Clayton Mitchell New Zealand First MP

Health and Safety laws in New Zealand need fixing when kids can't climb trees, but logging companies at the port can release poison gas arm's length from workers and metres from the public. And why are we offering companies a safe haven to put us at risk?

Last Thursday there was a meeting at the Tauranga Yacht Club, talking about a life-threatening activity that happened to be going on only a couple of hundred metres away. Health and Safety legislation that we keep calling to come back into the House for fixing, is dropping the ball, and the public are starting to stand up and demand accountability. The continuing release of toxic methyl bromide gas into our Tauranga air is totally ridiculous.

Port says it's the logging companies' responsibility, but who leases them the Port land to fumigate the logs? Regional Council owns 54% of the Port, but they're not given the teeth required to hold anyone accountable. Genera, the fumigation company claims there are no alternative gases they can use. Envirofume, a competitor says they can vent it higher into the air, but what goes up is going to come down somewhere on something or someone.

Picton, Napier and Wellington all used to fumigate with methyl bromide, but public pressure stopped them. The problem is, it's cheaper and easier for them to now send their logs to Tauranga, Nelson or Whangarei to be poisoned – sorry, “fumigated” – than come up with, or invest in alternatives.

And then, let's come back to a point we, at New Zealand First have been making for ages: Instead of exporting raw logs, let's create added-value jobs processing them.

India won't accept logs that haven't been methyl bromide-ised, and a quarter of the logs for China require it as well. Fine. Let's process them here. We should be protecting our workers from poisoning and unemployment, our economy from outsourcing, and our lungs and bodies from Cancers and Motor Neuron Disease. The Tauranga branch of the Methyl Bromide market needs to close and the Health and Safety Act needs to come back into the House for urgent repair.