, that allow for the continued use, controlled use, and phase-out of those for which we have yet to find suitable alternatives.

I am pleased to support this legislation and I commend it to the House.

National supports this bill, as do all the other parties in the House—and quite rightly. But I note that it has been on the Order Paper since 21 May 2002; although the Government purports to have some interest in the environment, the bill has languished for quite some time under this somewhat dilatory Labour Government. It concerns me that this bill comes under the very Minister who was responsible for not using her call-in powers—I may be wrong; the Hon Chris Carter is looking at me closely, but I understood that the bill was under the Hon Marian Hobbs.

💬 Hon Chris Carter: The member is correct.

She did not use her call-in powers to exercise some degree of balance in the consents that led to New Zealand’s largest landfill at Hampton Downs being given the go-ahead. That will be a very big blight in the future on the Labour Government, because there was an opportunity to have some form of balance in terms of ensuring that rigour was applied to the argument, and it was lost by a Government that purports to be interested in environmental matters but, unfortunately, and as exemplified by this bill, is clearly somewhat dilatory since the bill has been left to lie on the Order Paper for a very long time.

Nevertheless, the main purpose of this bill is to provide for the absolute prohibition on the manufacture, import, or use of persistent organic pollutants, otherwise known as “POPs”—not to be confused with elderly people. As I noted in Hansard, considerable doubt was cast upon that at one stage of events. Persistent organic pollutants are chemicals that have the quality of being incredibly environmentally persistent, and as the Hon Ken Shirley pointed out, they can lie around for over 20,000 years and their half-lives may still not have been diminished. They are toxic, bioaccumulative, and able to be transported by the movement of air, water, and migratory species to places far from their original point of release. There is no doubt that having a United Nations - sponsored bill such as this, where a convention is put into place and signed up to by as many countries as possible, is absolutely appropriate. In fact, I understand that the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants enjoys an almost unparalleled level of support among United Nations countries.

Submissions on this bill came from three important sources. One was from Geocycle Ltd, a subsidiary of Holcim. The Holcim group of companies is perhaps the world’s leading supplier of cement. The other ones came from Transpower New Zealand Ltd and the National Council of Women. It is worth spending a little time on the Geocycle submission, because it pointed out that Geocycle’s focus is at present on the collection of used oil, nationwide. Again, it supports the intent of the bill, but states: “However, the bill does not implement Article 5 or Annex C of the Stockholm convention, which concerns the unintentional production of dioxins and furans.” It submitted that the Government should provide for those in the bill or, at least, in additional legislation. “Geocycle’s view is that national environmental standards and extended producer responsibility policies need to be implemented to give effect to the Stockholm convention.” It certainly requested that the Government develop those, so I am hoping that the Government will take note of that. It also stated that the bill should “provide for the use of waste and hazardous waste in the manufacture of cement and lime, where appropriate environmental standards can be achieved, and recognise the positive environmental benefits of co-processing. That will obviously assist the New Zealand cement industry to remain competitive with other countries.”

Geocycle maintains that there are no national guidelines for dioxin emissions, and that they need to be enforced. At present, they are enforced variably. Again, I agree with the co-leader of the Greens that it is important to have robust national guidelines for the treatment of dioxins in New Zealand. Hopefully, that is something the Government will get on with. The commentary on the bill makes the point that “Dioxin is a by-product of some combustion processes and is not a substance that is used in a process. Therefore, dioxin is outside the jurisdiction of the Act and is not addressed in the bill.”

I put it to the Government that this is something to which it should give some attention. Geocycle’s submission states: “It is unfortunate that the cement industry is labelled as a potentially high dioxin producer by the Stockholm convention. The cement industry in general has been proactive in measuring dioxin emissions and operating in a manner to control emissions.” It goes on to say that there is a need for national environmental standards to be developed to cover all industry, not specific industry sectors; and that they should be based on discharge standards applying to all discharges, not to specific industries.

The next important submission came from Transpower, and, indeed, the committee dealt with its requests, which were, basically, to phase out the current usage of polychlorinated biphenyls, which are a form of persistent organic pollutants that are very much used in the power industry. Transpower operates high-voltage electrical protection equipment that contains small, hand-sized sealed capacitors known, or suspected, to contain polychlorinated biphenyls. Transpower states that there are approximately 2,000 of those items in use, but they are labelled and contained within

inside cabinets in controlled substation environments.

💬 Hon Harry Duynhoven: Transformers?

I understand that that is where they can be found, and there are many of them around the country. The point Transpower made is that the removal of polychlorinated biphenyls is subject to a replacement plan that reflects shareholder requirements on Transpower to manage the transmission system economically under the requirements for a State-owned enterprise. When Transpower obtained an exemption for continued use in 2000, premature replacement of the equipment was expected to involve a cost in the range of $20 million to $30 million. So its request was that an extension programme up to 2016 was accommodated in the bill, and that has been possible, provided those provisions are agreed to in the Committee stage. So this is a very important aspect of gradual, sensible disposal of persistent organic pollutants or polychlorinated biphenyl, in a practical sense that affects the New Zealand economy.

The third and somewhat interesting submission came from the National Council of Women of New Zealand Inc. They also supported the intention of the bill, but were concerned about some of the aspects that unfortunately have been addressed during the briefing processes. So this is a bill that is supported by National, and supported by the House, and I commend its progress.

I was not going to take a call in this debate, but I am prompted to do so to protect the honour and the integrity of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, following a very grave attack by the member who preceded me. He talked about the dilatory consideration of this measure. I need to put on record on behalf of the members of that select committee—of whom that member was one for the purposes of this debate—the very processes by which we considered this legislation. It came to the select committee on 20 February this year. We immediately acted by calling for public submissions, which we received by 21 March. We received three submissions, which the member has canvassed in detail. We then spent some 53 minutes hearing evidence from those witnesses, and a further 1 hour and 7 minutes considering the implications of that evidence. We then reported the bill back to the House on 29 April.

Contrary to any allegations of dilatory consideration, we spent more time dealing with the submissions than we did hearing the witnesses, we dealt with the bill speedily in a period of 2 months, and we have been waiting with eager anticipation the fate of these two pieces of legislation since that time. I need say no more, other than that the select committee worked well and constructively together, now looks forward to the measures passing, and resists absolutely any allegation that we did not discharge our responsibilities fully and thoroughly.

I want to address a number of important issues in this bill, but firstly I want to respond to the issues raised by the chair of the committee. I think he rightly says that the bill has been turned around in a very efficient time by the select committee, and I commend committee members. I simply want to point out the point that has been misinterpreted by him from my very competent colleague Paul Hutchison: it is a very long time from the point when the agreements were made by New Zealand to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and when this bill arrived before the House and progressed. My colleague Paul Hutchison is absolutely right to question the Government on why it took so long.

I would like to address three substantive issues in the second reading of this bill. The first of those is that this Parliament has spent an inordinate amount of time on writing primary law dealing with issues of hazardous substances—the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (Stockholm Convention) Act 1996, and repeated amendments have come through for the Stockholm convention, and others.

But my problem is that one can have all the first-order law that one likes, but it is the second-order law, and particularly the regulations that come from our Environmental Risk Management Authority, that are going to deliver the real benefits for the environment. In that regard the process has been extremely tardy. There is a huge lack of proper standards for dealing with contaminated sites, for dealing with pentachlorophenol and other chemicals dealt with by this legislation. If we spent as much time on those standards as we did on the law, then our environment would be substantially better served. I want to challenge both the Ministry for the Environment and the Environmental Risk Management Authority in that regard.

The second issue I wish to raise with respect to the bill, as it has been reported back from the select committee, goes to the core of issues between Parliament and international organisations, and their respective roles. It is a good thing that New Zealand plays its role as a responsible nation and that it joins other countries in the development of conventions and international law. But this Parliament needs to be quite determined that it finally is sovereign over this country. I must note with some concern that if we provide legislation that states that parties to the Stockholm convention can go on and make further changes and amendments—and they will, and that is quite proper—then this Parliament must have the final say on any amendments that flow from that.

I worry that when we make changes to clause 4 in the Committee stage and we include the convention and any subsequent amendments to it, in some respects we are abrogating our responsibilities in terms of ensuring that it is we who write the law for New Zealand, and that here is the opportunity for New Zealand citizens who may be impacted on to have some say, which would be unlikely in a United Nations or international forum such as the body that has responsibility for the implementation of the Stockholm convention. While of course we should be open-minded about further changes that may be made to this convention, before any of those changes take legal effect they should come back to this Parliament so that we can endorse or reject them and give New Zealand citizens and businesses the opportunity to have a say.

The third area in which I have an interest in the Stockholm convention and this bill is the way New Zealand is able to deal in a sensible and efficient way with previous chemicals, organic pollutants, and their disposal. The international community quite properly wants to provide some restriction on rich countries producing dangerous chemicals and then shipping them off to Third World nations where there is not the regulatory control, where there is bribery and corruption, and where the result is an inappropriate disposal of such chemicals in those countries.

So it makes good sense for the international community to come up with rules like the Stockholm convention to put restrictions on that, and to say to developed rich countries that if they make those dangerous chemicals they must be responsible for their disposal.

But one of my concerns is that large countries, such as European countries, or Japan, or the United States, have sufficient volumes to be liable to economically dispose of those chemicals. Whereas small countries like New Zealand, whether it is the transformer pentachlorophenol that is used—which has been referred to by my colleague Paul Hutchison, the member for Port Waikato—or whether it is those chemicals used in the niche horticultural industries in my own area, and we say that those chemicals have to be dealt with in New Zealand, then we actually make a very high price for those.

It makes sense for us to work with Australia and with other Pacific countries on the disposal of those chemicals, quite simply because it is practical and efficient. My point is that we need to be pragmatic about it. If we allow those restrictions to be excessive, then we take away good practical solutions that can be found in combination with Pacific countries, with Australia, in providing appropriate ways and technologies for the disposal of those chemicals. So I initiate a word of caution in that regard.

The last point I wish to make concerns the role of the Environmental Risk Management Authority in implementing these latest amendments to the Stockholm convention. We note that the authority is years behind. Its latest report to the select committee is that the provisions of the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act, which was passed by this Parliament 6 years ago, are not going to be fully implemented until after 2006. In fact, the authority’s latest programme is suggesting 2008. That is glacial pace. That is ridiculously slow. Why does this Parliament go to all the effort of passing new laws if the Government is going to drag its feet to that extent in terms of implementing these laws? I will want to know from the Minister, during the Committee deliberations, whether we will get the same sort of snail’s-pace implementation of these provisions from the Stockholm convention that we are seeing with the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act.

I also say that Parliament has to ask some tough questions with regard to the performance of the Environmental Risk Management Authority around the issues concerning new genetic organisms. There are articles in our newspaper this very day that raise serious questions about the authority’s capacity to be able to deliver the goods. If we are going to pass these sorts of provisions, I want to make sure at the Committee stage that the Environmental Risk Management Authority has the capacity, the resources, and the drive to actually be able to give these sorts of provisions meaning. Passing all the laws in the world, and participating in all the international conventions we like, is not worth it if we do not have the local body—in this case the New Zealand body, the Environmental Risk Management Authority—getting on and doing its job. I leave the House with those points, and I look forward to the Committee stage of this bill.

Bill read a second time.