Between the lines: Containers carry our nemesis

For reasons related to food, commerce, sport and even homesickness, New Zealand now hosts a vast army of pests.

Thanks to a lack of foresight over the past 150 years, million of dollars have to be spent each year to control invaders, including possums, stoats, rats, rabbits, deer, wasps, old man's beard, wild ginger and gorse.

Demand to bring in new plants, animals and insects continues, and unplanned arrivals occur more often.

We export further afield, and import from almost as many far-flung nations as have a port - some of them not too concerned about insect hitchhikers in containers.

Border surveillance staff at our ports randomly check about 20 per cent of incoming containers, of which 10 per cent need further attention, including fumigation.

Dairy Board executive Chris Kelly said recently that those statistics made "it painfully clear the nation is engaged in a very large game of Russian roulette."

Only recently the list of escaping creatures has grown to include snakes, scorpions, moths, mosquitoes, weevil and the Varroa bee mite - the creature beekeepers expect to cost millions more dollars yet.

Such invasions are warnings to be ignored at our peril, Mr Kelly says, and with the agricultural industries often the first to feel a pest's economic bite, no wonder he also seriously proposes that if there had to be a choice between having an effective Air Force, Navy or Army and efficient border security, the latter should win hands down.

Foot and mouth disease would shatter the $8 billion dairy industry and the $1.5 billion beef industry, as would other threats such as mad cow disease, viruses, bacteria and pasture pests. The clover weevil spreading through the North Island is already costing affected farms around $20,000 a year.

And, while the agricultural sector might be the first to be stung, the fact that more than 65 per cent of our foreign exchange earnings come from primary industries means the rest of the nation's wealth is also on the line.

That makes border security everybody's responsibility.

But that is not how beekeepers, particularly, believe it is viewed. The Government's decision not to try to eradicate the bee-killing Varroa mite left many of them feeling hurt and betrayed.

An anguished National Beekeepers Association executive member, Lin McKenzie, said that present thinking on biosecurity seemed to be "we will teach you how to live with what you now have and then leave you to it."

Understandably, he expressed a wish for another philosophy - "keep them out at all costs, but do whatever needs to be done to knock down those that get past."

But while the risks are increasing at a pace, the resources to combat them are not.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's biosecurity goal includes, in its own words, to develop "Government-agreed risk management parameters that give an appropriate level of protection and that meet New Zealand's international obligations."

Its deadline for deciding what protection our borders should have is 2010.

Ten years. Ten years to figure out what defence should be mounted against an invading army.

New Zealand's leaders seem happy to condone talkfests while hoards of pests chew up, smother and kill the country's prosperity.