Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill

When the House adjourned, we were on the second reading of the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill. The next caller is—

Steph Lewis.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s been a long day.

It has been a long day, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to take this call on the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill, a call I’m somewhat surprised to be taking this evening, but, alas—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Not “alas”; we’re all looking forward to it.

We are looking forward to it, and as the chair of the Primary Production Committee, I’m really excited to talk about this bill that we very, very carefully scrutinised through the select committee process, with thanks to our advisers from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). They were very diligent and thorough in their advice to the committee.

💬 Angela Roberts: Even though it’s a member’s bill—great officials!

They are great officials.

I would like to acknowledge and commend the idea of the Hon Jacqui Dean to find ways to support our biosecurity system here in Aotearoa. It’s something that I wholeheartedly agree with as someone who comes from a primary industry background, because in the primary industry sector, we are so reliant on having strong protections at our border to prevent and catch preventable biosecurity incursions, and that’s why last year I took through the House, this very House, the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill, which is now the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Act.

Just to slightly digress a wee bit, the fundamental premise of that bill was to make sure that passengers coming into New Zealand are being provided with excellent, top-notch, easy-to-understand, easy-to-digest information about our unique biosecurity arrangements here in New Zealand. At the time the bill was introduced, that was optional. It is now mandatory and will come into effect in October of this year.

The reason that I bring that up—and bringing it back to the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill—is because, unfortunately, we on this side of the House, although we support Jacqui’s desire to see stronger protections at our border, are not supporting this bill through to the next stage. Because the advice that we have received from officials is that this bill will not achieve the desired result—and that is to add another layer of protection at our border and prevent individuals coming here to New Zealand from bringing in your apples or your beef jerky or something that they’ve put in their bag before they hopped on the plane or on the cruise ship, and then when they disembarked here in New Zealand, they’d forgotten was left in there.

So what our officials from the Ministry for Primary Industries did tell us, though, was that education is one of the three things that makes the biggest difference in preventing people bringing in—accidentally or otherwise—goods with them when they disembark the plane here in New Zealand. That is exactly what my bill last year—now Act—aims to do, to provide that education to passengers arriving here in New Zealand. What the MPI officials advised the committee was that data they collected between May 2009 and April 2010, which is the last time that the fees—or the penalties, rather—were increased under the Biosecurity Act for incoming passengers. At that point, they were increased from $200 to $400. But the data that they collected between the time that those penalties were raised showed a very negligible impact on the number of people bringing stuff accidentally in their backpacks through the border. It showed that offending only decreased with the increase in fine by 0.01 percent. And yet the administration costs and burden of increasing the actual fines and notifying passengers etc. weren’t worth the decrease that we then saw.

What the officials did tell us is that the three most effective motivators for encouraging passengers to remove prohibited items from their bags—or, preferably, not even pack them in the first instance—is to make sure that they understand why items are considered a biosecurity risk. We here in New Zealand, as we all know, are bordered by water, so we are free from many of the pests and diseases that we see in other countries across the globe. So that is why it is crucial to our native ecosystems, our wildlife, our ecosystems, as I said, that we do protect them and we do prevent those pests from coming into New Zealand. So that’s why we need to be informing passengers—as they’re on their way here to New Zealand and, again, right before they hop off the plane and set foot on New Zealand soil—that we have a different set of biosecurity requirements here in Aotearoa and it’s really important that they help us protect what we hold so dear here.

Also, coupled with that, though, we can’t make our system so cumbersome that we’ve got passengers waiting in line for hours and hours and hours. We need to make sure that passengers still understand how they can pass through our border quickly. So that, as I said, is what MPI has said is the biggest factor for making sure that passengers don’t bring in prohibited items to New Zealand—you know, like we said, the apples with the Queensland fruit fly, etc. We don’t want those here in New Zealand. We need to make sure that they are removed from their bags before they set foot on New Zealand soil.

I thank all of the organisations and the individuals who took time out of their busy days to submit to the Primary Production Committee; we really appreciated your considered submissions. What some of those submitters and, in fact, MPI officials also alerted us to is that if you’re a traveller who has been on a plane—a very long journey, potentially; you’ve got tired, hungry kids with you as well, and you’re feeling a bit scratchy yourself—you get here and you’ve packed the kids a little snack pack before you hopped on the plane, and you forget to take it out of their backpack, and then you get to the biosecurity desk and, ping, you’re fined. What that would do in terms of Brand New Zealand Inc., in people’s perception of New Zealand and the feeling that they get when they travel here is that that will diminish our reputation, and that is absolutely not something we want. We want every traveller who comes here to Aotearoa to have the best possible experience when they arrive here.

I’d like to touch on a couple of other discrepancies. So we did talk about, in the select committee, the options of increasing the fee by the amount of inflation, but that would have created a very strange discrepancy with the other fees and penalties within the Act. The bill also proposes to allow biosecurity officers to deny entry of a passenger to New Zealand if they are found with prohibited goods in their bag, and that is inconsistent with current legislation. Currently, the only officers who have the power to restrict people from entering New Zealand are immigration officers. So, again, that would create another discrepancy that we as a committee, or the members of the committee on this side of the House, didn’t think was appropriate, and would create uncertainty where there wouldn’t, as advisers told us, be any increased benefit. In fact, as I said, there would be potential for passengers to have a worse experience coming to New Zealand and getting pinged for something that is an accident. So, unfortunately, I am unable to commend this bill to the House. We do not support this bill advancing. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to speak on this Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill, the second reading, and congratulations to the last speaker, Steph Lewis, for taking longer than the last three speakers in the House. It moved so quickly that I was wondering whether I was going to have to jump up, but the former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, walked in to stop me from doing that, so ka pai.

I want to acknowledge the intention behind this bill and I want to acknowledge the intention behind the member’s reasons for wanting this bill. I think we all want that around the House. We want to protect our wild spaces. We want to protect our ecosystems. And for those of us that live out in the regions, we want to be able to protect our food and fibre sector, the engine room of our economy and our country out there, out there in the regions.

At the first reading, we didn’t support this bill and the main reason for that is that if you’re going to increase the penalties for something, you need to have a good reason. You need to have a good reason why you’re going to do that, so I want to thank the Primary Production Committee for actually taking that on board. And I do note within the select committee report you measured it against inflation and I saw the differences between different numbers and so on and so forth. What I was expecting possibly was—if you’re going to, like, increase the fees, increase the penalties—to have actually had a bit more of a rationale for why you would do that and whether that would actually moderate behaviour, whether that will actually have an impact in protecting biosecurity. I didn’t see that in the select committee report. But I do agree with the sentiments around education. Education is fundamental to making sure that when people come here, we make it available in the best way possible so that people understand what it means to actually come to Aotearoa. And so we also supported the bill that the previous member who spoke as well—because education is actually key to that.

The new element for me, in terms of the work that the select committee did, was around the immigration officer part as well. Biosecurity officers have a very specific type of role that they have. And during the deliberations of the select committee, it was found that actually biosecurity officers have a completely different mandate and they don’t have the right to detain, and so on and so forth, Minister, if I’m reading this right, under a different Act. So that was a new element for me as well.

But I just wanted to add, in terms of my kind of insight, in terms of a conversation that I had actually with the biosecurity officer—I was interested to know how complex the job is, what they actually did in terms of their day to day. This biosecurity officer that I talked to had a science background as well. So I was interested in all of the different things around different species that may come in and be harmful to the environment and harmful to the economy. And it seems to me that if all of a sudden we start plonking on top of them an extra workload, what would be the flow-on impacts of that? You’re going to be talking about extra training, you’re going to be talking about compatibility for the new roles, and all of these other sorts of things. It compounds the work.

So I totally support the intention behind the bill. We need to do these things. We need to stop fruit fly and stop foot-and-mouth. And what would probably be useful for politicians in the House would be if someone came up with a way to stop foot in mouth, because that happens a bit around the House—probably have done it myself a few times! So I just want to once again acknowledge the intention of the member, wanting to have stronger biosecurity measures to protect Papatūānuku, to protect our environment, to protect our food and fibre sector, but, unfortunately, this bill does not do that.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is an honour to rise and take a call on the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill. Like everybody else who has spoken before me, we absolutely support and applaud the member’s concerns and attempts to address those concerns around improving biosecurity at our borders. As someone who lives in a rural community, I can remember, in a former life as an economics teacher, actually doing assessments with my senior economics students about the impact of M. bovis. And not just the economic impact but the impact it has on our people; on our farmers and our rural communities. So it isn’t just about the numbers but it is about the people involved, right?

We absolutely applaud the intent of this bill. Unfortunately, when we went to the experts—and it was really great, we had a lot of interest and input not just from officials but from Federated Farmers and other organisations. And I think that reflects how important it is that we get it right. I think something that the Federated Farmers talked about, actually, was that our regime is robust, but it can always be improved. So I think, at the very least, the opportunity to check in and make sure that things are working as well as they can be and supporting our officials in order for them to do the best that they can do to support and protect our rural communities and our primary industries is really, really important.

So the penalties for breaching the Biosecurity Act, as “the Feds” said, is a key plank in our robust border-control system, and there must be credible deterrence. So that was an interesting question that was raised by the member who brought this bill to the House, and a really good question. The officials came back to us and they talked about deterrence and there was a whole pile of psychology. I don’t know if anyone’s watched Border Patrol, but, you know, I think everyone’s got an opinion about how well or not our deterrent system works—maybe better than Australia’s but, you know. So it’s really interesting; we’ve all got an opinion about what will get people to fess up that they’ve forgotten the apple in the bottom of their bag. So it is a really great opportunity to discuss this and test it and make sure that it’s OK.

So the Federated Farmers are concerned about it being a really good deterrent, and I think that’s a really, really valid question to be asking. Horticulture New Zealand also asked about whether or not an increase in the fines will actually be reflected in a change in practice by people coming through the border. And I’m sure, Mr Speaker, you know much more about criminology than most of us in the House, but at some point there is a bit of a tipping point where, actually, if the fine is great enough and you’re in that line and you kind of feel like you’re at the point of no return, are you going to risk it because the fine potentially makes it worthwhile to try? So we had a lot of information about the psychology of this from the officials, and Horticulture New Zealand asked that question—it’s a really good question. If the fine says that the disincentive is not actually improving compliance, then, kind of, what’s the point? They suggested that is done after the fact. But, actually, I think the stakes are too high for us to just give it a crack and see if it has a positive impact. So they did actually very helpfully recommend that—Horticulture New Zealand recommended exploring alternative approaches and tools that are supported by evidence to obtain improved national biosecurity. And I think that was provided to us by the officials that turned up. They showed us what happened. We’ve heard from previous speakers in the House tonight about what happened the last time they increased the fine and they showed us that there wasn’t an increased impact on compliance.

So Horticulture New Zealand believe that not just the fines but the opportunity, or the risk, I guess, or the price to be paid with amendments to the Immigration Act to refuse entry—they were concerned about that. And they believe that such a serious price to be paid should be kept for those who are intentionally smuggling. So I think these submissions that were made really reflect the level of expertise that is right across—the high level of understanding about what’s going on and how we best protect our primary industries and protect our biosecurity.

As well as that, we have heard about the changes that—those tools that Horticulture New Zealand talked about, you know, and we’ve already heard about how education has such an important role to play. We heard from one speaker saying it doesn’t matter about whether or not somebody has made a mistake; if they didn’t know, they cannot make a decision about whether or not to declare. So, actually, the officials were really clear about this as well, that actually what you need to do is make sure they understand the why. And they reflected that, actually, as a nation, when we are inviting our whānau and our friends to come and visit us, we remind them or educate them as to why it’s important, how unique we are.

I can remember being on a plane once, coming home, and sitting next to a lovely young backpacker who was telling me about the snake she’d killed in South-east Asia—and she’d kept that trophy. And we were on our way to Auckland and we had a wee conversation about how that might not be something that she wanted to just keep in a backpack but might want to have a conversation with the officials at the airport. She simply didn’t know. Unfortunately, she hadn’t done really good geography at high school and didn’t really get that we weren’t Australia and that we didn’t do snakes. So, you know, she was a lovely young backpacker who really was quite horrified when she quite innocently told me, shared her story of her trophy in her backpack. She was so proud. But as soon as she had learnt of the impact that bringing in a dead animal to New Zealand would have, and probably wouldn’t have declared it, thinking it wasn’t a big deal, you know, she was horrified.

So education is absolutely critical, and we as New Zealanders have an obligation to remind anyone who’s coming to visit us, our friends and our whānau, before they arrive, how important and why it’s important that they protect us and they protect our environment and they protect our economy by making sure that they do the right thing.

The other thing we’ve heard about is, you know, then what? Being really clear about educating and making sure we’ve heard about the tools that are already being provided and the tightening up of making sure that people understand what it is that they can’t bring in is really, really important. And making that really streamlined. It is tempting, you know: do I go in this line? Do I go in the red line or do I go in the green line? Do I have a conversation about my tramping boots?

Chlöe Swarbrick: Always the green line!

Maybe the red line. I don’t know; I like the red line. Having a conversation and skiting about where I’ve been, you know, snorkelling and tramping on my trips or whether I’ve been really boring and sat in a conference centre. So having a really open conversation and a really healthy place for people to really genuinely put their hand up and ask questions is so much more valuable, and it is so much more the way we do things, and it is so much more likely to deliver what it is that the member who brought this bill to the House really, really wants.

So I encourage all of us to make sure that we are educating our visitors before they leave home and we make sure that we protect our fabulous primary industries and our fabulous flora and fauna, and that we make sure that things are great.

So I do acknowledge the member who brought this bill to the House, the Hon Jacqui Dean, and I do acknowledge the significant effort that all of the submitters made on the bill, because everybody understands and is committed to having a fabulously secure border. And, yeah, the select committee did a great job. You know, we had a good wrangle over how to progress this bill or how to progress the intent of this bill. One of the great things about the Primary Production Committee is that we are very united and clear about who we are working for. And it is because of that that I’m afraid we cannot support this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to talk about this particular piece of legislation, member’s bill, in the name of the Hon Jacqui Dean, and I acknowledge her for getting it to this stage in the House. It’s pretty rare for an Opposition bill to go through and for good intentions behind the bill, because those, as other people have spoken about tonight, are very important to protect New Zealand’s biosecurity. I thank the officials and the Primary Production Committee for the work that they did; it ended up being pretty valuable.

As others have stated, this bill amends the Biosecurity Act and the Immigration Act, the latter of those two being in my particular wheelhouse. It increases the fine from $400 to $1,000—and I’ll touch on that in a moment—and it also grants Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) officers the ability to refuse entry or revoke a visa, which is a fairly significant change from the present. Nevertheless, as a sign of good faith, ACT will be supporting this bill at second reading, with the idea that with the committee of the whole House stage, the issues that we do have with the bill could be addressed at that point with Supplementary Order Papers.

A couple of points around the fine increase: as others have said, as a mechanism of deterrence, as officials presented, it hasn’t actually had a particularly great effect. The last time this happened, I think it was a 0.01 percent decrease in offending, which is an interesting point, because it makes you wonder if we should just actually go back to the old fine and lower it; it really had no effect at all, and if it added costs in enforcing the regime. But, nevertheless, that’s not what this bill’s about. The fee increase will affect people. It’s not always like Border Security, which is a great show—it’s not always like that. You know, these are mostly accidental cases where people are bringing things in, and, you know, this penalty would apply predominantly to them. So we’d need to address some issues there. The obvious reputational issues—so if this regime kicked in, then we would need to have a think about how we how we enforce discretion, how we apply that so that it wasn’t too heavy-handed, so that we could somehow look at deterrence but not to the point of making no one actually want to come to New Zealand.

The immigration changes were quite significant, and this is probably the issue that—well, an area that I’ve got more of an issue with, with the MPI officials. The point with this particular consequence is that if a visa is revoked and entry refused, then, you know, that leads to a turn-around or deportation, which could actually lead to an exclusion period from New Zealand. That is a fairly significant issue that we’ve got with the bill, but, again, it’s one that we could address in the next stage.

I also wonder about—I talked about discretion before, and perhaps an unintended consequence there where, if a fine is so high and we’re talking about visa consequences, where a visa could be revoked, you might have a situation where officials are actually giving too much discretion because the consequences are so high and they let more things slide. So it could actually have the opposite effect.

Nevertheless, there’s a lot of good intentions with this bill. As I said before, biosecurity—incredibly important that we look after our primary industries and our horticulture and agriculture. A few issues with this; we could’ve ironed it out, but with that, in good faith, we’ll commend it to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s an honour, as always, to rise to speak in this House, and this bill is no exception: the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill. As members would have heard from contributions from other members of my party, it’s not a bill that we will be supporting at this stage. I do acknowledge the member the Hon Jacqui Dean for bringing this bill, and I join with other members of the House in acknowledging the good reasons, I’m sure, why she put this bill in front of the House. We did support it at first reading.

The Primary Production Committee did examine this bill, and I’m not a member of that committee, but I do want to acknowledge the chair, Steph Lewis, who spoke earlier on the bill, and the other members of the Primary Production Committee, who did look very seriously at this bill and whether it should proceed. I’ve had a look at the report of the select committee and I can see that there is genuine consideration of whether this bill would meet the objectives that it has in protecting our unique biodiversity in New Zealand, and I think other members of the House have mentioned that this is something that every member of the House would agree is very important, and, indeed, one of our members—Steph Lewis, who I mentioned earlier—had a bill that was supported by this House, the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Act now, as it was. And that showed, I think, the strength of feeling around the House on how important it is for us to protect our unique environment, because we do face serious threats due to the relative isolation of our biodiversity and the different aspects of our biodiverse environment.

I’ve travelled quite a bit in my younger days, and I have to say that one of the unique things about New Zealand that you first notice when you arrive is how seriously we take Customs and protection of our biodiversity. I think that that’s not something that anyone who has travelled here will probably quickly forget, and it’s often a surprise, I think, to people when they first arrive. Having travelled often back to New Zealand from shorthaul trips and then travelling through Europe, I myself was very surprised at the lack of checks in most other countries when you first arrive—kind of walking off the plane and thinking, “Oh, which line do I go into?”, and just realising that you can just enter without having anything scanned or any declarations or anything. So, I think, sometimes it can be easy for us to forget how unique that is and how, perhaps, the stringent requirements that we have do genuinely come as a surprise to visitors to our country.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t have those important checks. Those checks are very, very important for protecting our environment. I support the systems that we currently have, and I know it can be a very difficult job for the public servants who work in Customs and on the border, and the immigration officials, to make sure that all of those stringent checks that we do have in New Zealand are complied with.

So, in terms of this bill, the main aspects of it that we’d seek to introduce are, obviously, increasing the fees. I note in the select committee report that this was focused on in some detail. There is a significant rise in the amount of money that would be required for those people bringing in items which are not allowed to be brought into New Zealand. The fee that they would pay would be significantly higher. That seemed, to the select committee, incongruous with a lot of other fees that we have, and so it was noted in the report at that time.

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: The majority.

For the majority of the select committee. I’m sure that there are members opposite who will speak to the minority view of the select committee in due course.

However, that was one aspect that was due to change had this bill been successful through the House; another aspect of it was visa denial. It was proposed, as I understand, in this bill, that a refusal of a temporary visa would be done by biosecurity officers, which is not currently, as I understand it, how it works at the moment. Obviously, the Immigration Act allows immigration officials quite wide-ranging powers in terms of visa refusal. So one of the aspects of the bill that was examined by the committee and found to be wanting was that change in who would be enforcing the denial of a visa, and perhaps an acknowledgment that that was quite a significant power that would be given to a biosecurity officer.

Another aspect that I just wanted to touch on is the existing powers that we do have in New Zealand, which are quite stringent. So if you knowingly bring in a prohibited item, there are, as I understand it, existing provisions in the Biosecurity Act which would give it harsher penalty than if you did so in an accidental manner. So there are also, for people who are well versed in our immigration laws, quite clear penalties for knowingly bringing in something. So what we’re really talking about here, and I’m sure members who are in the Primary Production Committee will correct me if I’m wrong, is the unknowing, mainly, bringing in of an item, as some other members have said, a lunchbox or an apple at the bottom of the bag that people haven’t remembered about, and bringing in quite high—and, I think, the majority of the committee found that they were disproportionately high—fees for that type of penalty. I think most members of the House would have seen when celebrities have done this.

In New Zealand, there’s often been stories about so-and-so celebrity came in and received a penalty; they forgot that they had a piece of fruit in their bag. We would have probably heard stories of other people that we might know, or friends of friends, who have maybe done the same thing. This is not necessarily behaviour which is intentional. We know that when you come to New Zealand, you have to come on a very long flight before you arrive, most of the time, unless you’re coming from—well, even Australia is relatively long in terms of the flights that people take, and other countries, or people that live in Europe take between countries. So we do know that, often, people will be tired, they will be fatigued, they may have had to take extra food on the plane due to people in their family having different dietary requirements. I know that my children refuse to eat food on the plane, so I often have to bring food for them to eat on the plane to prevent them from not eating for a very long flight. So it’s a situation that I think we can all understand. These are not necessarily people who want to do ill to New Zealand, and that’s why we have such stringent biosecurity laws in place already.

I think that the fact this was supported at first reading, and the thoughtful, considered report of the select committee, unfortunately for the member, determining that this would not be something that the majority would support—but I do want to commend, again, the member for bringing an important issue to the House. We’ve seen that sometimes bills do not succeed, but that does not necessarily mean that the work and consideration that was done on them was in vain. I’m sure that when, or if, biosecurity laws or legislation relating to that, or members’ bills relating to biosecurity laws, are again examined—as I’m sure they will be at some point by either this House or by the Government—the thoughtful consideration of what was proposed in this will be of extreme value in whatever law or legislation or changes to the rules will come next.

So I do again want to commend the member for bringing this important issue to the House, but, unfortunately, it’s not one that we can support.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on second reading of the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill, and I want to commend the honourable member Jacqui Dean for bringing this member’s bill before the House on a very important issue that has been important for a long time, and will continue to be important for a long time to come.

I do want to acknowledge and thank the members of the Primary Production Committee, who have considered this, and the Clerk and the staff, members who have done a lot of hard work on this, and the officials who have provided helpful advice on this member’s bill. We’ve been trying to get to the right place on it, and we haven’t quite got there, but I just wanted to step through a little bit about what this intends to do.

So the purpose of the bill is to better protect our border by deterring people from bringing in illegal biosecurity risk items, such as fruits or other food, by increasing the immediate fine, and giving officers at the border stronger authority to refuse entry. In some cases, pre-COVID-19, there was and certainly will be again in the future once international travel increases more—and we’ve certainly seen tourism coming back in a strong way this summer, though still nowhere near the level it was pre-pandemic, but it still has been a strong season in parts of the country. Prior to the pandemic, there had been a 35 percent increase in arrivals of people entering New Zealand every year, and this bill aimed to try to strike a balance in terms of just increasing the penalty for bringing in fruit or other food that could place our primary sector at risk.

I just want to note the importance of both of those sectors because, prior to the pandemic, tourism had a total annual expenditure of $41.9 billion, so a very, very significant and important contribution to the New Zealand economy. Obviously, that’s come back a very long way due to the last almost three years that we’ve had since the borders closed in 2020. But it has come back in a strong way, particularly in parts of New Zealand that haven’t been affected by the bad weather that, unfortunately, particularly the North Island has experienced. Bad weather is probably an understatement as it’s been the Cyclone Hale and then Cyclone Gabrielle, which have had a huge impact on local communities and, certainly, on the tourism industry. Though I would note that Tourism Hawke’s Bay is getting out the message that they are open for business, that there’s a lot of great opportunities there. It’s a place that people should be visiting, and I just want to note that because there have been a lot of stories about Hawke’s Bay being very badly damaged, and certainly parts of it have, but there’s a lot of Hawke’s Bay that’s open for business, and want to see tourists and have a lot of great opportunities. So I’ll make that note there.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, speaking of opportunities, it’s an opportunity to speak to the bill now.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, which brings me back to this bill and the primary industry exports. We’re forecast to hit a record high of $55 billion in this year, and so this bill is trying to protect those exports by ensuring that people who come to New Zealand declare their fruits or other food which could place those industries and those exports at risk, which are hugely important for New Zealand. In particular, the National Party was of the view that the infringement fees for failing to clear a biosecurity risk item upon entry to New Zealand be increased from $400 to $1,000, and conviction fines for the same offence increased from $1,000 to $2,000—just trying to get that message across that there can be risks in fruit.

Look, I’ll just maybe share a little anecdote from my childhood, and risks you don’t even know you have in your fruit. I remember eating an apple and a wasp being on it and getting stung in the mouth as a kid—maybe an example towards the extreme end of the scale, but there can be risks in fruit, and something that we want people to be aware of and to think about when they’re coming into the country. So we want people to be very, very aware that it’s hugely important for our economy, that our economy is not stung by an organism coming into the country. [Interruption] Thank you, Mr Woodhouse. We don’t want our economy being stung and being badly impacted. So that’s the point of this bill, and I’d like to commend the Hon Jacqui Dean for bringing this very important issue to the forefront of all our minds and the opportunity to have a debate on it tonight in the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Increased Penalties for Breach of Biosecurity Bill. I just heard a heckle, which was, “Which fruit is the riskiest?”

💬 Hon Member: Tell us. Tell us.

I’m not going to be able to tell the members what fruit is the riskiest. This is not the heckle I was expecting today.

This is the first opportunity I’ve had since today to speak in the House other than asking a question, and so I do wish to, of course, acknowledge Jacinda Ardern leaving us here at Parliament, and her very wise words in her valedictory speech, which, of course, interrupted this bill. Good to hear her talking about climate change and environmental issues in that speech.

I was able to speak on the first reading of this bill, and in that first reading the Hon Jacqui Dean, who, of course, is the member for the beautiful Waitaki, spoke—of course, it being her bill—and I also spoke. And Joseph Mooney will also know, as will Michael Woodhouse, who I see over there, that the Otago Daily Times (ODT) pays close interest to the speeches that Southerners make. In the first reading, there was some discussion of how we look at the column that appears on a Saturday morning, but a number of our speeches referred to this. Then I want to let the House know that Jacqui Dean and I won the bipartisanship award from the ODT on 24 December last year, because, of course, at that stage, everybody was supporting the bill.

As the other speakers have said, we all know that our primary production industry is incredibly important to New Zealand—forecast for the year ending in June is $55 billion expected to be traded in exports in food and fibre, and that is, obviously, a huge amount, and this is important to the whole country. We also know that biosecurity risks can do a lot of damage to that, and we’ve seen that in the past. Of course, we are an island nation, so we can be a fair bit more feisty on biosecurity than other places can be.

In the first reading debate as well, there was a lot of talk of the Border Patrol TV programme; we heard mention of that just before by Angela Roberts. I did say in the first reading speech, though, that I was intrigued and I would watch it. I still haven’t done that, but will aim to do that.

This bill, then, is doing this good thing about biosecurity, caring not only about that $55 billion but also, as the member said before, about New Zealand’s ecology as well. Of course, the Hon Jacqui Dean has been the spokesperson for conservation for National for some time, and I know that’s something she cares deeply about.

But, unfortunately, when it went to the Primary Production Committee, it seems that rather than just the focus on biosecurity, which we’ve had some discussion about, the bill does, of course, amend the Immigration Act. The select committee, in its report, does then discuss how the Immigration Act and the Biosecurity Act both at work together at the border. Of course, the immigration offences are important and detailed in immigration laws, and that’s not something that I can pretend to be an expert in; I do tend to be more on the biosecurity side of things. But the select committee said, “Well, what’s going to happen here is that those immigration officials, those border officials, they might have to say no to somebody because of a biosecurity breach. And those immigration officers, they are not necessarily trained in biosecurity, and so those provisions don’t link nicely together.” That’s covered on page 3 of the report.

Of course, also, there was mention of the increase in the infringement fee. This is very much within the purview of the Biosecurity Act. You’ll see that the bill is very short. There are but nine clauses, and clauses 3 and 4 relate to the Biosecurity Act. Clause 4 was going to replace $1,000 with $2,000. And then in Part 3 there are amendments to the Biosecurity (Infringement Offences) Regulations, and that’s clauses 8 and 9. The other clauses—5, 6, and 7—relate to the Immigration Act. So at clause 9, that regulation was going to be amended from $400 to $1,000—and my time is up.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Like my colleague Rachel Brooking, I’ll begin my contribution by recognising the extraordinary contribution of our former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, her extraordinary speech, but also the extraordinary legacy she leaves.

I wasn’t part of the Primary Production Committee, who considered this bill, but I would like to thank them for their work. In my eyes, again, this is a demonstration of a bill where the select committee went in genuinely looking at the issues in front of them. So our thanks to Steph Lewis, the select committee chair, and also to the members. I want to also recognise Jacqui Dean, the member who brought this bill to the House and who I had the pleasure of getting to know on an Inter-Parliamentary Union trip. I do think that the values that sit behind the reasons why she brought this bill are very, very important. And so I hope that she doesn’t consider me a pest for speaking against it in this instance.

So, to cover some of the points within the bill, the proposal within the bill is that the biosecurity officers are granted power or discretion to refuse entry on a breach of biosecurity rules. But as members have pointed out, immigration officers already have this power. And in fact, my view is that it wouldn’t be appropriate for a biosecurity officer to hold these powers. If you will, there’s a legitimate boundary or border, if you like, between the powers of a biosecurity officer and an immigration officer. The other issue that the committee legitimately identified is that putting biosecurity in primary legislation and not putting other factors that immigration officers must consider when they’re exercising their powers appears to elevate biosecurity above the other issues that immigration officers need to consider—things like declaring goods or smuggling as well.

I just turn briefly to the proposed increase of financial penalties. And my sense, in terms of the member’s intention, is that this isn’t about laying a trap, if you like, for individuals who are entering the country. The intent is to draw people’s attention to the scale of the cost to them. Now, unfortunately, the select committee did find that there was no evidence to suggest that the increase would change behaviour of erroneous breaches. I understand that in terms of the analysis of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), penalties were ranked the seventh most effective tool for declaring or disposing of risk goods. According to research conducted by MPI, the three most effective motivators were an understanding of why items are considered a biosecurity risk, a greater understanding of what must be declared on arrival, and an understanding of how to pass through New Zealand’s borders more quickly.

So ours is a system that isn’t intended to be a snake in the grass, if you like. It is not about surprising people with unfair penalties; the penalties must be reasonable. If we are truly intending on growing compliance, it really is about information provision but also creating opportunities for people to dispose of those goods when they realise that they are carrying them with them—so the signage, the bins that we all see so frequently at the airport. There might be a case to increase those, because that’s the practical way; if you like, providing a moth to the flame kind of solution that creates practical ways that people will be drawn to, in terms of disposing those goods.

Now, I’m not a member of the select committee. However, I did read the select committee report and I read the National Party minority view. I agree that we must put in place the measures that we can so that we don’t get an incidence of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). And while I’ve possibly played lightly in some of my contributions earlier today, I do think that is a serious issue that will impact New Zealand severely should we get it.

However, I then went from the National Party minority view to the MPI website, where I looked at the measures they’re currently putting in place to respond to the FMD outbreak in Indonesia. What they’re doing at the moment is they’ve changed some of their measures to ensure that we’ve got a more robust biosecurity response to people coming through Indonesia. So passengers arriving on direct flights from Bali, for example, use a dedicated biosecurity lane. This is all fairly new; I understand this only happened since March this year. They also face additional risk assessment questioning from officers and may be directed to undergo baggage searches; it’s required for their footwear to be disinfected. The measures have been really built on the enhanced measures that were put in place in July last year, so there are practical things that biosecurity are doing to respond to the increased risk.

Advice is also provided to those who are heading to Indonesia. They’re advised to wear close-toed shoes for their arrival back to New Zealand rather than open-toed. That’s really aimed to speed the process of disinfecting their footwear, coming back into the country. That advice and communication is absolutely happening by the New Zealand Government. There are other pieces of information provided to people travelling. I’m speaking specifically to Indonesia, but there’s no reason that this sort of system can’t be replicated to other countries where there are FMD outbreaks. They’re told to avoid wildlife and livestock such as cattle, pigs, or goats. They’re told to avoid visiting farmland or rice fields, and, again, to make sure that their footwear and clothing is free from dirt on their return. They’re specifically told to avoid bringing back risk items, including animal-based food products and skulls or untanned leather souvenirs, and they’re also told to stay away from New Zealand farms or livestock for at least a week after arrival. These are practical things that will really make a difference.

I understand also that there are specific questions asked of passengers when they’re coming through biosecurity, if they’re coming via Bali or Indonesia. They include: “Have you been in contact with any wildlife or livestock such as cattle, pigs, or goats? Have you visited any farmland? Do you have any shoes or equipment contaminated with soil? Do you have any animal products such as food items?” Some things are best done by law. I’m a lawyer and now a politician, so I do agree with that. Some things are best done by policy or, if you like, our “Customs”—the things we put in place to ensure that there are practical steps that we can take to truly, in an evidence-based way, ensure that we’re protecting New Zealand’s borders.

I’ll finish, just by mentioning that not only are we taking those proactive measures but there’s also an FMD task force, which I’m sure that members opposite will be aware of, set up in 2022. It’s not an ideal, but it’s a task force based on providing solutions should we ever have a case. It’s nothing we want; it’s nothing we want across this House. But what we do want across this House is evidence-based solutions to ensure that we protect our border.

I cannot, unfortunately, commend this bill to the House this evening. But I do commend, again, the member who has brought the bill to the House. I do think her intentions were entirely in the right place and I do think that this is one of those issues where we should be working cross-party to ensure we protect New Zealand borders. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Here’s my first grizzle—actually, it’ll be my second grizzle, apart from the terrible puns that are being put out tonight. As a dad, I would be proud of those as dad jokes. But I’ve been in this place nearly 15 years, five of them as a Minister, so 10 years in that time, being eligible to have a bill in the member’s bill ballot—haven’t had a single one drawn out; not a single one. There are some people in this House that are very greedy—well, very lucky, I suppose—David Clark, Louisa Wall. Annette King, I think, didn’t have a single one in her 33 years—she would be with me. But when we do, it’s quite something—it’s quite something—because it’s usually something that the member feels passionately about, and certainly Jacqui Dean feels passionately about the conservation and biosecurity of this country. I think it was Rachel Brooking that reminded us that the food and fibre sector is $55 billion.

You know, we’ve had incursions. We’re never very sure how they come in, but painted apple moth, fruit fly, we’ve got the stink bug—what was that called? A marmorated stink bug—and Vanushi Walters has just talked about foot-and-mouth disease. The impact of these incursions could be devastating, not on human and animal health alone as a direct consequence of those incursions but the ongoing economic and social harms that they cause, because the earnings from those exports pay for our hospitals, they pay for our schools, our social development programmes, our law and order. We thrive on primary industries. For Ms Walters to talk about the risk that this bill elevates biosecurity above other matters for determination under the Immigration Act I think is certainly not the way I would describe it. I think what Jacqui Dean was trying to do was to bring biosecurity up to a common level with other grounds for refusal of entry, denial of visa, and deportation.

So I like the idea, and I’m sure, as Steph Lewis said, the Primary Production Committee was diligent in doing its job, but the question really seems to have been asked through the lens of: is the bill in perfect shape? The answer to that was clearly no. It was pointed out in the general policy statement that the commentary talked about giving biosecurity officers a stronger ability to refuse entry to New Zealand when, in fact, that power only vests with the Minister of Immigration or his or her delegated decisionmakers, warranted immigration officers. It was just a minor technical error. The bill itself was correct in providing powers to immigration officers, not biosecurity officers. Those are things that could be fixed.

So my question, my suggestion, to the committee isn’t what was right or wrong with the bill but how could we get the bill into a shape that would make it better and make for better law. It seems like people have talked, including officials—I don’t want to sound critical, but the departmental report is quite revealing, I think, in the sense that they’ve taken a technical look at this and said, “Oh, well, section 109 of the Immigration Act is probably not the right one to fix.” Well, the right one to fix was probably section 22, which lists the immigration instructions that can be written, because it is true that most of these guidelines aren’t set in primary legislation but are set in instruments called immigration instructions. So let’s make a change to that. And it wasn’t.

But I think the most telling part of this, kind of, ambivalence about the bill, despite it being an incredibly important area, was this kind of inference that—well, it wasn’t an inference; it was stated by a couple of speakers—the Immigration Act already provides for the denial of entry for people on biosecurity grounds. OK, so why did the select committee not ask officials to say: if that’s the case, please tell us how many individuals under current law have been denied a visa or refused entry into New Zealand on biosecurity grounds? I looked in the departmental report; it wasn’t there, and I wonder if the committee asked that question. It would’ve been an obvious one to ask. If the Immigration Act provides these powers and they are elevated to a point where everybody knows about them, has a single person ever been denied entry on those grounds?

Maybe Jacqui Dean’s attempt is a belts and braces approach, a “for the avoidance of doubt” amendment to the Immigration Act, but I think it’s a pretty good one. It’s a good one to the degree that the biosecurity risks to this country are so great—and our biosecurity officials, frankly, do a great job—that it should be made more prominent; I don’t think more prominent than the other aspects, other criteria for refusal of entry, but just to put them on a par, and if we don’t support this bill, we lose the opportunity to do that.

You know, I also watch border control shows from time to time, and one of the things that really grinds my gears is when I see two types of border stop by biosecurity officials. One is the inadvertent, accidental—as Camilla Belich talked about—sandwich in the bag, the apple at the bottom of the suitcase, you know, after a long flight.

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: Mandarin.

Mandarin?

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: A friend of mine had a mandarin.

Really? Did it cost him $400?

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: It did.

It did. Right, excellent point, Mr Goldsmith. Contrast that with the deliberate offender with suitcases full of produce coming from source countries. They’re often fruits, they’re often animal products, bird products, feathers, traditional medicines that they may think that they can’t get here in New Zealand. The suitcase is open and there is a plethora of illegal product in there and biosecurity risk, and the fine, Mr Goldsmith, is how much?

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: $400.

$400—$400 for a mandarin; $400 for a deliberately concealed high-risk suitcase full of product. Maybe $1,000 per fine was a little high. Maybe the answer is to reduce the fine, not raise it, but make it clear that the scale of offending needs to be reflected in the infringement that is given, because I don’t agree that—well, I do agree with Vanushi Walters on the point that she said that the fine is about the seventh most important or effective barrier, but that’s possibly because it’s so low. The Ministry for Primary Industries were very interesting in their departmental report where they talked about the last time the fine was raised, in April 2010, that compliance meandered along and then significantly improved; the number of infringements and detections dropped. Now they’re saying that wasn’t due to the fine because it was too far after the change. Well, I’m not so sure that’s the case. But the point is I think fines as a deterrent and the promotion of that—you go from Singapore to Malaysia, and what’s the first thing you see, a sign at the border that says “death to drug importers”. I tell you what, that’s a pretty big deterrent. You’d have to be pretty, I don’t know, dumber than a bag of nails to ignore that sign. Several thousand dollars of fines at the border at Auckland Airport or Christchurch Airport could well be a significant deterrent to people who wanted to take a risk and then decided it wasn’t worth it financially.

So I am disappointed that we haven’t, as a House, found a way to say yes to this. I think everybody agrees on the goal: improve our biosecurity, reduce the risk to human and animal welfare, and to our economy. Let’s not forget, as I say, this is what pays our bills. I commend Jacqui Dean for her passion on this, but I think there was a way for us to get to a place where we could have done both, and I’m disappointed that we’re not going to be able to tonight.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I tend to agree with Michael Woodhouse on how serious biosecurity risk is to our country. In fact, I would put it up there as one of the greatest challenges we have, to continue to protect our borders as a duty to this country. And I know this, because it’s been a passion of mine since I worked, a few years back now, on the foot-and-mouth New Zealand campaign for educating New Zealanders and farmers when there was a foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK. One of the jobs I had was to travel with a UK farmer around the region, talking to farmers about what the experience would be like if foot-and-mouth came to New Zealand. What that taught me was that education is one of the greatest ways to protect our borders. If passengers and people know about the risks to New Zealand, we have a far better chance of protecting our borders.

Another job I had on that was to go to Auckland Airport, where they had the beagle dogs who were trained in sniffing out fruit in the airport. And during that time, there were signs everywhere showing up where people needed to be reminded about remembering to throw out those apple cores before they came through our borders. Now, those dogs were a very good way of educating passengers to be able to see, “Oh, those dogs are reminding me that I’m not to take through anything that could be a biosecurity risk.”

When I first read this bill, I looked and went, “Oh, great. I think this is fantastic. We’re going to tighten our penalties and increase our penalties, and it is coming to the Primary Production Committee, which I am on.” I was looking forward to hearing the submissions, but, unfortunately, Cyclone Gabrielle struck, and I was back in the region when the submissions were being heard. So as the last speaker in the House tonight, I’ve been able to pick up a lot on what was said in the submission process, and I was surprised to find that an increase in fine did not see a decrease in the number of people being prosecuted. And I looked at that, and I thought, “Well, that sort of actually backs up that education is the best way to keep us front and centre of protecting our borders.”

We’ve talked a lot about protecting New Zealand’s $55 billion primary sector industry. And over the course of this Government, we have invested a huge amount of taxpayer money right into protecting our borders. In fact, it’s one of the investments that I think, across the House, people would agree is a good investment, one that we should continue to do, because heaven help us if we ever had an incursion of brown marmorated stink bugs—brown marmorated stink bug, is that right? I hope I’ve said it right. And we do have to put up the strongest armour to do so. Again, when I think about education, if you spot one of these brown marmorated stink bugs, you need to know what it looks like, and you need to know where to report it.

During the speeches tonight, we have heard some interesting stories, and none will stick further in my mind but that from Joseph Mooney, who happened to eat a wasp on an apple. Man, that must have hurt if it stung him. By crikey, it’s no wonder it’s become a childhood memory. In fact, one could use that in an advertisement for educating around biosecurity, so “Let’s just make sure you leave those apples and wasps behind: wasp what you’re thinking.”! Now, that would go down a treat, wouldn’t it?

💬 Hon Member: There’s a stinging ring to it.

A stinging ring to it. Gosh, it’s all coming to me. I don’t even have to think about them. They just bring them on. And then, of course, we had foot in mouth—in mouth—rather than foot-and-mouth.

Look, the intention of this bill was there, but we’ve seen that a fine would not see a significant decrease in the number of people bringing through apples by mistake, or more intentionally as we heard from Mr Woodhouse. But I would like to pick up that if someone does deliberately make an incorrect or false declaration to try and conceal items, the consequences are more severe. In fact, if someone is convicted of deliberately smuggling, they could be fined up to $100,000 and be sentenced to up to five years in prison. So if we were to take that suggestion of Mr Woodhouse about harsher penalties—perhaps saying, at our borders, that you can face five years in prison if you deliberately smuggle in something illegal into our country that has a biosecurity risk—then that would work as well.

So, all in all, everybody in the House agrees we must keep biosecurity risk and biosecurity education front and centre when travelling into New Zealand. Again, I can say to Steph Lewis, who was speaking prior to me, how we had put through a bill of hers not that long ago around ensuring we have more videos on planes and have them, perhaps, in other languages as well, so that when passengers are watching—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: They’re already there. They are there.

Yes, that was the legislation. That’s the sort of deterrent—education, education, education.

I must say another way of making sure that they learn early is when you are travelling with your young ones, as I have done myself, and you suddenly find that they are about to go through Customs and they open the pencil case and out comes the pair of scissors. I remember this well where Livia had taken her pencil case to go on a trip with us, and suddenly she lost her scissors because she’d forgotten to take them out of her pencil case. Now, I don’t think she’ll ever forget that, because she was quite attached to those scissors. She uses them quite a lot, and it’s cutting into my memory! Yes, that’s right. But it’s those things that if you learn once when you are young—just like that wasp in the mouth—I think that you would never bite back. So, on that, I commend this bill—I don’t commend; we’re voting against this. We’re voting against this bill. But on that, there you go.