Biosecurity Law Reform Bill

We now turn ourselves to Part 3, debate on clauses 79 to 83, and the schedule. I advise members that this is a very narrow debate.

I consider that an insult! I am very aware and I always keep my debates tight.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Of course you do!

Thank you. I would like to take the opportunity to talk on Part 3, clause 80, “Amendments to the Wild Animal Control Act 1977”. It relates to the definition of “wild animal”. It states that it is omitting “thar, wallaby, or possum”, and substituting “tahr”. These are technical details here, and I will be able to explain exactly what this means, but there will be many hunters out there who are concerned that the Government, through this bill, the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill, is making the right call here.

One of the particular issues has been the management of tahr. This is a wild Himalayan animal that was brought into this country, I think, well over 100 years ago. They have been liberated and they live in a limited range in the Southern Alps. They are majestic animals, to say the least. I have had the pleasure of going out and hunting them, or trying to catch up with them—at great distance, I have to say—and we have not shot one, but we have done our best to chase them round the hills. That in itself requires an amount of fitness. The point is that they are an introduced animal. They have established themselves and live right at the highest parts of our alps. They do graze on some of our native species, and I know there are a number of people—conservationists and the Department of Conservation—who are concerned that the numbers will get out of hand.

The changes that we are making here, in my view, should enable, firstly, the control of the numbers of tahr. I think the Minister might take a call on this and explain it to the hunting fraternity, because I know they are concerned. So we need control. But we have also fostered a very valuable commercial hunting, as well as recreational hunting, activity in the country. There are literally tens of thousands of dollars spent on helicopter time, on guides, on accommodation, and on the very best, I have to say, of hospitality for people who fly around the world to come to New Zealand to go out and hunt Himalayan tahr. That is a valuable part of the tourism sector at an otherwise very quiet time for them.

I just want to ensure that we are making the changes that allow the tahr management plan to be a sensible plan, not to have extermination or elimination of the animals, as some would desire, but to have management of a population that does ensure their viability and does not allow them to get out of control and hammer some of the plants. The Mount Cook lily, for example, I know is a threatened species up in the high country. We appreciate the need to protect those species, but anyone who has seen a tahr out in the wild and seen them run up vertical rock faces and down and around has to admire the nimbleness, the tenacity, and the sheer skill of these animals in surviving. So that is one of the amendments that are made under clause 80 of the bill. I just need to ask the Minister, and I hope he will take a call, to reassure us that changes to definitions in the Wild Animal Control Act 1977 are not going to put the skids under all those tahr hunters.

We have got other changes here under Part 3, and they relate to possums and wallabies. Again, they are species that have been introduced to this country. The possum, of course, is a serious pest, both for the decimation of native flora and fauna and for the fact that they spread bovine tuberculosis, and that, without control, would undermine our ability to export meat and animal products around the world. So both of these—wallabies and possums—need to be controlled. Wallabies have hopped over the Tasman. They are not much good for anything other than the odd hunting activity. They are down in South Canterbury and North Otago. I almost ran into one about midnight one night, heading up the Waitaki Valley. They are a pest, but they are not a nasty animal, I suppose. But, again, they do need to be controlled under appropriate regulations and appropriate legislation under the Wild Animal Control Act, which is going to be amended by the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill.

The Director-General of Conservation generally does oversee these processes to make sure that they do not get out of control in the conservation estate. Other obligations that we have now placed on the Department of Conservation to be a good neighbour, in the development of pest-management strategies, should mean that it does its bit to keep numbers of wallabies and possums down at the lowest possible level. Those animals do not, as I say, benefit farmers. There are some people in the fur industry who would like to see possums managed in a more sustainable way, so that they can get the fur. They have still got a long way to come down to get the figures where New Zealand is not under threat of tuberculosis or seeing its native species decimated out in the wild.

I am not going to take too much longer, but I will just say that we support the changes in the bill. The Minister might like to get up and take a call and explain exactly what will happen by redefining “wild animal”, and making adjustments to the Wildlife Act so that “possum” and “wallaby” are indeed deemed something we do not really want. With that, I will ask the Minister to maybe take up a call and answer my queries. Thank you.

I hope the Minister for Primary Industries is not going to just sit there like a dried arrangement for the entire Committee stage and not answer these very pertinent questions that have been put to him by members of the Opposition on what is undoubtedly one of the most important pieces of legislation that we have in New Zealand—our biosecurity law, which underpins the very basis of our economy. I certainly hope that the Minister in the chair is scribbling away some notes there so that he can get on his pins and answer some of these questions.

I want to pick up the amendments to the Wild Animal Control Act 1977, and come back to a theme that I think has been running throughout this Committee stage debate, which is the danger where you have overlying pieces of legislation, all with different intents, all with different purposes but essentially governing the same thing. Perhaps nowhere is that more stark than in the area of wild animal control, because there is a natural tension between seeing a particular species as a resource in terms of hunting, the recreational and tourism value that adds, and the downstream benefits of that in terms of using the fur, etc., etc., and seeing that same species as a pest under Department of Conservation legislation or under wild animal control legislation. It is not a tension that is particularly easy to manage, as we are finding out at the Local Government and Environment Committee at the moment where we are passing another piece of legislation to overlay all of this, which is the Game Animal Council Bill, which was something that the Government agreed to do to get Peter Dunne’s support for asset sales, and other such things that the Government is trying to push through with its one-vote majority.

So we have this Game Animal Council Bill, which is currently at the Local Government and Environment Committee. We see the submissions and see that tension between the conservationists, who are very concerned that some species will no longer be governed under the Wild Animal Control Act as pests but will now be seen as a resource, that those species like tahr, as my colleague Damien O’Connor mentioned, and some species like wild pigs will not be as properly managed as they should be, because of these conflicting pieces of legislation, and that perhaps pest control strategies are going to be undermined. For example, if you look at wallabies and possums, which are mentioned in clause 80(2), they are not under the Game Animal Council Bill that is currently going through the select committee, but in respect of the pest management strategy that controls a lot of those—in particular, possums and 1080—there are already concerns coming through from people who are in support of the Game Animal Council , saying: “Well, you know, 1080 can also be life-threatening to some of the very species that we now want to use as a resource, then there are natural concerns.” The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was one who said she wanted to see something there that specifically stated that pest management strategies were not going to be undermined because of the secondary impact they might have on a species that is now going from being considered purely as a pest to being considered as a resource and as something that should be managed rather than eradicated.

So when we talk about amendments to the Wild Animal Control Act, we also see the amendment in clause 79 to the Ombudsmen Act 1975, which inserts: “Management agencies under Biosecurity Act 1993, if they are corporate bodies, in their role under pest management plans or pathway management plans”. My concern would be that we do not want to see a lot of farming out away from the Government, away from the Department of Conservation, away from the Director-General of Conservation, who has the responsibility of protecting this valuable conservation land on behalf of all New Zealanders. We do not want to see a lot of that being contracted out, being privatised, and not having the same levels of transparency in terms of the ability of parliamentarians or members of the public to find out what is being spent on those strategies, who is carrying them out, how effective they are being, when they are happening, which is always a big issue in local communities that want to know when a 1080 drop is going to happen and what protections are being put in place for other wildlife that might be affected by it.

When we look at that clause 79 where it is talking about other corporate bodies who may have a role in pest management strategies, I just want to make sure that the very same stringent controls are in place—the very same stringent standards and expectations that are put on Government agencies. Certainly the Department of Conservation comes under fire a lot when people are not happy with its performance in this area, where people feel that perhaps the department has been remiss, has not been transparent enough, has not consulted enough with the local community, or has not taken on board the concerns of key stakeholders, including recreational hunters and iwi. All of those things come on to the Department of Conservation because of its role as a public body, whereas I worry that talking about putting these out to corporate bodies—and maybe the Minister might want to just clarify what that means and allay concerns—means that we are not going to see exactly those same levels of transparency, those same standards, and, in particular, the ability for the public to get this information around how this is being carried out through the Official Information Act, and the ability for MPs to be able to get it through parliamentary select committee hearings, through written questions, and that none of that is going to be blocked because now it is with an outside body, arm’s length from the Government. It can be done well. The Animal Health Board is an example of where possum control has been very, very well managed, but the Animal Health Board comes before the select committee, and it answers to a lot of those questions. So that is one of my first questions.

The next one, again, going back to what I said, is around that layering, around how you manage that tension between what is a pest and what is a resource, and, in particular, in terms of the Biosecurity Act that is protected, because under the Biosecurity Act we need to make sure that that pest element, or whatever species it is that we are talking about, needs to be taken seriously and is not going to be undermined. I would like the Minister to make a personal undertaking that he will not allow legislation such as the Game Animal Council Bill, which is currently at the select committee, to undermine the pest management strategies and the pest control strategies that the Department of Conservation carries out, or undermine its ability to do that, without being constantly questioned because of the impact it might have on other species that are now being seen as manageable and as a resource rather than a pest.

Now I want to raise one more issue, which is in the schedules. I am sure this is just a technical thing, but I am really struck by this constant changing of words to put in the word “plan”. So we have all these laws and regulations that are being amended here, and in every single one—and there are hundreds here—it says to omit “strategy” and substitute the word “plan”. I am wondering whether the National Government has become so sensitive about accusations from the public, from commentators, and from the Opposition that it does not have a plan on anything that its answer is to now just go through all the legislation it can and get rid of any word that is a vague synonym for the word “plan” and put in the word “plan”, so that when the Opposition members say “Where is your plan?”, it can say: “Well, we just changed that word 400 times in the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill. So do not tell us we do not have a plan, because we just added another 400 of them here in this one piece of legislation.” So maybe that is what it is for; I do not know. Maybe it is technical in nature, but if you have learnt anything, it is to always be wary of those “minor technical amendments”, because they are always the ones that come back to bite you. I would like to know why it is that the word “strategy” was not reasonable, and why it is that 400 times in this piece of legislation we need to change it to the word “plan”. Please allay my perhaps cynical, but I think somewhat well-founded, concerns that this is in response to claims and accusations—quite rightly—that the Government has no plan.

I am happy to take a call on Part 3 of this bill, the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill, to talk about how it is that we are going to manage many of the pests that pose a significant threat to New Zealand’s biosecurity. This is quite a different threat to our biosecurity from that we have been discussing under the previous part of this bill, when we were talking about micro-organisms that can affect our marine biosecurity. This is very much about safeguarding our terrestrial environments. This is very much about protecting our high country. This is very much about dealing with many of the legacy issues we have from 19th century colonisation and many of the non-indigenous species that we now have in our country, and what the impact of the presence of these species are on our environment. That is why we are having to go through some very specific changes to the existing legislation in terms of managing wild animals. My colleagues Damien O’Connor and Moana Mackey have very ably articulated many of the issues that we have with this part of the bill, so I think I will just be taking a very short call on this part of the bill.

We have two very significant questions that we would like the Minister for Primary Industries to answer in the Committee stage of this legislation. How do we balance this view of the resource-versus-the-pest nature of some of these species that we now have in our high country and in other parts of New Zealand? I do not think there are many New Zealanders who have not observed some of the damage to our environment that has been caused by some of these species. I do not think there are many New Zealanders, be they young or old, who do not recognise the damage that a possum can do and what a significant threat to our native forests these creatures are. Some very important questions are there.

We also need some assurances about how this piece of legislation fits with yet another piece of legislation that is currently going through this House. We have posed questions in terms of how it gels with the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Bill, but also how it is going to fit with the Game Animal Council Bill, which is currently before the Local Government and Environment Committee and on which submissions are being heard. Moana Mackey asked some very pertinent questions there. We have to grapple with some very interesting questions.

Under the current systems, under the current legislation we have, pests are not always managed in the best way, and the regulatory impact statement for this bill sets this out very clearly. We have some pest management that is not happening where it should be, thus putting at risk more of our environment and many of our flora and fauna species, which are put at risk by the fact that we are not managing significant pest incursions in these areas. Then we have some pest management that is happening when it is not needed. On the one hand we have whole gaps, and then we do have other areas where we actually have pest management that is happening when it is not necessarily needed. This is all about finding this balance, and my colleague Damien O’Connor touched very pertinently on an issue there about the need to get this balance right in relation to some of the commercial hunting enterprises that we have—how we protect these very precious environments but not completely kill off this industry, and manage the tahr in these areas in the high country.

Importantly, what this bill is doing overall—and we are seeing it in every part of this legislation—is addressing the fact that some pest management is not as effective as it could be. This bill, again, is about making available to us the new technologies and the changes that have happened in the world since 1993. When we look at the age of some of the legislation that comes before this House, legislation that was passed in 1993 does not seem particularly old, but in this area of biosecurity this actually is a very aged piece of legislation, because this is a very fast-moving area where we do have a lot of technological advance. We must have the ability for the Department of Conservation and for everyone who is involved in biosecurity in this country to be able to use the best technology that is available to them.

What we are also seeing under this part is the very clear definition of these wild animals that are going to pose a threat to our environment. Thank you.

I move, That the question be now put.

I am pleased to make a contribution to Part 3 of the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill. I would like to just focus in on clause 79, which is an amendment to the Ombudsmen Act. In particular, the clause states that “Management agencies under Biosecurity Act 1993, if they are corporate bodies, in their role under pest management plans or pathway management plans” will be included within the ambit of Part 2 of Schedule 1 of the Ombudsmen Act. I just refer back to new section 96 in clause 37 of the bill, which I believe defines management agencies. It states that management agencies are specified in a plan—be they the pest-management plans or the pathway plans—as “(a) a department: (b) a council: (c) a territorial authority: (d) a body corporate.” I would just like to invite the Minister for Primary Industries, in addition to responding to the requests for a contribution or a clarification on the points raised by my colleagues, to tell us whether a body corporate that is a management agency would be a private company, and tell us what level of Crown control or Crown involvement there will be over such a body corporate.

I think it is commendable that the body corporate actually does fall within the gaze of the Ombudsman, that august officer of this Parliament. But I would just seek clarification on that body corporate point, in terms of whether that extends the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman to, for instance, a private company, or an industry body—whether that is an incorporated society or any other body type corporate. So I think that is worthy of a clarification from the Minister. But, other than that, it is commendable that the Ombudsman does have jurisdiction to inquire into the operations of the management agencies that will be involved in these pest-management plans, because there will be a great deal of public funding going into the programmes that they will be running under their activities.

In terms of the other provisions in Part 3, it is good to see that possums and wallabies are included as unwanted organisms. They indeed are pests. I know that in relation to my own experience we have got whānau land down there in the Rowallan basin—right down there, which is actually South Island Landless Natives Act land, which is—

💬 Hon David Parker: 1916.

1916—that is correct. So those lands were set aside for us landless natives in the South Island. We have not really been able to do much in terms of working those lands because they are so remote. They are basically at the bottom end of the country, where none of us were, in very far, remote corners. But on the issue of the Rowallan basin, the Rowallan Alton Incorporation entered into a joint venture close to 12 to 13 years ago with a Chinese organisation that wanted to eradicate the possums, but also actually start a trade with China in possums. They called it Kiwi Bear. It had a lot of promise. Unfortunately the venture did not actually eventuate, but it would be good to see some other activities coming to light. I know there are possum industry participants who are making use of their pelts. But it would be good to look at, in addition to eradication, what economic development opportunities there are around the eradication of those unwanted pests. Thank you.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 27 in the name of the Hon David Carter to Part 3 be agreed to.

Look, if members want to call a party vote they must call it. So the motion is agreed to. Part 3 as amended will stand part.

Schedule

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 27 in the name of the Hon David Carter to the schedule be agreed to.