Biosecurity Law Reform Bill

I have to acknowledge my good colleague Rino Tirikatene there. I slightly misled him on a debate. I am sure he will have the chance to put his views to the Committee on this part.

💬 Hon Craig Foss: Do you wear that tie on the West Coast, Damien?

Absolutely. It takes more than clothes to maketh a man down there.

💬 Hon Annette King: That’s why he never made it.

That is right. As I said, Labour is supporting the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill, but we do have some major problems with it and with the resourcing of biosecurity across this country. In speaking to the next part of the bill, and particularly in regard to the formation of pest-management strategies—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): No.

Clause 76? Sorry, Mr Chairman, I am—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Ballast water and the marine environment.

Ah, yes. Going back to the marine environment clauses—

💬 Hon Craig Foss: Loosen the tie. Come on—loosen the tie.

That is what a pink tie does to you.

Can I say we actually welcome having provisions in the Biosecurity Act, finally, around ballast water. It is a situation that I am familiar with because going back some 20 years, in fact, there was an application in South Westland to export fresh water. That was out of Jacksons Bay. Anyone who has been down there knows that it is a pristine environment. I know that the Chairman, Mr Roy, has been down there many times. One of the issues that arose then—and it has not come up that often—was ballast water and what the potential impact could be of ballast water being tipped into Jacksons Bay by boats that had set out from Singapore or some Middle Eastern port, gone down there, and put that water out there, bringing with it all the pests and diseases. At that time no one had really identified the risk. It was put up as an argument primarily by the green movement at that time—way before the Green Party. But there were environmental groups that were concerned, legitimately, about what might happen down there through ballast water being put into that bay. I have to say that was one of a number of arguments and issues that actually put that whole project on hold. I am sure that at some stage we probably will be exporting fresh water from this country as its value increases.

The issue, though, is ballast water, the management of it, and ensuring that we do not bring pests into this country unnecessarily. I do not think we can ever guarantee that we will not bring in something, or that we have not brought it in. Undaria, which is a seaweed that has some commercial uses but has been deemed a weed, was mostly brought in through the ballast water of boats. The question I have in this area—again, because we have a Government that refuses to properly resource MAF Biosecurity New Zealand—is whether, with all these regulations and these improvements that we accept are needed, effectively we may not offer any more protection for the New Zealand marine environment with the passage of this bill than there was before, and that would be a problem. We have here in clause 76 new Part 19A, “Protection of marine environment from ballast water”. Ballast water means, as we know, anything picked up to stabilise a boat on its way to New Zealand with a cargo. Cargoes change in weight, and, obviously, the ships need to take on board water to make sure they do not tip over. What we have done here is put in place defences for people who think they took all reasonable steps to minimise any potential risk to New Zealand, as the other part of the bill is quite prescriptive.

I have to say that we hope we have got it right, because as good as the chair of the Primary Production Committee is, I am not sure—maybe he will take a call. I hope he will get up and explain. I know he has been fairly diligent all the way through this process, and he probably has read this bill a number of times, so he would be able to get up and explain each and every single part of it.

Can I say that what we do have in there, as well, under Part 3—I am sorry, we going up to clause 78 only. I apologise for that, Mr Chairman. I was just trying to rush the bill through. I do not want to prolong it any longer than necessary. The clauses up to clause 78 deal with marine pollution, as well, which is another serious issue. It is one that has been overlooked internationally, I would suggest. I am not sure whether this provision puts us at the forefront of ballast water management internationally, but if we have a stricter regime for boats coming into our territorial waters, then so be it. There are, we are told, ways of flushing ballast water as ships are in transit. As to whether that occurs or not, I am guessing there is probably an offset in energy use and maybe the speed of the boat in doing that, and we are concerned that, in fact, it might not occur. Hence the heavy fines of up to $200,000, or imprisonment for up to 2 years. That is quite a penalty for someone who discharges ballast water in breach of the regulations that we are allowing to pass here. I think it, quite rightfully, says to each and every ship owner, to the people in charge of those ships: “If you come into New Zealand, we want to keep our marine environment free of any unwanted pests and organisms. So we will pass this bill, we will allow regulations to be put in place, and we are going to hammer you if you don’t do it.”

I think this part is a good part of the bill—we acknowledge the Government for it—and that is why we will support it. But, again, if we do not have the resources to properly police and implement these regulations, then they effectively mean nothing. In this area it is not going to be easy. In spite of, I guess, the ship companies’ determination to reduce the number of ports their ships come into, there will be ships in our territorial waters, over our fisheries areas, that may not abide by these regulations. So we welcome this part of the bill.

I am so excited to talk about this bill, the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill. I am going to confine my comments to new Part 19A in clause 76. But before I do so, I want to tell you why I am excited about Part 2 of this particular bill with reference to ballast water. The other day my colleague the Hon Damien O’Connor took us to a dairy farm and he had us stand in front of this big, huge, open septic tank. There were two or three of them, and he said to us: “Now, boys, have a sniff of that.” So we took deep breaths and then, before we knew it, the Hon Damien O’Connor said to us: “That’s the smell of money.” I could not believe it at first, because I just thought it was the smell of cow poop, but I now recognise that the point he was making was the value of our agricultural industry. What I noticed was that they had the cow waste go from one septic tank to the next—there are three or four of them—and at the bottom they then recycle the clean water. What they would normally do is disperse that throughout the farm.

In terms of this particular bill, in regard to ballast water, “Ballast water means water with its suspended matter taken on board a ship to control the ship’s trim, list, draught, stability, or stresses.” The big question is where that water comes from, because if it is water that comes off the final open septic tank, then there is going to be concern, particularly if it is coming from another country, and we may have to ask questions about who owns the water, who has the rights to the water that goes on these particular ships. We may even have to have a secret meeting to decide who has the rights to the water that comes from that ship.

I am particularly pleased because in new section 246B it states: “(1) ballast water may be discharged from a ship only in accordance with the applicable marine protection rules.” I believe that the farmers, our aquaculture sector, our forest sector, and our wine industry are going to be quite excited about this particular bill—all 264 pages of it—because they are going to have to hire employees, consultants, and other people to try to make sense of what is in this bill.

Do not get me wrong. At the end of the day, as the Hon Damien O’Connor says, we support the bill. But in terms of having the measures that will enable us to, hopefully, protect and continue to safeguard our borders for the sake of our valuable industry, we really cannot have the Government shirk its responsibilities. So I suppose, with the farmers who would be listening in to this debate, the responsibility still falls on them to hold this Government to account. At the end of the day, when Mr Damien O’Connor says, with reference to our agricultural sector, that that is the smell of money, it underlines the fact that we have got a very valuable industry that we have to be protective of. [Interruption] At the end of the day, I agree that the penalties that have been imposed of $200,000—“a fine not exceeding $200,000; and … if the offence is a continuing one, a further fine not exceeding $10,000 …”—send a clear signal. It imposes responsibility on the importers, but it still should not allow this Government to shirk its responsibility, because ultimately the Government is our representative and has the duty to protect and safeguard our borders. If that does not happen—and we have already seen examples of what has occurred. I will give you just some examples in terms of what has happened. The latest independent report on the Pseudomonas syringae pv. Actinidiae disease shows it will cost our border—

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! I am having difficulty following the member’s logic, but this is quite specific. So I ask the member to contain himself to clauses 76 to 78.

The point that I am making in terms of the ballast water clauses is that there are serious concerns about ensuring that the ballast water is not released in our shores. I will give you another example. In 1990 a ship by the name of the Naomi travelled between the islands of Samoa and American Samoa. Because they did not ensure that there were safeguards and protection on what was carried on that cargo ship—

We have now moved on to Part 2 of the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill and we are dealing with the marine environment and biosecurity. As my colleagues have mentioned, we support this part and the provisions that are contained in it—in particular, the fact that there are stern penalties imposed for breaches of conditions in terms of discharge of ballast water.

Having worked at one stage in the fishing industry, I know that there is a lot of activity that goes on with those vessels, and the vessels are not contained purely in the New Zealand 12-mile or exclusive economic zone. We do have a lot of ships that go up to the Pacific, out of zone, and that does not even mention the amount of merchant trade ships that go into our ports each and every day—the lifeblood of our main port towns—and the emerging and burgeoning tourism cruise ship industry. It is very positive, actually, that we do see so many more cruise ships coming in during the peak summer periods.

It is commendable now that we have some biosecurity provisions in relation to ballast water, and I would just like to say that perhaps Te Ururoa Flavell could have put in some conditions around consultation with tangata whenua, given that we have large investments in the marine industry, and there is a lot of the Māori asset base that is dependent on the marine environment. Perhaps he could have extended those consultation provisions he had in his Supplementary Order Paper, which we did support, but, obviously, it was not agreed to. But we do support that idea that there be greater consultation with tangata whenua, particularly around things like the national pest management strategy, regional strategies, and the like.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 5.55 p.m.