Our 2011 election manifesto - Labour Party

BIOSECURITY
Our vision
New Zealand must have a first-class biosecurity system. Keeping pests and diseases out of
our island nation is essential for our primary producers, our livelihoods, and the protection of
our unique native flora and fauna. And for our primary producers to compete in global
markets, they need to be able to give biosecurity assurance to customers.
With trade and travel increasing in a globalising world, pressure on our borders is becoming
more acute and pest incursions are increasing. Over the past five years over 400 pests a
year have been caught at the border – and in the last quarter of 2010 alone, three new pests
became established in New Zealand.
We need biosecurity vigilance to protect our country from environmental and economic
damage from pest invaders, and from severe health threats like avian influenza. We must
plan for the future challenges that increased trade and travel, and climate change, will bring.
We may not be able to stop every biological threat from entering New Zealand. However,
when they do, we must be prepared to manage them effectively. Labour believes that
affected industries and local communities have a big part to play in responding to such
threats. We need to maximise our total response, and ensure we get new threats under
active management and control as soon as possible.
Prevention
Labour substantially boosted New Zealand‟s border security capacity. Scientific and
operational systems were changed to more effectively investigate, eradicate or manage
biological threats.
Labour set up Biosecurity New Zealand to co-ordinate the agencies that manage and protect
our country against these threats. We developed a comprehensive biosecurity strategy
applying to all of New Zealand‟s environments (land, freshwater and marine), and to both
indigenous and introduced flora and fauna.
Primary industries are feeling increasingly vulnerable to pest incursions. The spread of
tomato/potato psyllid since 2006, and the Psa outbreak in kiwifruit in late 2010, show the
devastating impact such incursions can have. Unless primary industries can be assured that
robust biosecurity protection is in place, they are unlikely to risk making large new
investments.
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