Biosecurity Law Reform Bill

I will take an opportunity to lead in again on Part 1, which is basically the big part of the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill—the significant part of it. It sets up requirements around pest-management strategies, which are the plans, I guess, to get rid of or manage diseases that are already here, such as tuberculosis. Strategies for others will be developed. Ones around rabbit calicivirus disease, or the rabbit as a pest, hopefully will be developed further down the track.

Can I say on behalf of my electorate, in particular, that one of the obligations in this bill that I have to endorse and applaud the Government for is the good neighbour obligation in here. It does place upon the Crown, as the neighbour of many farmers and private property owners, an obligation to engage with them through these pest-management strategies and to be a participant, just like every other private farmer and landowner. I applaud that initiative.

At the same time, I have to go back and alert anyone who might be listening to this debate to the fact that although Labour supports this bill, we have some serious questions. In regard to the Government-industry agreements, what I must point to—and there will be a lot of people out there who have not read the report—is the review of the import requirements and the border process in light of the entry of Pseudomonas syringae pv. Actinidiae into New Zealand. One of the recommendations in that—and I hope it is not taken up—is that the Ministry for Primary Industries needs to look at the relative cost-benefit ratios of reprioritising its resources towards managing risks for economically significant industries. One of the concerns of the small sector groups—the likes of hothouse growers; pipfruit is not a small one, but summer fruit is, and avocados—is that they do not think that under the Government-industry agreements they will get a fair go and an opportunity for them to negotiate an affordable deal to manage any risk incursion or, in fact, to have input into the preventive measures at the border. The point being that here is a recommendation that points to the insufficient resourcing in biosecurity and says: “Well, if you do not have money, reprioritise and forget about the small sectors.” That is effectively what it says.

There may well be net benefits in reprioritising the Ministry for Primary Industries’ resources away from smaller, less strategic industries in order to ensure the risks to high-value sectors are appropriately managed. What that says is that we will put the resources into dairy, kiwifruit, pipfruit, and meat and we will forget about the rest. Well, those sectors need to be well aware of the dangers. Under the current Government’s management of biosecurity, there is insufficient resource to have a proper system, and the shifting around of those resources may very well mean that they miss out.

The recent incursion of fruit fly is a classic example. I guess it would have been the whole fruit sector engaged under an MIA—a GIA, sorry; I am getting my MIAs and GIAs confused here, as it is not the Meat Industry Association but a Government-industry agreement—then I am not sure how we would engage. Thankfully, there was quick action on that—the one fly—at a cost of $1.4 million. That issue was addressed. We did not have a wider spread of the Queensland fruit fly, thankfully. But you have got sectors here like summer fruit that are crying out for the ministry to X-ray all incoming baggage into the country, because somehow that larva got into this country and we did not pick it up at the border.

There are hundreds of thousands of containers coming into this country every year and they are not checked. There are hundreds of thousands of visitors coming into this country each year and they are not checked. Direct exit means that those people go out without any physical check whatsoever. The vague hope, the vain hope, that the dogs are around to check it out, in fact, does not apply to Wellington—has not applied since October last year—and there have been serious shortages of dogs around the ports and airports of this country for some time. I understand that the ministry might be upping it by four in Auckland, but we have a serious—

I rise on behalf of the New Zealand First Party. We are opposed to the passage of this bill, the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill, in its present form. New Zealand First is strongly committed to the promotion and preservation of New Zealand’s biosecurity. We understand that the intention of this bill is to enhance and improve the level of that biosecurity, and we support the amendments that it will bring to several other pieces of legislation, namely the Maritime Transport Act 1994, the Ombudsmen Act 1975, the Wild Animal Control Act 1977, and the Wildlife Act 1953. We see the bringing together of relevant legislation under a single umbrella as being a positive move in terms of the imposition and enforcement of measures intended to safeguard the biosecurity of New Zealand, which is undeniably of crucial importance to our agriculture and to tourism, and thereby to our economy and way of life.

We acknowledge the work done by the previous Primary Production Committee and appreciate the lengths and detail to which that committee went in order to ensure that what has been presented to the House is a far more workable bill than that which the committee originally found itself tasked with examining. Indeed, in reading the Hansard from the previous Parliament, it is apparent that members from both sides of the House found immediate and obvious faults in the bill as it had been prepared. The committee made nine substantive changes and recommendations to the Government, all of which were accepted.

From this I am given cause not only to be reassured as to the commitment of the committee to achieving workable and practical outcomes, but also to wonder why and how such an important piece of legislation could have been so flawed to begin with. It is this inherently flawed nature of the construction and, more important, the focus of this bill that forms the basis of the New Zealand First Party’s opposition to it, rather than the detail of its application, which has already been addressed. In addition, given the bill’s focus, as we see it, combined with the concurrent adoption of certain new technologies and existing budget-driven contemporary practices at the border, it is our view that these elements will in fact work together, in our estimation, not to strengthen New Zealand’s biosecurity but, indeed, to weaken it.

There are five key areas identified in this bill: border risk management, marine biosecurity, readiness and response, pest management, and compliance and enforcement. In terms of marine biosecurity, the New Zealand First Party is encouraged by the inclusion of the 200-mile exclusive economic zone within the boundaries of the bill’s jurisdiction. We believe that this will enhance the safety of the existing fishery, as well as contributing to the minimisation of other risks associated with sea traffic, and further risks with a potential to impact on the New Zealand mainland and major outlying islands from other marine-based activities, including those associated with offshore mining and oil exploration.

We are pleased also that the bill facilitates the implementation of the International Convention for the Control and Management of Ships’ Ballast Water and Sediments 2004. This convention aims to minimise the potentially negative or deleterious effects of ballast water carried by cargo ships, generally collected in or near the coastal waters of one port and discharged at the next, and often including real and possible contaminants, such as biological materials including plants, animals, viruses, and bacteria. These materials can include non-native species, which may impact on aquatic and marine ecosystems, causing a variety of negative effects, ranging from civil nuisance value through to serious ecological and economic damage.

Likewise, New Zealand First welcomes the provisions in this bill that enable a national policy direction to be formulated and imposed with regard to pest management and control. New Zealand First believes that a collective strategy coordinated by Government will enable all individuals and agencies involved in, or responsible for, the control, destruction, or other management of existing and potential pests to work to a known standard in the formation of their operational plans and methodologies. We believe that this will greatly assist in the eradication or effective control of pests that may exist, or cross between, regional and jurisdictional boundaries.

We are also pleased that the Crown as a landowner will be included in regional pest-management rules under the provisions of the bill, correcting what we see as the anomaly of its present exclusion. Land not currently required to meet regional pest-management rules includes not only that managed by the Department of Conservation and Land Information New Zealand, but also that controlled by the Defence Force, the Department of Corrections, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Justice, the Crown Forestry Group, and the New Zealand Transport Agency.

So there are good things in the bill, and the stated intent is a good one, with which we agree. As I have said, we acknowledge the good work that the previous committee has done on a cross-party basis towards bringing the provisions of this bill into line with that stated intention. However, where New Zealand First sees the bill as failing is in its approach to the remaining provisions not yet addressed—those of border risk management, readiness and response, and compliance and enforcement. We appreciate that the aim of the bill’s authors is to include some carrot along with the stick, to reward those who have a good track record with regards to upholding and improving biosecurity, as well as punishing those whose record of performance is poor.

But it is in the relaxation of inspection-based activities and the change in focus away from direct and intensive governmental involvement in the process of ascertaining the presence of risk factors and organisms, which is an essential element of the reward side of the equation, that in our view places the biosecurity of New Zealand at greater rather than lesser risk. I note from the second reading of the bill that the Hansard contains references of concern from some Opposition MPs that the move towards greater industry self-regulation may be driven by a desire to ease and accelerate the movement of goods, in line with the requirements of the World Trade Organization. Be that as it may, it is of great concern to the New Zealand First Party that removing the direct involvement of inspection and enforcement of regulations for any industry, coupled with an increase in penalties for those subsequently found to be in breach of them, is not a formula that has proven to be successful in New Zealand in recent years. It is somewhat akin to putting an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff rather than a fence at the top.

I would suggest to members that both leaky homes and Pike River came about under regulatory regimes that had been relaxed in a similar manner. Although a desire to speed the process of importation and international travel for those who have not transgressed against the requirements of the border may be of honourable intent, we are acutely aware that our primarily agrarian economy is but one mistake away from disaster. The most careful of frequent travellers could very easily bring in a threat, inadvertently and unintentionally, the consequences of which have the potential to be dire for the nation as a whole.

We have seen the effects of the Pseudomonas syringae pv. Actinidiae disease on our kiwifruit industry and the varroa mite on the bee-keeping and honey industries. And, of course, we all know that New Zealand lives with the constant spectre of foot-and-mouth disease, the repercussions of which have thankfully yet to be visited upon us. I can tell this House that the root virus phylloxera arrived in Central Otago during my time in the wine industry there, and that was with all the necessary protocols in place around movement. Without them, it would doubtless have made its appearance decades earlier, and had it done so, it is doubtful the New Zealand’s reputation as the producer of the world’s finest Pinot noir could ever have been established.

A piece of fruit or a jar of honey accidentally left in the luggage of a business traveller with a hitherto unblemished record could have consequences for this country that no fine or monetary penalty could possibly hope to address. Similarly, an insect or animal pest slipping through the net of an importer with previously impeccable systems and credentials could likewise impact on the nation beyond the ability of any punishment to deter, particularly when any such transgression is likely to be entirely unintentional. In either event, without recourse to complete inspection—certainly, by new technological means, as far as is possible—the adoption of this bill in its present form will mean that New Zealand has no means at all of intercepting or preventing such threats.

That is a risk that I would suggest to members is too great to be countenanced. The SmartGate may not seem so smart after all if we allow it to let in a virus that devastates our pork industry or a moth that wipes out our pine forests. For these reasons New Zealand First cannot support this bill. Thank you.

The Green Party is also unable to support this bill, the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill. The Green Party is very, very concerned about biosecurity, and we often, and for many years, have been pushing the issue of inadequate biosecurity by successive Governments. We have seen pest after pest come in, affecting different industries and affecting biodiversity in this country.

I was part of the early consultation on this bill, and it is clear that Biosecurity New Zealand, as it was then, was really looking to see whether it could have some better systems and some better processes to look after biosecurity, and in some respects the bill does address that. It is looking at how to do it in maybe a more user-pays way, which unfortunately leaves some glaring gaps, but not only that, it actually impacts on industry in a very—how would you say it—hodgepodge way. It is a mix and match, all over the place way of doing it. It is going to be inadequately resourced under the Government-industry agreement system when it is implemented, and that is being attempted to be implemented now, under duress, in most of the industries.

Most of the changes may seem to be able to enhance biosecurity outcomes in New Zealand, but that would be only if biosecurity was significantly better resourced, and there is no intention of that. The Government has not done it, and it did not do it in the last Budget either.

The distributed responsibility for biosecurity management is, we say, a brave new adventure for the Ministry of Primary Industries, but it is one that will blur the lines of responsibility for biosecurity breaches. It is a more cooperative approach, and you might say that will lead to some better biosecurity outcomes, but it is actually blurring the lines of responsibility, and we see that as a very big risk. We see that as actually quite sad.

I want to look at the real problems with biosecurity in New Zealand. The Minister for Primary Industries has said it in this House in recent months a couple of times: do we want the same approach taken by our international markets, the importers of our produce into other markets? That was in response to the pig endogenous retrovirus more recently, the pig issue—the thing that is in front of the court because it is so contentious. The Minister expects that we will accept greater risk into this country because of some of our purported better exports. He says that we need to prioritise, that we will take up the recommendations from the Pseudomonas syringae pv. Actinidiae investigation, and that that will prioritise where biosecurity goes, depending on the importance of a particular sector. That is a very narrow way of looking at it. It is a very risky way of looking at it, because it puts it down into just a few sectors that are seen as the sectors where our economy is based. But that is our economy at the moment, on a really slack commodity level. We have got pines, we have got dairy, and if that is all we are going to rely on and we look the other way and not at the depth that we need to around biosecurity risk, we are not looking to the future for New Zealand.

I note that John Lancashire, the immediate past president of the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science, in its recent publication lambasted the Government—and previous Governments as well, I must say—for the neo-liberal approach that it has been taking to trade and biosecurity.

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: What’s that mean?

That means that in recent years both major parties have said they will do a little bit less regulation and they will do freer and freer trade, and that means we are taking more risks about growing biosecurity threats. The slight loosening of border controls has led to some very expensive search—

I am very happy to take a call on the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill, a substantial piece of legislation that seeks to amend the Biosecurity Act of 1993. Essentially, one of the things that this bill seeks to do is to bring the legislation up to date with the technology that is available in terms of biosecurity in New Zealand.

As my colleagues have talked about at length, Labour does support this bill, although we do have a couple of concerns, which we have outlined, one of which my colleague Damien O’Connor talked about earlier today. It was the Government-industry agreements, and this is a concern for us. The other concern for us is that you can have the best legislation in the world, but if you do not properly resource it, it is not going to work.

One of the things that my colleagues have talked about while we have been debating this bill is the lack of resourcing that we are seeing in this area of biosecurity. We are seeing that Wellington Airport has not had a sniffer dog working there since October last year. We are seeing that there are cuts, and this is of concern to everybody. We support the efforts to increase our biosecurity, because like most people, or like everybody, really, in this House, and most New Zealanders, we know that historically New Zealand’s biosecurity and our protecting of our land-based primary production—our agricultural, our forestry, and our horticultural industries—is absolutely crucial to our economic survival, and, indeed, our economic development. Not only has it been incredibly important to us historically as a nation but we see, in Labour, that it is still important to us today. It is very much part of our present.

This bill does recognise the vital importance of biosecurity to our marine environment, to our indigenous flora and fauna, and to human health. I think it is interesting that we started debating this bill last night, immediately after the reading of the exclusive economic zone legislation where we were seeing the House talking about how it is that we could control our exclusive economic zone. What we have here is a piece of legislation that seeks to extend into that exclusive economic zone. So the purpose of this bill, as I said, is to bring biosecurity up to date to take into account the technologies that are available and had been there since the passage of the legislation that was passed in the 1990s.

The present bill that we have before us now really goes back to when Labour was in Government and the scare that the varroa mite posed to an entire industry. And, sadly, since we have seen the scare that the varroa mite posed to the honey industry, we have seen several other scares, which members have talked about during this debate. We have seen the Pseudomonas syringae pv. Actinidiae (Psa) incursion into the kiwifruit industry—a $75 million problem. We have seen the Queensland fruit fly in Auckland. All those actions posed significant threats to New Zealand’s economic well-being.

The fruit fly alone could destroy a $3 billion a year horticultural industry. So these might be very small organisms or very small insects, but they are not very small problems. These are things that we need to protect against. This is why Labour more than doubled the spending on biosecurity between 1999 and 2008. We raised that spending from $94 million to $187 million.

Then in 2003 Labour initiated the New Zealand Biotechnology Strategy, and this was a very good piece of work. This strategy emphasised the critical role, and this is what is really important for me. This is a strategy that emphasised the critical relationship between science and biosecurity, and that science needed to underpin what we were doing in the area of protecting our borders and in terms of our whole biosecurity system.

This strategy identified four expectations of science in the field of biosecurity. It emphasised that the science should be closely involved in the development of any strategy, that the purchase of science should be integrated across providers who are working in this field, that the investment in science should be long term to ensure maintenance of key capabilities, and that the priority for research to improve biosecurity is understood. As someone who has worked in the research industry before entering this House, I have seen very much that biosecurity was at the forefront of thinking in terms of our horticultural and our primary production industries.

New technologies—many of which have been developed under this increased funding that I have sketched out—are now being used in defending our borders, and the legislation that we have before us now actually will enable us to make greater use of these new technologies. It will ensure that a secure biosecurity system from pre-border management to pest management must be underpinned by this science that I was talking about, to support the social, the cultural, the environmental, and the economic values that are important to all of us as New Zealanders, and that we must ensure that science continues to underpin our approach to this system.

Our science in this area has a very strong international reputation in fruit fly protection, in eradication techniques, the use of baggage-securing X-ray technologies, in fumigation technologies, in pesticide technologies, and in molecular diagnostic techniques. These are all things that New Zealand scientists excel at and that we do very good work at. We need to be able to use these technologies in the defence of our borders. We have examples of these technologies being used to protect our borders, but we also have examples of these technologies being commercialised, and that is a spin-off economic benefit to the New Zealand economy.

We have SniffertechTM, which was developed by the Crown research institute AgResearch, and it went on to be a very useful technology. Biosecurity is a really salient example of the importance of investing in science to our economy right across the broad spectrum of how it is that we look at our economy. Our economic future is dependent on this, and we must continue to innovate in this area. As I said, the purpose of this bill is to enable us to use these innovations, these new technologies, and these new bits of science.

The Biosecurity Act as it stands now does not reflect these significant advances in technologies that have taken place over the past decade, and that we anticipate we will continue to make greater advances in. The present legislation requires that some of the acts be carried out in a manual way, when time has moved on and we actually have technology that could do a better job at this and actually do more to protect our borders.

For other functions there is uncertainty about whether the available or future electronic technologies and systems can be used to support the prevention of biosecurity risk. We must tidy that up, and one of the reasons that Labour is supporting this bill is that it does precisely that. We need that legal certainty over the use of technology and over the use of electronic devices in defending our borders. The Ministry for Primary Industries needs to have that certainty to improve, target, and manage the risks at our borders. Visual inspection, as required in many ways now, will not pick up the organisms that pose the threat, whether they are bacterial or viral such as Psa. We must have a way to detect these. We have the technologies and we must be able to use them. That is why Labour is supporting this bill at this reading. Thank you.

I am pleased to make a contribution to this Committee stage of the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill. Before I go into talking around Part 1, I will say that biosecurity is critical to our prosperity as a nation. This bill is all about protecting our pā, protecting our industries and our livelihoods, protecting our brand, protecting our resources, and protecting our mana. So Labour does support this bill. We have supported it right since its introduction, but we do have some reservations over a couple of aspects to the bill, particularly around the Government-industry agreements, which my colleague Mr O’Connor has touched on.

I want to just take this opportunity to talk on Supplementary Order Paper 88, which Te Ururoa Flavell has tabled. The proposed amendment is to insert new clause 8A, which inserts new section 5A, “Principles of Treaty of Waitangi”, into the Biosecurity Act. Labour supports this Supplementary Order Paper and the inclusion of this new clause. As we all know, the genesis for the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi came out of the Treaty of Waitangi Act, its architect Matiu Rata, and the Labour Government of those days, and it has been central to the whole modern-day era of the past 30 years of Treaty settlements. There is a long line of Treaty jurisprudence around the principles of the Treaty, but in terms of its inclusion in this bill it is very important in recognition of Māori iwi and Māori as the tangata whenua and as kaitiaki for our natural resources, and the partnership between Māori and the Crown. So we do support the inclusion of this clause.

It is unequivocal in terms of the wording that “This Act must be interpreted and administered so as to give effect to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.” I know Mr Flavell has tabled another Supplementary Order Paper, but I believe that it might come under a different part. We will discuss that at a later time. But in terms of Part 1 and new clause 8A, we support this Supplementary Order Paper.

Returning back to the thrust of this bill, we do support the measures—for instance, the new tools for more effective and efficient border biosecurity, placing more duties on importers to take more reasonable steps in terms of their importation and compliance with health standards, the modern-day framework for the use of information on risk profiling; and one that was endorsed by my colleague Ms Mackey, which she spoke to last evening, and that is the expansion of the Biosecurity Act and its application to the exclusive economic zone. So those are commendable measures in the bill.

I said that it is all about protecting our pā. Having worked with Māori economic interests, I know that Māori are significant stakeholders in our primary industries, whether it is our agricultural industries, our farms, our orchards, our marine farms, fisheries, or forestry. In fact, the bulk of Māori assets are in the primary sector, and, therefore, our trade and our ongoing viability in those industries are really critical in terms of our biosecurity. We are, in terms of the Māori sector, very, very keen to see boosted protection of our pā.

That leads me on to the Government-industry agreements. This is an area, I know, where Labour does have reservations. It is a classic example, I guess, in terms of the inequity between big industries and very small industries and the resourcing that is required, but also the fact that these agreements are between two parties. We are seeing it with the New Zealand pork industry at the moment. It is taking litigation against the Government over the non-recognition of the scientific evidence that the industry is putting forward in opposition to the lowering of the import standards for the some 800 tonnes of pork that comes into our country every week. That is a critical issue for the pork industry, and in terms of these Government-industry agreements, I think that it is a classic example whereby the industry itself cannot even get the Government to pay recognition to its own scientific work. This is a Kiwi, New Zealand industry, our pork industry. I think we need to give a lot more consideration to the Government-industry agreement provisions to make sure that there is a greater equity, and not too much cost borne. There is a disproportionate cost when the industries are so small, when it is a small, fledgling, emerging export industry. We all know that we want to broaden the base of our exports sector, of our tradable sector, so I think it would be good to just focus on the Government-industry agreement area, and make sure that that is tightly drafted and meets the interests of the industry itself. That really concludes my contribution at this time. Kia ora.

As I was pointing out, with the neo-liberal approach, which is saying more and more free trade and sell out biosecurity for free trade, John Lancashire was absolutely correct in pointing out that that is actually the critical thing, the philosophical thing, that is allowing biosecurity risks to be increased. As I have said, the Minister has repeatedly said that we need to be open, we need to be accepting more and more stuff coming in and more and more risk if we want to be trading freely. But just today the World Trade Organization (WTO) came out and has pointed out that for just that material that is coming in, there are actually gaps around it in terms of how it is being managed. The WTO is saying that that needs to be looked at. The different agencies internationally, the WTO and the other agencies, need to be working better to make sure that biosecurity works and that it is not seen as that trade barrier. Instead of taking the approach that it is always a trade barrier, we actually need to look at biosecurity almost first. We definitely do need to look at it first, but this Government has been saying: “No, no. We want to open up, let more in, and take more risks.” So it is very interesting that that came out today, while we have got this bill, the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill, in front of us that is quite shaky in terms of looking after biosecurity here.

The other thing that has just happened, of course—and a colleague mentioned this before—is the four new dogs, which is very, very good because he and the Green Party had been repeatedly saying that there are not enough decent inspections at our ports, so it is good to see that there has been a media advisory out to say that there are four new dogs out, and the breeding programme is expecting to see 11 new Labradors graduate from training this year, as part of a move to bolster biosecurity in this country. That is absolutely fantastic. There is no doubt about it. There are some major gaps, and they are being filled. But I would ask how many more staff are going to be coming back into MAF Biosecurity New Zealand. How many more dollars and how many more resources are going to go into making sure we can do an adequate job? Will the increased staffing, assuming there is a handler for each of those dogs, because there needs to be, exceed the successive losses from successive Governments in successive years of backtracking around biosecurity investment in this country?

I will just point out some of the losses that we can expect to get if we carry on down this track of liberalising and loosening biosecurity by not resourcing it properly. Horticulture New Zealand a couple of years back did a look at what would happen if fruit fly got into various regions, and pointed out that in the Bay of Plenty the loss would be $820 million and 3,430 jobs lost, Hawke’s Bay $390 million and just over 3,000 jobs lost, and in Nelson $265 million and 1,945 jobs lost. Yes, the Government did jump when a male fruit fly sprung up in Auckland. We also know what the cost was of that. That would not have happened if we had better port controls. Pysllids are another one, affecting the spud industry, tomatoes, capsicums, and tamarillos—the Solanum family industry. It has cost the industry already something like $250 million in lost production, markets, and production costs, yet there is no more money and there is nothing happening, really, in terms of reducing those risks. Yes, there are some dogs—that is a little bit of catch-up—but there is no more loot going in there to make this better.

I come back to the aspect that I touched on earlier, in terms of the prioritisation of biosecurity in New Zealand. Instead of a serious blanket approach of dealing with biosecurity fully from a Government approach, we have got a bundle of industries that will all suffer significantly. We have got the forestry industry, which is incredibly vulnerable, particularly with its monoculture.

I move, That the question be now put.