2026 Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill (304-1)

The Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill (304-1) (Submission PDF): This assessment provides evidence that it will likely frustrate the legislative intent of the HSNO Act.

Call on the Primary Production Committee. PSGRNZ opposes this Bill and calls on members of Parliament to reject this Bill in its entirety. PSGRNZ request that the Primary Production Committee pause proceedings and return the Bill for fundamental revision, following genuine consultation extending well beyond the narrowly selected groups engaged to date.

Sections [4-7] of our Report and Submission highlights specific failings which PSGRNZ explicitly rejects.

See also:

PSGRNZ's letter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton.
PSGRNZ Substack article on our Submission to the Bill, and RCR interview with PSGRNZ researcher J.R.Bruning.

PSGRNZ's Submission - First page 'brief':

PSGRNZ opposes the specific mechanisms this Bill uses to achieve efficiency, because they systematically reduce the scientific rigour, public participation, and independent oversight that the HSNO Act was designed to provide; and submit that the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) is unfit, and that the Bill is premature and fundamentally misconceived for the following reasons:

The underpinning policy prioritised industry concerns about process speed, with human and environmental health protection treated as secondary considerations throughout.
The Bill has a deficient basis, as it ‘copies’ and ‘pastes’ the policy foundation from the Ministry for Regulations’ Agricultural and Horticultural Products Regulatory Review (2025).
The Review and RIS directly contradicted the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, by claiming that the current systems are effective for managing risks.
The targeted stakeholder engagement for Bill policy was dominated by organisations with direct commercial interests in its outcomes; human and environmental health considerations not discussed. No independent toxicologists, public health bodies, environmental advocates, or affected communities were included.
The process is upside down. To be ‘risk proportionate’, the risk assessment analysis & review should have been developed prior to the Bill, to then inform development of the Bill.
The process is being shunted through at the same time that the Ministry for the Environment is being disestablished. Participating officials and Ministers would know this.
The process is being shunted through just prior to a new NZEPA CEO commences giving that new CEO to take part in design and scope of any regulatory amendments.
The risk assessment framework, universally acknowledged to be outdated and unfit for purpose, is currently directed for redesign by a consultancy with commercial conflicts of interest, and a preference for maximizing efficiency in navigating regulatory systems.
Faults: The Bill's text, taken as a whole, risks undermining the principles and purposes of the HSNO Act, the very framework it purports to improve.
The Bill invents new terms (denewed), creates new meanings for language (vagrant), and fails to define key terms (low-risk, risk-species, recognised international regulator, significant public interest and risk proportionate).
Faults: The Bill creates a fast-track approval pathway requiring sign-off from just two overseas regulators. The NZEPA has no mechanism to ask whether those two decisions rest on recent high-quality reviews. Two jurisdictions can both trace back to a single unreviewed assessment and New Zealand can view that as sufficient.
Faults: The Bill may contradict a 2014 High Court finding. It permits the NZEPA to declare a genetically modified organism - an apparently invented term - a ‘denewed’ organism.
INTRODUCTION

The Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Amendment Bill (304-1), introduced to Parliament on 11 May 2026 by Hon Nicola Grigg, proposes the most significant restructuring of New Zealand's chemical and new organism regulatory system since the HSNO Act came into force 30 years ago. The Bill is being considered by the Primary Production Committee (submissions closing 11.59pm Monday 15 June 2026) rather than an Environment Committee

This likely follows the disestablishment of the Ministry for the Environment, notwithstanding that the vast majority of submissions to that select committee had opposed that Bill.

The Bill makes 150-plus amendments to the HSNO Act 1996. Its stated purpose is to streamline approval pathways, reduce processing times, and make greater use of overseas regulator assessments. PSGRNZ does not oppose efficiency in regulation. We oppose the specific mechanisms this Bill uses to achieve efficiency, because they systematically reduce the scientific rigour, public participation, and independent oversight that the HSNO Act was designed to provide.

The companion Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Amendment Bill (305-1), introduced on the same day by Hon Andrew Hoggard, is before the same committee and raises parallel concerns.

To ensure public trust in the regulatory system, there must be a scientifically robust response to finding that risk assessment models are not fit for purpose in order to update them before expanding the approvals that depend on them.

In the May 2025 RIS, proportionate is used repeatedly as a positive regulatory objective. The term is associated with reducing regulatory burden, streamlining approvals, aligning assessment effort with perceived risk, accelerating innovation, and avoiding unnecessary scrutiny. The underlying assumption appears to be that existing regulatory requirements are, in some circumstances, disproportionate to the risks presented.

The difficulty is that the RIS appears to devote considerably more attention to the administrative consequences of proportionality than to the scientific determination of proportionality. The document explains why approvals should be faster, more efficient, and more closely aligned with risk.

This is a recurring issue throughout contemporary regulatory reform. ‘Risk proportionate’ regulation is often treated as though it were synonymous with reduced regulation. Yet these are not necessarily the same thing. A proportionate response to uncertainty may, in some circumstances, require more extensive assessment, additional monitoring, broader consultation, stronger containment measures, or post-market surveillance. Proportionality depends upon the nature of the risk being managed, not upon a prior preference for regulatory simplification.

Risk-proportionate regulation is the outcome of a methodology. Unless the scientific assessment process is demonstrably systematic, transparent, and reproducible - which is widely recognised not to be the case - claims that a regulatory response is risk-proportionate remain assertions rather than verifiable conclusions.

However, despite finding that risk assessment models are not fit for purpose and first updating them before expanding the approvals that depend on them, the Bill takes an opposite approach. It further transfers (and/or delegates) market entry reliance on overseas assessments, while simultaneously removing the methodology requirement that would at minimum have required the Authority to articulate what standard it was applying when making those decisions. It delegates authority to two foreign jurisdictions without specifying the rigour with which those jurisdictions must undertake risk assessment.

The RIS and Bill provides much less discussion of the methodology by which risk itself is identified, characterised, and evaluated, particularly in circumstances involving uncertainty, cumulative effects, environmental persistence, self-replicating organisms, ecosystem interactions, or long-term consequences. As a result, key policy questions that might traditionally be resolved through primary legislation are instead deferred to secondary instruments and regulatory practice.

The importance of the scientific process to ensure that decision-making follows robust procedures and is trustworthy and can stand the test of time, has not been a priority of the underlying policies, nor is it emphasised in the text of the Bill. In contrast, the language that is inserted in the Bill, reflects a shift away from accountability and transparency, despite claiming to achieve such effects.

At the same time, the Bill shifts greater discretionary powers to decision-makers. Yet if this was to work – there should have been a greater the obligation for the scientific process informing those decisions to be systematic, transparent, and reproducible. This did not occur.

This distinction is particularly important in the stewardship of hazardous substances and genetically modified organisms because the regulatory challenge is fundamentally different from many conventional administrative activities. The purpose of the system is not simply to process applications efficiently. It is to evaluate technologies and substances whose risks may be uncertain, delayed, cumulative, difficult to reverse, or not fully observable at the time decisions are made. In such circumstances, proportionality cannot be reduced to a question of how much regulatory effort is applied. It must also encompass the adequacy of the scientific inquiry itself.

Quite clearly, terms such as ‘risk-proportionate’, ‘denewed’, ‘low risk’, ‘vagrant’, and ‘significant public interest’ do substantial regulatory work yet are either undefined or dependent upon future administrative interpretation. This may reduce legal certainty, increase regulatory discretion, and make it more difficult for affected parties to anticipate how statutory powers will be exercised.

The RIS invents a new word ‘denewed’ that is then incorporated in the Bill. The Bill assigns an ecological term (vagrant) as a legal term yet neither the RIS nor the Bill clarifies this altered use approach.

It is unclear whether ‘vagrant’ is confined to naturally occurring organisms or whether it may also apply to genetically modified, gene-edited, volunteer, feral, or descendant organisms arising from escaped heritable material. Given that the designation carries substantive regulatory consequences, greater clarity is required regarding the intended scope of the category and the criteria governing its application.

For genetically modified, gene-edited, or self-propagating organisms, that becomes particularly important because ‘low risk’ today may depend heavily on assumptions about persistence, dispersal, heritability, and ecological interaction that can only be tested over time.

Therefore, the Bill appears to establish a series of broad enabling concepts while leaving much of their substantive content to future NZEPA notices, regulations, guidance, classifications, and administrative determinations.

This is not a response to inadequate risk assessment. It is a legislative instruction to proceed despite it, with an expansion of risk to the public and the environment because of built-in regulatory blindspots.

A Constitutional Question: If Parliament is increasing the terminology and expanding regulatory powers, what corresponding safeguards, regulatory frameworks, constraints, review mechanisms, transparency requirements, evidential standards, and accountability measures are being strengthened at the same time?
TO KEEP READING: The Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill (304-1) (Submission PDF)

Contents

INTRODUCTION

[1] REGULATORY REVIEW WHITEWASHES RISK

WAYLAID: PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSIONER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT CONCERNS
FAULTY POLICY PROCESS
NZEPA CONTRACTOR: COMMERCIAL RELATIONSHIPS IN REGULATED SECTOR

[2] INCOMING NZEPA CEO MUST HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO ASSESS THE UNDERPINNING POLICY AND BILL CONTENT BEFORE IT PROCEEDS

NO, NOT A SHORTAGE OF TOXICOLOGISTS

[3] STAKEHOLDER COI’s UNDERMINE BILL 304-1 CONSULTATION

[4] RISK: BILL TEXT MAY UNDERMINE HSNO PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE

[5] HSNO AMENDMENT BILL SPECIFIC FAILINGS

INCREASING AMBIGUITY OF LANGUAGE
PUBLIC NOTIFICATION COLLAPSE
OVERSIGHT ARCHITECTURE: CONCENTRATED POWER, PUBLIC SCRUTINY CLOUDED
UNDERSTANDING REGULATORY CONCEPTS: WHERE ARE THE DECISION-MAKING CRITERIA LOCATED?

[6] HSNO AMENDMENT BILL: NEW ORGANISMS

ALTERED DEFINITIONS
NZEPA MAY DECLARE A NEW ORGANISM ‘NOT A NEW ORGANISM
NEW CONCEPT: THE ‘VAGRANT’ PATHWAY
MULTIPLE EXTENSIONS OF TIME FOR RELEASE APPROVALS – PERMANENT DEFERMENTS?
SIMPLIFIED PATHWAY: FROM CONDITIONAL TO UNCONDITIONAL RELEASE
LOWERED THRESHOLD FOR ADVERSE/EMERGENCY RELEASE OF NEW ORGANISMS
SIGNIFICANT PUBLIC INTEREST – DISCRETIONARY

[7] NEW ORGANISMS: STATUTE CANNOT UNDERMINE LEGAL PRECEDENT

[8] INCREASED EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY WITHOUT CORRESPONDING GUARDRAILS

[9] NZEPA’S RISK ASSESSMENT MODELS ARE NO LONGER FIT FOR PURPOSE

CONCLUSION: AN INDEPENDENT SCIENTIFIC REVIEW MUST PRECEDE FURTHER PROGRESS

TO KEEP READING: The Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill (304-1) (Submission PDF)

Download

2026 Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Bill (304-1)

INTRODUCTION

Information

Providing scientific & medical information & analysis in the service of the public's right to be independently informed on issues relating to human & environmental health.