Border control and management
1. Protect New Zealand's biodiversity
and primary industries, including agriculture, horticulture, forestry,
and fisheries, by upgrading border biosecurity to prevent, as far as possible,
the introduction and spread of alien pests and diseases. Key actions
include:
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Mandatory offshore decontamination and
quarantine clearances of high-risk imports such as used vehicles and machinery.
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Major upgrade of container biosecurity
regimes including six-sided inspections.
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Enhanced biosecurity educational programme
to raise public, industry and overseas visitor awareness of the importance
of biosecurity.
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Development of a Safe Trade programme
that ensures New Zealand exports gain a world-wide reputation as being
free of biological contaminants.
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Ensure wider public input into the development
of a national biosecurity policy and priorities by appointing two representatives,
of primary industry and environmental organisations, to the Biosecurity
Council.
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Ensure comprehensive pest and disease
surveillance programmes, particularly around ports and airports, with prompt,
well-resourced eradication operations if serious pests breach New Zealand's
border defences.
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The development and enforcement of effective
protocols for ship ballast water and hull fouling.
2. Increased resourcing through Vote
Biosecurity for the above actions and for the development and revision
of Import Health Standards for risk pathways.
Replace the Ministry of Agriculture
and Forestry with a Ministry of Biosecurity, incorporating MAF Quarantine,
and a Ministry of Food. Reallocate MAF’s residual functions to the Ministry
for the Environment (sustainable land management and indigenous forests
management) and Ministry of Commerce.
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Trade
controls
3. Support and work to achieve
the incorporation of environmental and biosecurity regulations and policies
into international trading agreements (World Trade Organisation, Sanitary
and Phyto Sanitary Agreements and APEC) to ensure that trade liberalisation
does not result in additional environmental degradation or enhanced biosecurity
risks.
4. Support trade bans on certain
products including toxic waste, endangered species, ozone depleting substances
and high biosecurity risk goods.
5. Work to ensure that consultation,
reporting and decision making structures for international trade agreements
(World Trade Organisation, Sanitary and Phyto Sanitary Agreements and APEC)
are open and based on democratic principles, allowing non-governmental
organisation (NGO) observers and participation in procedures.
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Regional measures
6. Develop, in partnership
with Australia and the South Pacific island states, a regional biosecurity
programme to minimise the risk of new alien species invasions within the
South Pacific-Oceania region.
7. Ensure the strictest biosecurity
regimes apply to the Ross Dependency and advocate for similar regimes to
apply to all of Antarctica.
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Pest management strategies
8. Develop priorities, and
a timetable for the introduction of national pest control strategies, for
the major pests and diseases that threaten the environment and/or New Zealand's
primary industries.
9. Effectively control,
and eradicate where achievable, alien weeds, pests and diseases destroying
New Zealand's biodiversity and harming primary production causing $800
million in economic damage each year. Key actions include:
a) Ensuring, through
the Biosecurity Council, the development of national priorities and programmes
for the eradication, containment and sustained control of pests and diseases
by government agencies to complement the biosecurity programmes of regional
councils.
b) Identifying and addressing
legislative and policy deficiencies that compromise biosecurity objectives,
including a greater emphasis on freshwater and marine biosecurity.
c) Ensuring the Department of
Conservation is funded to undertake efficient and effective pest control
and eradication across the public conservation estate, including riverbeds.
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