Point of Order: Govt eases the way through Customs and to buying building materials.....

.....but illegal timber imports are barred

The Government has made a prohibition pronouncement under a headline that makes a dubious claim about the snuffing of illegality. The headline says Government shuts door on illegally harvested timber.

Good-oh. With the door shut, there can be no way of getting our hands on illegally harvested timber because there is no way of it getting into the country – right?

Not immediately. It will take a few more years for the door to be shut, by the time the regulations are prepared – and even then the government would be over-confident if it smugly imagined all illegal activities will be halted.

Murder is illegal, too.

The statement is one of a few new announcements posted on the government’s official website ahead of the Budget Day tsunami this afternoon.

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With regard to the door being shut on illegally harvested timber, Forestry Minister Peeni Henare was enthusing about the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill receiving Royal assent and becoming an Act of Parliament.

He says the Act cements New Zealand’s position on combatting the trade of illegally harvested timber, a significant problem globally.

But he seems more confident than he should be when he says it:

… will stop the import of illegally harvested timber and also provides the international market with confidence in New Zealand’s timber and timber products by introducing a new legislative framework for legal harvest assurance.

Certainly, the new legislation aims to discourage the illegal trade.

Discouraging it and snuffing it are not the same thing – we have laws to make the importing of many drugs illegal too – and it is going to take a few years for the regulations to be developed.

The Act allows for up to three years for commencement and a further 12 months for compliance. The Ministry for Primary Industries and New Zealand Forestry Service will be administering and facilitating its implementation.

During this time, officials will consult and engage with industry to develop regulations that are practical yet robust.

Approximately 15 to 30 per cent of the global timber trade involves illegally harvested timber, according to the press statement.

As Henare points out, illegal logging

• destroys forests and degrades ecosystems; and
• strips the economic livelihood of local communities and responsible companies.

“By introducing a legal harvest assurance system for timber products, New Zealand is taking a tangible step to support international efforts to stamp out the trade in illegally harvested timber products and provide assurance that our country is committed to trading only in legally harvested timber.”

The legal harvest assurance system will require forest owners, log traders, primary processors, timber exporters and importers to provide assurance the timber they are dealing with has been legally harvested or sourced from timber that has been legally harvested.

Moreover, it provides importers and our domestic processors and exporters with a government assurance framework to support their businesses that will demonstrate they have completed due diligence on the legal harvest of the timber products they are trading.

Henare said the Act is also needed to quash the importation of illegally harvested timber products.

“With a rising volume of imported timber products, it is important to ensure these products are sourced from legally harvested forests overseas.”

Major trading partners such as Australia, United States, the European Union, Vietnam, China, Indonesia, Japan and Republic of Korea have implemented or are developing their own legislation to prevent the trade of illegal harvested timber.

“This assurance system will bring us in line with these countries to ensure the protection of New Zealand’s forestry and wood processing sector. We export nearly 85 per cent of our timber products to these countries. Without a legislative scheme for legal harvest, we run the risk that we can no longer export to these markets.”

Your Point of Order monitors of ministerial machinations observed that on the same day Henare was enthused about keeping illegal forestry products out, Customs Minister Jo Luxton was chuffed about new legislation which makes it easier for travellers to come in.

Changes in the Customs and Excise (Arrival Information) Amendment Bill make the obligations concerning arrival information clearer, improve the enforcement of arrival information obligations, and support modernising New Zealand’s border with the implementation of a digital arrival card.

“As passenger volumes increase, it’s important that our border processes are as efficient as possible to support a positive traveller experience while also helping to make our border safer and smarter,” Customs Minister Jo Luxton said.

“This legislation, which supports the transition to an online arrival declaration, allows for traveller information to be provided digitally and can be voluntarily provided prior to arrival to streamline the process for travellers coming to New Zealand.

“Customs has an important role at our border. These changes will help frontline Customs officers identify risks more quickly and efficiently, and better enforce the requirements to keep New Zealand and New Zealanders safe,” Jo Luxton said.

The legislation creates two new offences.

• The first offence relates to if a person fails to provide required arrival information, while
• The second offence is where a person provides incorrect or false information which is not merely trivial or inconsequential. For example, if they say they do not have $NZ10,000 or more in cash but they are carrying $NZ10,000 or more in cash.

Both offences will be made into infringement offences which can result in fines.

The legislation comes into force on 21 June 2023. For certain classes of maritime vessels the new arrival obligation will come into force on or after 31 October 2023.

Henare’s legislation (at first blush) has implications, too, for the government’s plans to make it easier to buy building materials.

The Minister for Building and Construction Dr Megan Woods and Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Dr Duncan Webb say the Government agrees, or agrees-in-principle, to eight of the nine recommendations made in the Commerce Commission’s market study into Residential Building Supplies.

Key actions will include:

• Monitoring and publishing prices of key building supplies
• Doing more work on guidance to support builders and councils make good decisions on alternative equivalent products
• Drive the uptake of offsite manufacturing by Government agencies by a minimum of 10% year on year, to improve productivity and competition.

Megan Woods said.

“We need to remove market barriers that make it hard to introduce new building products and for competing suppliers to expand their businesses.

“This drives up costs and means homeowners end up paying more than they should. At a time when the cost of living is hurting families, that needs to improve.”

The Government will go further than some of the Commission’s recommendations and expand on its existing review of the building consent system. It will also widen its work to ensure alternative building products are more easily used, following last year’s plasterboard shortage.

Key relevant Government actions to date:

• MBIE has issued new guidance to support people to understand and use the building consent system in a way that gets faster and more consistent decisions from building consent authorities.
• Offsite manufacturing regulations introduced in 2022 for a new certification scheme – BuiltReady – to provide certified offsite manufacturers with access to faster, more consistent building consent approaches.
• CodeMark scheme changes in 2022 to strengthen the scheme and help new and innovative building products demonstrate they comply with the Building Code.
• New regulations in 2022 that require manufacturers and importers to provide a minimum level of information about their building products to improve use of alternative products.
• A Critical Materials Taskforce established in 2022 following the plasterboard shortage. MBIE released guidance for designers and building consent authorities to help facilitate product substitutions and variations, including specific guidance on plasterboard.
• The Government’s 2022 review of the building consent system aims to address barriers to competition for building products, following public feedback. MBIE is developing options for a new or revised building consent system. Further information on next steps will be announced in the coming months.

Point of Order is a blog focused on politics and the economy run by veteran newspaper reporters Bob Edlin and Ian Templeton