Traveller risk still too high: HortNZ

Horticulture New Zealand says the Ministry for Primary Industries' annual 'Passenger Compliance Monitoring Report' shows the country's biosecurity risk from travellers is still too high.

"MPI quite clearly says in their report that they have not met their compliance target. This has to be a concern for New Zealand horticulture and the wider primary industries," HortNZ chief executive Peter Silcock says.

"Especially as the number of passengers and volumes of goods coming in to the country are only going to increase, as the world recovers from the global financial crisis."

Five years ago the government agreed that MPI could remove the requirement to inspect or x-ray screen the baggage of eligible arriving Australian and New Zealand passengers.

This requirement was replaced with the use of a range of biosecurity risk management tools and a compliance output standard: MPI must demonstrate that 98.5% of all passengers are compliant with biosecurity requirements by the time they depart the airport.

The report just released shows the results of testing of passengers after they've been through the regular border protection checks. This year's report showed a compliance rate of 96.9%.

"That means they are still 1.6% off the target and given that they inspect 4.9 million people, that's almost 80,000 more people leaving the airport with risk goods than their own target allows.

"We want to encourage and acknowledge the hard working border staff, we know they care about these figures and about our nation's protection," Silcock says/

"But they need to be supported by government to ensure they have the resources to do their jobs properly and reach the government's compliance target."