Financial Review Debate — Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment

Tēnā koe, Mr Chairperson. Ka nui te mihi ki a koe i tēnei rā. I note that the Local Government and Environment Committee confirmed that there were no matters to bring to this Committee. Unfortunately, I disagree. I think we should also use the financial review process to highlight the strengths, not just the weaknesses, of our current entities, and in that regard the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is one we should highlight.

As an independent Officer of Parliament, the commissioner reports to Parliament as a whole, not to a Government Minister. This is very different, as I understand it, from other environmental agencies such as the Ministry for the Environment and the Environmental Protection Authority, which both report to, and have their budgets set by, a Government Minister. The commissioner therefore has a unique opportunity to provide Parliament with independent advice on any matters that may have any impact on the quality of our environment. The mission of the commissioner is to maintain and improve the quality of the New Zealand environment by providing robust independent advice that influences decisions.

As a party committed to the kaupapa of kaitiakitanga, we see investment in protecting our primary ecosystems as vitally connected to future economic prosperity for the benefit of future generations. In our approach we promote renewable energy - efficient marae, communities, towns, and cities as the basis for economic development, and the primary foundation must be to protect Papatūānuku as the key to our future.

The commissioner pays particular attention to environmental problems that are irreversible, cumulative, and accelerating. Climate change ticks all of these three boxes and is the greatest environmental challenge the world faces. We appreciate the insights that the commissioner has shared with us. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has offered particular value in profiling the specific trade-offs that must be decided upon, such as the expansion of dairy farming versus the goal of maintaining and improving water quality. We submit that the inclusion of the mana o te wai supports the construction of a decision-making framework in which there is, as there should be, a strong presumption in favour of water quality. We are encouraged by the leadership the parliamentary commissioner offers in this regard.

It is through our positive observations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment that we are promoting the concept of a parliamentary commissioner for the Treaty. A commissioner, from our perspective, would have a lot of tie-overs. A Treaty commissioner would be required to report annually to Parliament on the status of whānau and to monitor State sector progress in improving outcomes for whānau. A Treaty commissioner would also be required to proactively review and monitor progress of Treaty settlements, as well as the performance of the Office of Treaty Settlements and the Crown’s commitment to the Treaty.

Similar to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, we would hope that they would look to result areas. So our position is that a Treaty commissioner would have specific roles that would see them looking at things such as developing a result area for whānau that is measurable and for which we can hold chief executives, for example, to account. We would want services that are visible, responsive, and organised around whānau, and that policy provided to Cabinet and all bills tabled in the House be required to demonstrate the impact of the policy on whānau and that Treaty relationship. Only from this can a model of justice that gives fair weight to the rights and needs of all people be derived. That is really important.

So we would look to require an annual report to Parliament, like the Commissioner for the Environment provides, on the progress of things like the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in facilitating the right of Māori to preserve, evolve, and transform their ways of life. We would introduce a requirement for Government departments and Crown entities to report annually on outcomes for Māori. Maybe another key deliverable might be achieved in conducting a Treaty audit across Government departments. The audit would include the effectiveness of Māori-specific advice put forward by departments, including assessment of the various mechanisms for presenting such advice, whether it be to Māori focus units, wāhanga Māori, or a deputy secretary for Māori, etc. So the annual accounts of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment show the measures—

I am pleased to take a call on the review of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is an independent environmental watchdog for this Parliament and the public. With a total of only 20 staff and a budget of around $2.62 million, it is the smallest of the Offices of Parliament. It is very cost-effective. The Green Party would like to see it better resourced so that it can undertake more investigations of the quality that it has done recently into a wide range of environmental processes, issues, and agencies.

As Te Ururoa Flavell noted, its mission is to maintain or improve the quality of New Zealand’s environment by providing robust independent advice that influences decisions. Certainly, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is providing robust advice and quality reports; the problem is that the Government is not listening. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has provided quite extensive advice on the Government’s changes to the Resource Management Act and has said that that Act should not become an economic development Act, which, of course, is what the Government is proposing with its changes to the heart of the Act—the purpose and principles in Part 2—by stripping out some of those key environmental principles. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s advice was not to do that, yet the Government has not taken that off the table.

Then we see that in 2011 the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment did a very comprehensive investigation into the use of 1080. She confirmed how little the Department of Conservation was doing in terms of controlling animal pests on the conservation estate. The Department of Conservation last year spent only $18 million on controlling rats, stoats, possums, and other animal pests. It controls those pests on only one-eighth of public conservation land. That shows that this Government is not serious about protecting our native plants, wildlife, and wild landscapes, even though we have an extinction crisis in New Zealand. The Green Party values our native plants and wildlife. It would invest in doing predator control over a much larger area of conservation land.

The other area where the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment is not succeeding in its mission because the Government has blocked its ears is in water quality. Last November the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment did a very comprehensive report on land use and nutrient pollution. It was a big report. It was underpinned by substantial research by the Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust and others, and it showed the very strong link between land-use change and water pollution—the fact that where you are getting this extensive change from forestry and from dryland farming to more intensive agriculture like dairying you get more water pollution. That report showed that the amount of nitrogen that was entering rivers every year in most regions would continue to increase.

The Green Party wants rivers that we can swim in. Yet what has the Government done with this major report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, which shows that in my own region of Canterbury the burden of nutrients on Canterbury’s rivers, lakes, and streams would increase by 45 percent between 1996 and 2020? What has the Government done? It has not come out with strong limits on nutrients in its proposed changes to the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management. No, it has come out with very weak limits.

So you have got New Zealand’s eminent freshwater scientists backing up what the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was saying in her report—that we needed to set much tighter limits on nitrate because otherwise we would end up with rivers that had more nitrate in them than the eight worst rivers in the OECD, that we would end up with more nitrate than is found in the Yangtze River in China—yet what did the Minister for the Environment say? She said that the Freshwater Sciences Society, New Zealand’s leading freshwater scientists, was simply wrong when it highlighted that we were going down the track of China and the Yangtze River.

We in the Green Party value fresh water. We want strong rules for land-use management so that we are not seeing nutrients sliding off the land into our aquifers and into our rivers. We want a charge on the commercial use of water for irrigation. We would implement the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. We would take seriously her report showing the burden that allowing increased expansion of dairying is putting on our rivers.

The Government needs to look much more closely at the advice in the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s reports. It needs to avoid burdening our environment with the debt that it is creating through its stand-off land-use controls.

I take a call on the financial review of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The Local Government and Environment Committee report is only four lines “and has no matters to bring to the attention of the House.” But Dr Wright is doing important work and I would like to touch on some of that from the time under review and the current operations.

She has produced an important report—an update on water quality in New Zealand. As previous speakers have said, New Zealand’s water quality is in an appalling state. We have a clean, green reputation, so how can we let our waterways deteriorate so rapidly? Our country’s own spirituality, that of wairua—that the blood and bones of our ancestors flow through our rivers, lakes, and streams—implies that we would have great respect for our water. But the reality is that our rivers, lakes, and streams are becoming heavily polluted. One needs only to look at the Manawatū River and, in my area, the Kaituna River. I have gone down that river. I have taken photos. It has been quite amazing because the real pollution starts as soon as the dairy farming starts. In about the last 15 kilometres of the river you have estuaries and streams running into it where it says “No human contact”. In Dr Wright’s report she touches on some of that pollution. How can our waterways be so polluted? The intensification of dairy farming is one of the main contributors to our polluted waterways, and we urgently need to do something about it. Where is the funding? Where is the teeth behind legislation? We need to take note of Dr Wright’s report.

I also touch on the point regarding the current operations within the scope of this debate. Dr Wright wrote to members in parties a month ago regarding the Environmental Reporting Bill, which has subsequently been introduced. She made the point that if the bill is passed in close to its current form, the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment will need significant resources to discharge the new functions arising from the bill. So when we come to consider the Environmental Reporting Bill, this Parliament will need to pay close attention to the allocation of resources to the commissioner.

In closing I would like to make two points. One is that the Officers of Parliament, including Dr Wright, have their budgets set by one select committee, the Officers of Parliament Committee, and have their financial review conducted by a different one, in this case the Local Government and Environment Committee. The Officers of Parliament are the only entities treated in this way. All the ministries and departments have their financial reviews done by the same committee that reviews their estimates. We can cast our eyes to the problems faced by the Office of the Ombudsmen when its chronic underfunding did not get proper attention for some time. So I hope that we might be able to find a solution. This might involve moving the financial reviews to the Officers of Parliament Committee. That may be a better way.

Report noted.

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet