Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill

I move, That the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the bill.

It is indeed quite a pleasure, really, to stand up and speak in this House. I do it very rarely these days, and so this is quite exciting, even more so exciting because I’m speaking to my—I think it’s my fourth—member’s bill. I’ve only had one winning strike and two fails, so I’m going to have a crack at this one.

This is a bill that’s very dear to my heart. It’s quite a simple bill, but I do hope that this member’s bill will go some way to providing further deterrents to any person or individual who is determined to bring a biosecurity threat across our border into New Zealand, and why is that important? Well, I think we all know, but since I’ve got a member’s bill in front of me, it behoves me to explain why it is important to protect our borders and increase the fines and disincentives to try and smuggle items into the country across our border.

The first threat that I want to outline, very briefly, is the sheer number of biodiversity threats that can and occasionally do, unfortunately, come to New Zealand. I think, probably, if I talk about threats such as myrtle rust, that is a significant threat which has reached New Zealand, and it is now occupying an awful lot of Government time and resources to try and stay across that threat.

Now, not all of these biosecurity threats come across our borders. Some of them blow in on the wind, and that is just a feature of having an island nation surrounded by water. But we are rich in biodiversity. We are rich in nature and in native habitat, and we can, and we must—and we have a collective will to keep it that way, as much as we can by strengthening, I would suggest, disincentives to smuggle across the border.

So it’s interesting in this world of politics that every now and again a member of the media pops up and takes a genuine interest in what we’re doing. A rare thing, I understand. But it just so happens that Mike Houlahan of the Otago Daily Times (ODT)—known to many of us in the South—writes a weekly column on a Saturday. We all wake up on a Saturday morning and, before we do anything else, we all grasp our phones and we go clickety, clickety, click click click, “Southern Say”—which is the name of Mike Houlahan’s column in the ODT—and he writes something salient about what is happening with the southern MPs around the south of the South Island. Not always complimentary, but just occasionally—I don’t know; maybe once a decade or something—Mike Houlahan might find something complimentary to say; thank you, Mike Houlahan.

But seriously, folks, this is one journalist who takes a serious interest in parliamentary process, parliamentary practice, and has taken, which is wonderful, an interest in my biosecurity bill. So I’m going to quote from him, because I want him to get extra bang for his buck, having sat down late on Friday night to write this column. He says—and I quote—“It does not take a great deal of brain power to work out what the Bill would do if it became law … the fines for those auditioning for a role on Border Patrol, by attempting to bring unwanted flora or fauna into New Zealand [the penalties] will be upped substantially.”

Thank you, Mike Houlahan—you’re right on the button. “If you lie about having something on the specified list of exempted goods in your possession—behaviour which will almost certainly guarantee your consideration for a TV appearance—the fine for doing so will we upped from $400 to $1,000.”—just as it says in the bill. I carry on: “Double down, and erroneously declare that the stuff still isn’t yours after having been asked by officials about those things and the fine will hike from $1000 to $2000, and you can start asking the director to please film you from your best side.” Anyway, it goes on. So, Mike Houlahan, thank you so much for doing the work and having a look into the bill and describing it so neatly for me.

So I will go through the main provisions of the bill. I do want to recognise the interest across the House in what is a serious piece of legislation. It’s not perfect. It’s not going to solve by any means the problem of people wishing to bring in contraband across the border, but I think it makes another step in the right direction, and I welcome support across the House if and when it is forthcoming.

So it is a simple bill, as I say. There are some provisions in the bill which will amend two pieces of legislation, and one secondary piece of legislation. So it amends the Biosecurity Act 1993. It amends the Biosecurity (Infringement Offences) Regulations 2010, and also it amends the Immigration Act 2009. The Immigration Act amendment really provides for a strengthening of officials to deport persons. It really codifies in legislation, in the Immigration Act, the ability for immigration officials to deport persons who try to smuggle items across the border.

So, as I say, the bill is simple. It recognises, I hope, and makes a contribution to dealing with the biosecurity threats that come across our border. It also recognises that New Zealand has a very high economic reliance on our primary industries, which is why I am nominating the bill to go to the Primary Production Committee. All I need to say—there’s only two further words I need to say in that regard, and that is foot-and-mouth disease. If we thought that M. bovis was a disease that threatened New Zealand farming—that sends a shiver down everybody’s spine in this House because it’s touched all of us, in most parts of New Zealand—when I say foot-and-mouth, then that’s an entirely different thing, and that is a biosecurity threat which is knocking at our back door.

I see Jo Luxton over the other side of the House. Jo Luxton chairs the Primary Production Committee, and I do know that that Ms Luxton is going to address the House, and she’s going to be fulsome in her support of this bill. So, members, thank you for your time, and I do hope that you commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to take a call on this bill in the name of Jacqui Dean, who I recently had the pleasure of travelling to Canada with. I actually enjoyed just listening to the member’s contribution this evening, and it’s very clear to us—right across the House, I think—the member’s passion that she has for biodiversity and protecting I guess what you would call our way of life here in New Zealand from potential threats of pests coming across our borders and upsetting our farming, our rural sector, and our horticultural growers, etc.

I’d just like to begin my contribution with something that we are probably all familiar with every time we take flight around New Zealand or into New Zealand, if you are on a plane that has one of the wee videos that plays. It talks about tiaki. On the video, it says, “Tiaki knew that we don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we only borrow it from our children.” And I think that’s a really nice way to start off speaking about this bill this evening—

💬 Simeon Brown: It’s not even a safety video anymore.

—which I am pleased to say, Mr Brown, this side of the House will be supporting, at least until the select committee stage.

What this piece of legislation does, is it increases the conviction from $1,000 to $2,000 for making an erroneous declaration regarding possession of specified goods; it increases the infringement fee from $400 to $1,000 for the same offence; and it provides an immigration officer with the power to refuse entry to a temporary entry class visa holder if the person has failed to comply with the requirements of the Biosecurity Act 1993 or if the person has failed to comply with any direction of request made by a biosecurity officer.

So I am looking forward to having this piece of legislation come to our select committee. I think right across the House, it’s fair to say that we are all in support of anything that increases and strengthens our efforts to protect New Zealand and our biosecurity. But we just need to determine whether this bill is the right way to do this.

Defending or strengthening biosecurity here in New Zealand is actually a responsibility that’s on all of us. It’s a responsibility for all of us to ensure that we do our best to protect our farmers and growers, particularly here in New Zealand. Now that we have the borders reopening, our risk begins to increase further. One of the other things that increases our risk in this space is also our warming climate, so that’s something that we need to bear in mind as well.

As the member mentioned before, we are a trading nation and we trade off our clean, green, and pest-free image. I just want to acknowledge all our farmers and growers, who’ve actually carried us through COVID and who’ve ensured our export-led economic recovery, and we support efforts to increase the protection for our primary sector.

We’ve seen—and the member Jacqui Dean spoke to this very briefly—some of the impacts of what can happen when we have an incursion of certain types. She’s talked about myrtle rust as an example. But I just want to touch on M. bovis, which the member also mentioned before. You know, it certainly has an impact on our economy; there is no doubt about that. I think there’s been more than $660 million spent over the last four years fighting M. bovis.

But it’s actually not just the economic impact that happens when we have an incursion; it’s actually the toll it takes on humans. It’s on our farmers, it’s on their families, and it’s on all those that are perhaps involved in the whole primary sector relating to the type of incursion that has happened.

Our farmers—and I’m thinking of our dairy farmers in this particular conversation when I’m talking about M. bovis. The electorate that I represent—Rangitata—Ashburton has been one of the hardest-hit areas in the country with M. bovis.

I’ve seen firsthand the toll that it has taken on our farming community: the angst, the tears. When you know that you’ve got M. bovis on your farm, you are milking cows—you’re able to milk them until the end of the season—you care for them, you look after them like you ordinarily would, but you know that when milking finishes, they are going to be destroyed. And you have spent years and years and years putting time, effort, sweat, and tears into your herd to get it to the space that you want, producing the milk that you want, the best that you can.

This member’s bill actually ties in quite nicely with one of the bills that we heard about from my colleagues earlier tonight, which also amends the Biosecurity Act—the member that had that bill: Steph Lewis—whereby it is going to be a requirement that all incoming passengers on certain craft must be shown or displayed a video about what you can and cannot bring into the country.

That’s a really important piece of legislation that we’re seeing coming through the House as well. Again, our select committee has worked on that bill, and I have to say that when it comes to things like that, you know, we’re a very collegial select committee and we take these things very, very seriously.

So I see that this piece of legislation—or this member’s bill, I should say—could potentially be an additional tool that we have in our toolbox alongside the likes of the one that we have had in committee stage around the incoming passengers earlier this evening.

When I talked a bit about the economic impact that we have when we have biosecurity incursions, I just want to take a moment to talk to the House—when I find my piece of paper that tells me about it—about when we have had things such as the Queensland fruit fly, and I just want to run off a few figures. In 2012, when we had to respond to it, it cost $1.5 million. In 2014, it was $1.2 million and again in 2014, $1.1 million. In 2015, it was $16.1 million, and again in 2016, $1 million. That is a lot of money that it costs to fight to try and eradicate and rid pests from our country.

💬 Hon Member: It’s a huge challenge.

It is a huge challenge. I just want to also talk about the fact that we have one of the most beautiful environments here in New Zealand, where people love getting outdoors, enjoying our bushwalks, enjoying our flora, our fauna, our fishing, and everything that we have to offer from a tourism perspective.

If we have incursions of certain types, all of that is put at risk. You know, we risk losing fish, we risk losing certain flora and fauna, and often those sorts of things are a taonga and specific and native to our country. And we already have several thousand species of flora and fauna that are at risk of extinction. So we need to do everything that we can in order to protect those.

So I want to thank the member for bringing this bill before the House. I want to congratulate her for having had her member’s bill drawn from the ballot box. Fourth time—according to the member across the House. That’s pretty impressive. There’s some people that spend all their time—many, many years—in this place and never have one bill drawn.

So I want to congratulate the member on having her bill drawn, a bill that I think is hugely important to us here in New Zealand, for us as a trading nation and a country that has some of the most beautiful flora and fauna around the world. I commend this bill to the House.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I would like to join with others around the House in congratulating the member Jacqui Dean for getting her—all of the members, actually, for getting their biscuits out of the biscuit tin. I’ve had a couple of biscuits in there as well, and sometimes your biscuits come out and sometimes they don’t, and that’s just how the cookie crumbles.

💬 Hon Members: Aw!

It’s 9.05 p.m., folks. I join with colleagues across the House around the support for very strong biosecurity measures as well. I guess all of us around the House want to make sure that we do the best things that we can do for our tamariki and for our mokopuna: making sure that they have clean rivers to swim in, making sure that they have forests that haven’t got kauri dieback tramped through them, making sure that those things are there, making sure we do all the things to make sure that we revitalise the biodiversity, and making sure we do the best things that we can do to take care of the flora and fauna. It’s also very important to make sure that we do all the things as well to protect the regions and to protect the provinces, acknowledging the role that the provinces have in making sure that we have food and fibre and jobs and that way of life for folks as well, and making sure that biosecurity measures are in place as well.

This bill proposes to do a number of things. It increases the immediate infringement fee from $400 to $1,000 for the offence of making an erroneous declaration relating to possession of specified goods at the border. It also increases the conviction penalty for the same offence from $1,000 to $2,000, and it gives immigration officers the power to deport those on temporary entry class visas who breach any of the requirements of the Biosecurity Act.

I guess where we’ve landed on this is whether this is actually going to do what we want it to do. I look at the fee going from $400 to $1,000 and think, “Well, will that actually stop people from actually doing these things?” I do want to acknowledge the other biosecurity bill that we did have in the committee of the whole House, the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill—that we talked about as well. This bill, possibly, at first glance, for us anyway, looks like a solution looking for a particular problem.

💬 Simeon Brown: That’s the Plain Language Bill. You’ve got the wrong speech notes.

We are not yet convinced that this will actually—that’s the Plain Language Bill? You’re three hours a bit late, mate.

So we’re not convinced that this bill will be the right mechanism to actually carry out some of those problems. As I followed through the previous biosecurity bill, there were very specific things that it was trying to address. It was looking at making sure that videos were available, and that those videos were made accessible in other languages as well, because when people come into the country, they have to make sure that they understand the conditions and the rules that are here when they arrive here. Is that the problem that we’re dealing with, that this bill is trying to do? Is it a language issue? Is it an access-to-information issue? Is it actually trying to deal with people who have nefarious intentions in terms of trying to bring stuff through, and are they doing it through the planes or not?

So where we’ve landed on this, at this particular point in time—and I understand that in order to get this through the House, you need to have the support of both Labour and National, and congratulations to the member for being able to do that, as the bill will land at the select committee—is that there is not sufficient clarity enough for us to support the bill at this time. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Well done, Mr Speaker. It is a great pleasure to take a call on this bill and, like everyone else, congratulate the Hon Jacqui Dean on bringing it to the House. Despite what some people think, this side of the House is always really pleased when we can do something that further strengthens and protects our rural communities. This protects a lot of things in New Zealand, but rural communities are one of them. And it does make us very pleased on this side of the House, because many of us do live in rural communities and we’re very aware of the impact of the breaches that have been described tonight.

I just want to share a little story about the snake. I once was on a flight back from South-east Asia a few years ago and sat next to a lovely young English backpacker who was really excited about coming to New Zealand and spending time in our beautiful outdoors. But it’s a long flight from Bangkok and we had a lot of time for her to tell me about her adventures and about the time when she had to stand up for herself and kill a snake with a rock. And she was so proud of herself that she kept that snake and she actually had it in her backpack and was going to take that trophy with her back to England, which, of course, was via New Zealand. So she was a lovely young woman who really valued our beautiful open spaces and she had no malice but she was about to expose our economy and our ecology to a potentially fairly significant risk. She truly had no understanding of what she was about to do, but money talks. And we all know that the size of a fine says a lot. It says that we take our biosecurity seriously. Even if she didn’t understand why, she understood a little bit more about the fact that she needed to take it seriously. And the idea that she might be refused entry into the country or that she may be hit with a fine of potentially $1,000 or $2,000 might help her to sharpen her mind.

We all know why—we’ve heard about it in the House tonight: the threats to our biodiversity, our native flora and fauna, the economic cost. We know that there are people in this House who have not just experienced M. bovis and the impact financially but on your heart, right? And we don’t want to expose our farmers to those sorts of risks when we can protect them. It is our way of life. The travel restrictions that could come about—we’ve heard about foot-and-mouth disease and what that would do not just to our exports but to our way of life as we had to shut the country down to eradicate it.

The importance of stopping these things at the border is immeasurable, really. And it isn’t just about sorting out those jandals as we come back from Bali. We have to think about—and we know from M. bovis—what happens when things do slip through the gaps. And it isn’t just about the immediate response. We heard from the Commissioner for the Environment this year about the impact of plants coming into the country and eventually becoming weeds, and the fact that for every four native plants we have three exotic plants that have naturalised. That’s taken generations to happen and will take generations to eradicate. We know why. And the really important thing about upping the sanctions is that it makes it a little bit more likely that those coming across the border will have a wee think and focus the mind.

And it isn’t just the smugglers that the Hon Jacqui Dean talked about—those who need to be deterred—but actually I think the more dangerous behaviour which is complacency; possibly much more dangerous. Those careless and hopeful young backpackers, maybe they’ll read that advice—and there is a lot of it—about what they need to declare, that they won’t necessarily lose everything that they declare, but that they need to do it for the sake of our nation. So that is why we support this bill going to select committee: so we can have a good dig into how it fits into the broader commitment that this country has made—not just tens of millions of dollars into biodiversity but how we strengthen our laws across the board. So we will be pleased to discuss it and make sure it fits into our arsenal to protect our economy, our way of life, and most importantly our flora and fauna. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasant surprise and something of a rarity to have a Labour caucus actually understand pragmatism and practicality when it comes to legislation, and agreeing with it. So, to canvass the bill, what a wonderful piece of legislation, and I just want to—

💬 Simeon Brown: You woke them up.

You certainly did there, Simeon Brown. I just want to contest the Hon Jacqui Dean on her “simple” bill. I actually think I’d change the wording to a small bill but an important one, an immensely important one. As has been well canvassed in the House, the primary sector is worth umpteen billions of dollars—something like $52 billion to $53 billion—to our overall wellbeing, economic wellbeing.

ACT fundamentally supports the bill and, as has been well canvassed before in the House, to use the Hon Jacqui Dean’s words, it’s a simple piece of legislation that increases the offences regime from $400 to $1,000 and, for a conviction fine, from $1,000 to $2,000. I think that’s a nonsensical argument to make when we’re talking about the potentiality of a biosecurity threat coming into New Zealand and potentially doing billions of dollars damage to the overall economic wellbeing of the country.

Just to canvass a couple of the biosecurity issues that we are currently confronted with, for those that are either naive to these issues or simply don’t know for various other reasons: Queensland fruit fly, pea weevil, fall armyworm, granulate ambrosia beetle—gracious me; I don’t know what that thing looks like but I can only imagine the damage that pest does. Apparently the granulate ambrosia beetle consumes some 350 different plant species. Try and reconcile that into economic terms. And that beetle’s also found, interestingly, in dozens of countries including in Australia, our nearest neighbour and one of our largest economic trading partners.

I’m not going to overplay my hand here. This is a wonderful, simple—to use the Hon Jacqui Dean’s wording—piece of legislation and, yeah, ACT supports this bill.

Fa‘afetai lava, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to rise as the MP for the beautiful Takanini to speak on this first reading of the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill. Again, like my colleagues, I’d like to commend the member in charge, the Hon Jacqui Dean, for presenting the member’s bill to the House. Again, like you’ve said—what the member has presented—it is another step in the right direction, adding another layer to protecting our biodiversity.

What the bill proposes to do, like colleagues have mentioned, is the $1,000 to $2,000 increase for the conviction fine and also the infringement fee from $400 to $1,000. But I think the third point is really important, because I think that is more of a deterrent, I believe, and that is for the immigration officer to have the power to refuse entry to a temporary entry class visa holder. The reason why I see this as really important is I watch Border Patrol on TV as well—we all do—and it’s quite interesting what we see on TV, with the different entry points into Aotearoa. I just want to mention and acknowledge the hard work that our customs officers do, because I see many of our passengers arrive here and sometimes they may have missed, on the declaration card, presenting items which may be small, might be fruit, and can be chucked away. But then I see others who deliberately do not declare it, and they have bags and bags of goods that are prohibited. How much of a risk that is to our biodiversity is huge.

So I acknowledge that having an immigration officer have those powers and for people to get educated on the three new points of this bill would make a huge difference in deterring that sort of behaviour. Like our select committee chair has mentioned, it is all our responsibility to protect Aotearoa from pests and disease, and it is really important that, as the border has opened, Kiwis and foreigners that come to Aotearoa make sure that we are declaring, because Aotearoa has that reputation of being clean and green, and we want to keep it that way.

The environment—seeing the impact of unwanted pests and disease. I think about the environment I see in my electorate of Takanini. We have beautiful parks and habitats and natural ecosystems, from Barry Curtis Park at the northern end, the Botanical Gardens, Totara Park, all the way down to Bruce Pulman Park. We have a beautiful stream that goes right through the electorate and borders with Arena Williams and other MPs through here, and that’s the Puhinui Stream. That’s a stream where we’ve had mana whenua and Auckland Council come into agreement that we need to make sure that we uphold that stream that provides life to that natural ecosystem. Having these diseases and pest that come through the border will impact that. We don’t want that to happen, especially with our residential area, with our kids playing near the stream, and we want to make sure that they don’t get sick as well.

I turn to the economy and the primary industries and the impact that has on our farmers and growers here, and the economy, as the previous speaker has mentioned, and the huge billion-dollar industry that that provides.

💬 Rachel Brooking: $53 billion.

That’s right: $53 billion, that provides to our economy in Aotearoa. So it’s really important we protect our farmers and growers in that environment as well.

I do have a friend who works at Auckland Airport and does the Customs control there. It is really hard when they have to face so many passengers that get off. Things do slip through, and the risk is that of destroying our environment, spoiling our waterways, reducing animal, plant, and fishing stocks, and as Kiwis, we love to fish and do all those—

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: We love our fish.

Yes, that’s right—and the illnesses that causes into our livestock as well.

I sub on to this select committee. I’m not a full member on the select committee, but I always love hearing and learning. I do know about hand, foot and mouth, which affects our kids, but foot-and-mouth, definitely, for animals. So I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to take a call. My congratulations also to the member, the Hon Jacqui Dean. It’s a great little piece of legislation. I am not going to be on the select committee to hear this, but I do think it’s important that we progress it to select committee to see if we can do some tightening up or some decisions about where we’ve landed with this piece of legislation. But I am quite impressed that the member has managed to have four bills drawn. I’m a little bit envious also, I must just say. So congratulations.

I think we all agree that biosecurity is incredibly important to our country, and we are all here in this House unanimously agreeing that this should progress through to select committee. I’m going to just talk a little bit about what the bill does, although that has been quite well traversed, and then I thought I would take an opportunity to do a little 101 on a couple of biosecurity issues that we have in this country.

So very quickly, the bill amends the Biosecurity Act 1993, the Immigration Act 2009, and the Biosecurity (Infringement Offences) Regulations 2010. It increases penalties and it also, as we’ve heard, gives the power to enable temporary visa holders to be withheld from or to leave the country if they fail to comply. So that’s pretty much it. There’s not a lot to the bill, but it’s useful. These members’ bills are, I think, often best when they are simple but have a clear reason to exist.

I live in the beautiful Bay of Plenty; Tauranga Moana is my home. One of the reasons I wanted to take a call on this bill tonight is because of the amazing agriculture that we have in our community.

💬 Hon Member: Close to the glow of Hamilton.

It’s not close to the glow of Hamilton; it is a jewel in its own right. So one of the things that we have, as people will be aware, is the Port of Tauranga, which is almost like an international airport, but for boats—OK, it’s getting late. So the reality is that we have a lot of stuff coming into our ports, and I wanted to just talk about something that I’ve talked often about with Zespri, our kiwifruit industry, as well—the brown marmorated stink bug. I have a prop, people. OK, there are two things that distinguish it from the normal stink beetle, but apparently if you squash it, it smells just the same. So this will decimate our industries here.

💬 Hon Jacqui Dean: Is that the one that was on the PM’s shoulder the other day?

No, it is not the one that was on the PM’s shoulder. So this will decimate our industry. It is so very important, and I want to ask you all to keep an eye out for this, but also to be aware that if you come across a pest such as this, there is an 0800 number to ring. Go to the Ministry for Primary Industries—

💬 Glen Bennett: Stop, drop, and roll.

No stop, drop, and roll. Go to the Ministry for Primary Industries website and find out what to do if you come across these kinds of things. The other thing—because I love my oceans—is also a pest that we have in this country: it is the Asian paddle crab. Now, the Asian paddle crab has only just made it into Tauranga Moana. So one of the things that I’m asking the people of our community to do is—these things are edible—go out, make sure you identify them, eat them, get rid of them, because they will destroy our ocean environment as well.

So with the 30 seconds that I have left, I would just like to say that while it’s been a little bit of a joke and a little bit of a laugh tonight, so late in the day, I do think this is a really important piece of legislation. I do think that these are threats that are serious and should be taken seriously, and so, therefore, I do commend this bill to the House.

I think there was a plain English bill earlier in the day—I think it was a pretty crap bill; sorry, that’s probably more colloquial than plain. But I thought—to make it relatively simple, I think this is a good bill.

💬 Hon Member: Yeah.

Yeah. I want to commend Jacqui Dean for getting this bill up and, by the sounds of it, near unanimity, apart from the Green Party, who have yet again found an excuse not to sort of involve themselves.

A pretty simple bill. Pretty simple bill. Makes sense. I just flew back in to New Zealand recently, and thought to myself, $400 is not a lot of money; $1,000 might make people think a little bit further.

It’s a good bill. It’s a good bill. I think I’ve said it’s a good bill. There’s really not much more you could say. I could pause a bit more for dramatic effect. [Pauses] Probably just did.

💬 Simeon Brown: Very plain English, Simon.

I think it’s great. I think it’s very plain English. Very simple. Not messing things up. No, it’s a very good bill. Jacqui Dean’s done well to bring it to the House. I’m pleased that there are a number of parties—hopefully, all—that support this. Anything we can do to protect our environment, our farmers, and our trades is worth supporting.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Before I begin my speech this evening, this is the first time that I’ve stood in this House since the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge her passing—an exceptional woman who, when I was growing up in the Channel Islands, we referred to as the Queen Duke in acknowledgment of her ancient title of Duke of Normandy. I think it’s really important that we just acknowledge that 70 years of service to your community is an exceptional achievement. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for indulging me.

I’m rising in support of the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill that’s been brought to the House by the Hon Jacqui Dean, and I’m absolutely delighted that you have had—sorry, not you, Mr Speaker, but that the Hon Jacqui Dean has had this bill drawn from the tin. Like many people, I watch Border Patrol with keen interest and watch with increasing horror as we pass through that half an hour, I believe it is, as insect-riddled objects and suitcases full of half decomposing fish and other food products were revealed to our eyes.

But the serious part of this is that the risk that it poses to our extraordinarily beautiful and precious country can’t really be overstated. I lived through the foot-and-mouth outbreak in the United Kingdom. I can still remember, even though I was relatively young, television footage at the time of mountains of cattle corpses that were burnt in farmers’ fields in an attempt to bring the disease under control, and heartbreaking scenes as farmers watched heritage strains of cattle being burnt in their fields—decades; in some cases, centuries of careful breeding by farmers who cared so deeply for their animals and lost their livelihoods. But, actually, the loss for them was far more personal and extraordinary and extremely touching, and it isn’t something that I would ever wish to see again, but particularly not for the farmers of New Zealand. So it is important that we do take strong action to protect our farmers, our biosecurity, our plants, and our native fauna as much as we possibly can.

Like many people, I fly pretty frequently because I was born in the United Kingdom and immigrated into New Zealand in 2004. I’ve flown backwards and forwards a fair few times from the UK, and I was one of those people that initially used to bring half a suitcase full of treats and snacks, full of the foods that I believed I couldn’t live without. But I was really careful to ensure that none of the foodstuffs that I brought posed a risk to our precious country here. One of the things that I used to bring by the kilo was proper Marmite, and the definition—

💬 Rachel Brooking: No!

—of proper Marmite is the hill, Ms Brooking, on which I will die, but it doesn’t pose a risk to New Zealand.

I’ve also been part of a travelling party that experienced what we call the $400 tomato, as one of one of the members of our party had actually brought some food from where we were staying on to the plane for consumption on the plane and then completely forgotten about it. But as we’re aware, breaking the law, you can basically do it unintentionally. You can do it by accident. You can do it because you forgot. You could do it because you’re careless, but at the end of the day, that tomato did potentially pose a really significant risk to our precious lands here. So this bill would see the $400 tomato turn into the $1,000 tomato, and completely appropriately, in my view, because anything, as I say, that can discourage people from breaching those precious and important laws is to be encouraged. I commend this bill to select committee and to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m delighted to take a call on this Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill.

I was very pleased to be in the House for the Hon Jacqui Dean’s first speech on this bill—and I’ll be here for her second one—and her description of a Saturday morning if you are an Otago- or Southland-based MP, because it was entirely accurate. In terms of, you wake up on a Saturday morning and quickly go to the Otago Daily Times website to see what Southern Say has said. It’s not always good. But I was delighted to read the particular Southern Say article that the Hon Jacqui Dean just quoted from, because, of course, Mike Houlahan was quite right. This is a simple bill but it’s an important one. He explained it very well.

From listening to the other speeches in the House tonight as well, I have learnt that I need to start watching that border control programme. It sounds very interesting, indeed. It’s something I’ve been missing out on.

Of course this is important because biosecurity is so important to New Zealand. There’s two main reasons why it’s so important, and we’ve heard that from the other speakers as well. One of them is because agriculture—the primary sector—is, of course, the backbone of the country, as we’ve heard from other speakers. We’ve got over $50 billion of export earnings from that sector estimated for this year. Of course, it’s just incredibly important, not only for our own food security but for that of the world. Some of our colleagues often say in this House that we can feed 40 million people, and that’s important.

Of course, the other reason why biosecurity is so important—well, why is biosecurity important to agriculture? It can, of course, destroy it. We’ve heard just then from Sarah Pallett about her experience in the UK with foot-and-mouth disease. We’ve been lucky—well, not just lucky; we’ve put a lot of money, a lot of investment, a lot of laws like this into avoiding things like foot-and-mouth because it can shut down the entire country. We saw those pictures in Britain in the early 2000s, I think, of the fires of those animals being burnt and the trauma that that caused for the communities that live there. It was a horrible time and not anything we want, which is, of course, why so much money has been put into M. bovis and to do that bold move in the past Government to try and exterminate it or eradicate it, because it has such dire consequences for our economy in that case.

The other arm of why biodiversity is so important is our indigenous flora and fauna. We know at the moment we’ve got myrtle rust. It’s a big problem. We don’t actually know how it got into the country. It might have been through some fruit from Australia, or it might have been on the wind. It’s a fungal issue. But these different pests, whether they are an animal or a fungi, can do great harm to our quite unusual indigenous biodiversity that, of course, we want to protect.

It’s for those reasons that we care about biosecurity, and we don’t want these things to come into our country. So that is, of course, what this bill does. It’s trying to dissuade people, incentivise people, to not bring in what was a $400 tomato and is now a $1,000 tomato. We’ve heard quite a lot about that change to the schedule, which makes the change from $400 to $1,000 in Part 3 of the bill. But it’s also important to note that sections 109 and 157 of the Immigration Act are amended, and that is where people don’t comply with the directions or a request made by a biosecurity officer. That is then something that becomes an offence, and it has got stronger standing than it does at the moment. So I think those would be good issues for the select committee to look at, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to thank members across the House for their very good contributions to this simple, small member’s bill of mine. I want to reflect how wonderful it is to sit in this House for nearly an hour and listen to biosecurity issues, to have a very good discussion around those threats to the economic wellbeing, the social wellbeing, and the environmental wellbeing of New Zealand. I think that this has largely been a non-partisan discussion with some very unique contributions, almost without exception, to what, I would argue, is one of the most pressing issues we have in New Zealand. And we all know what those are. We all know about M. bovis, we all know about foot-and-mouth, we all know about marmorated stink bugs—

💬 Nicola Grigg: I didn’t.

💬 Hon Member: We do now.

Well, we do now. And when you see a stink bug, you look at it really closely these days. But why do we do that? Because incursions across our border threaten our very way of life and they threaten our environment. And that has been the most satisfying part of this discussion.

I have to say, though, that Teanau Tuiono was struggling, and it took him a full 2½ minutes of his contribution to talk himself into not supporting this bill.

💬 Simeon Brown: We know he wanted to.

💬 Hon Member: He wanted to—he really did.

Well, my colleagues are saying he wanted to—I believe he did. And I can only reflect that we have in this Parliament the Green Party, which is becoming more and more disconnected from what really matters in New Zealand. And I would argue that for a party which calls itself green, they have failed to live up to their name tonight. But what I will say about other parties around the House is that there has been a near universal acknowledgment of those things that matter to us as citizens, as members of our communities, and as parliamentarians. And so I want to thank everybody very sincerely for that.

As I said, the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill is a small bill that makes a couple of changes. It empowers Immigration officers to deport people who wish to bring things into New Zealand which will damage our environment, which will damage our community, which will damage our economy.

I do hope that the Primary Production Committee invite me to come along to consideration of the bill, because I remain very, very interested in its outcome. And once again, I do want to acknowledge the contributions across the House and thank you, members for your support. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The question is,

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Primary Production Committee.