Environmental Reporting Bill

I move, That the Environmental Reporting Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Local Government and Environment Committee to consider the bill. In New Zealand our economy is dependent on our environment, and our environmental protection efforts rely on us having a strong economy. Of course, we all as New Zealanders care about whether our popular swimming spots are clean enough to swim in or whether the air we breathe is free from pollution, and we all want to look after our oceans and protect our rich biodiversity. But, at the same time, it is also true that we want a high standard of living; we want affordable houses, power, and food; and we want to see jobs created and the economy growing. In order to protect our environment while encouraging economic prosperity, we need to be able to have an honest debate about the interactions between the environment and the economy, and have a clear picture of what trade-offs and opportunities there are and of the impacts that the choices we make have. Any argument that seeks to present only half the picture does little to advance our understanding.

The Environmental Reporting Bill before the House represents the Government’s commitment to a step change in the way we monitor and report to the people of New Zealand on the condition of our natural environment. It complements other work we are doing on regulation around fresh water and the marine environment and around reform of the Resource Management Act. Collectively, our programme of action will lead to the most significant improvement in our environmental regulation framework since the introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991. To date, environmental reporting on a national scale has been patchy and inconsistent. We are one of only a few OECD countries not to currently require independent reporting on the state of our environment. This bill changes all that.

The bill creates a national-level environmental reporting regime that is regular and robust. It contains measures that will ensure that environmental reports are independent, fair, and accurate. The public will have confidence and certainty about the scope, timing, and quality of New Zealand’s environmental information. That means we can shift the debate from frustrating arguments around data quality to discussions on the issues and long-term trends that affect our environment. The scope of the reports will be comprehensive, going beyond the programme of Environmental Indicator updates that the Ministry for the Environment has produced in recent years. The reports will not cover just the state of the environment; they will also describe the pressures, driving the environmental, trends and the impacts of these trends. This approach is in line with international best practice.

Better information is critical if we want to make better decisions on environmental issues. The pressure, state, impact approach means we will have a broader view of issues affecting our environment, and this will lead to a more informed debate and better options for the public. Every 3 years the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician will be required to publish a report on New Zealand’s environment as a whole, entirely at arm’s length from the executive of the day and from political interference. This synthesis report must describe the state of New Zealand’s environment, pressures that may be causing or have the potential to cause changes to the state of the environment, and impacts that the state of the environment or changes to it may be having on ecological integrity, public health, the economic benefits derived from utilising natural resources, and culture and recreation. It must also describe changes to the state of the environment over time, and how the state of the environment measures against national and international standards.

The bill stipulates that the first synthesis report must be published by 30 June next year. As well as synthesis reports, the bill requires the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician to publish a domain report on one of five environmental domains every 6 months. The domains specified in the bill are air, atmosphere and climate, fresh water, land, and marine. Each domain must be reported on at least once every 3 years. The topics that will be reported on in each domain report and the synthesis report will be prescribed in regulations. Prescribing topics in regulations will ensure that environmental reporting provides necessary evidence for policy making and will improve clarity across the wider system about information needs and data improvement priorities, helping to focus investments in improvements.

Although Ministers will set the topics, topics simply provide a high-level outline of what domain reports will cover. For example, the topics for the air domain could include population health impacts. Statistics will be selected and applied for each topic by the Government Statistician. For example, statistics for population health impacts could include those due to exposure to particulate matter. Rigour is a focus throughout the bill. Topics must be selected on the basis of significance, statistical rigour, and evidence of a strong connection to an environmental state. Reporting must draw on the expertise of the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics New Zealand to ensure statistical integrity and robustness. The bill focuses on reporting the best available data and does not include a requirement to generate information that is not currently in existence. Over time, the certainty provided by the bill will drive improvements in monitoring and data collection.

A key element of the new environmental reporting system is independence from the Government of the day. This is achieved through providing clearly defined roles for the Minister for the Environment, the Minister of Statistics, the Government Statistician, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has a crucial role to play in assuring the public of the performance of the environmental management system as a whole, including the quality and balance of the environmental reports. The bill affirms the role of the commissioner to provide independent commentary on environmental reports and the processes that produce them. Importantly, the bill does not constrain the commissioner’s ability to report on any matters she considers important, as is consistent with her role as an independent Officer of Parliament.

Regulations will set out the topics to be reported on at a high level, and these are to be developed following consultation with the Government Statistician and the commissioner, in accordance with the framework in the bill. The Government Statistician, after consulting the Secretary for the Environment, will determine the statistics to be used to measure each topic and must ensure they accurately represent the relevant topic. The Government Statistician has sole responsibility for deciding the procedures and methods that are to be used in providing statistics for each report. The Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician have a duty to act independently. They must ensure that the results give a fair and accurate representation of what is being reported on.

As well as defining roles, a further measure has been included in the bill that strengthens the independent preparation of environmental reports. A request to disclose information or analysis that will be, or has been, used in an environmental report can be declined if the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician are of the opinion that disclosure would compromise the independence of the report or if the information or analysis is integral to significant findings or conclusions in the report. This clause covers requests made under the Official Information Act and requests made by Ministers and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.

The bill marks a significant change in the way New Zealand will report on its environment. It will ensure that New Zealanders have comprehensive, robust, reliable environmental information that allows us to debate and respond to the environmental issues that affect our country. This bill represents a significant step forward for environmental law in New Zealand, and it is with much pleasure that I commend the Environmental Reporting Bill to the House.

It is with great disappointment that Labour will not be supporting the Environmental Reporting Bill at the first reading, but I do want to thank the Minister for the Environment, Amy Adams, for providing a copy of the bill beforehand. I reiterate to her that we are very committed at the Local Government and Environment Committee to doing whatever we can to allay the concerns that we have. Minister Adams and I actually had a conversation about it, where we talked about some of the issues I was having. I said to her that the purpose of the bill looked great and I did not think there would be any issues. Unfortunately, when we went through the detail of the bill, there were a number of fish-hooks that popped up, which meant that, on balance—and I am not going to pretend it was not a line call, because it was—our concerns about independence, and particularly the role of Government Ministers in choosing what the topics are, meant that we felt we could not support it at the first reading. But we are very committed to working constructively on this bill at the select committee to address some of those concerns.

We also ran it by some outside stakeholders, who agreed with us that these fish-hooks were very real. But this is not at all a slagging of this bill, because I am very pleased to see an environmental reporting bill before the House. Hopefully, we can end up with a credible, robust, independent environmental reporting system that will inform generations to come of the state of the New Zealand environment.

I just want to go into a few of the issues that I think we are going to need to deal with at the select committee. The first is the issue the Minister referred to about the release of information. I understand that with the use of tier 1 statistical reporting there are certain rules around how some of that information can be used, which is absolutely appropriate. We are going to need to do the kind of pointy-headed stuff that select committees are good at. We are going to need to do some work around that tier 1 reporting to make sure that tier 1 statistical reporting is compatible with the way we do environmental reporting. There may be some areas where it is not, but I think those of us who are geeks and like doing that sort of stuff look forward to getting into the detail of that at the select committee.

I am sure we can find a way through to ensure that the information that is currently in the public domain—and I think that is where some of the concern has come in—stays in the public domain. A lot of this environmental information from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and other such organisations is already in the public domain, and we would hate to see it being taken out of the public domain. I accept the Minister’s assurance that that is not the intention of the bill and that there may be instances where that information is sensitive, but I was very pleased to have the assurance of the Minister that there is no intention to remove from the public domain information that is currently there. We will just work through the details of how that appears in the legislation to make sure that that is the effect of the bill.

I want to come to the substantive area of our concern. As I said, when I read the purpose of the bill, which is to create a national-level environmental reporting system to ensure that reporting on our environment occurs on a regular basis and can be trusted by the public as independent, fair, and accurate, I agreed 100 percent. I agreed 1 million percent. That is absolutely what we want. My fear is that the way it is being implemented does not meet the purpose of the bill—in particular, around clause 18, “Regulations”, which states: “The Governor-General may, on the joint recommendation of the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics, by Order in Council, make regulations prescribing—(a) topics to be covered in synthesis reports relating to—” a range of measures and topics to be covered in the domain reports.

My concern is with the level of ministerial involvement in choosing what the topics are. I understand, from the Minister’s comments in her speech, that we will get more information at the select committee about what those topics are and therefore what the risks are in having Ministers so heavily involved. But, with the greatest of respect, I get very nervous when I see things like this being put into regulation, particularly in a bill where independence really is kind of at the core of what it is about—ensuring that these statistics are not seen to be being swayed in any way by the Government of the day, whatever political stripe that Government happens to be. I have always felt that it is much better if we can get as much as we can in primary legislation, so that it is Parliament’s decision and Parliament’s bill, not simply topics decided by a National Government or a Labour Government that a National-led or Labour-led Government would then have to go back to Parliament to get permission to alter in any way. They should be topics decided by the New Zealand Parliament. That is not to say that you cannot have regulation to ensure flexibility around some of the finer detail of that, but to have the topics set entirely by regulation and by Government Ministers could, I think, undermine the credibility of the system.

As I said, when we get to the select committee we will see how real that danger is, but it was something that jumped out at me right away. If you are going to have any kind of credible environmental reporting system, then the topics are going to have to be consistent over time. You cannot be constantly changing the topics that are to be reported on, because then you are not going to have the trend data that you need. The very basis of a system like this is that you are going to be measuring the same things over a long period of time, and that there is going to be very little change in the way you measure things over a very long period of time. If having this done by regulation is an indication that we expect to see a lot of churn and a lot of flux in the things that we are measuring, then I do not think that is going to lend itself to a particularly credible environmental reporting scheme or system. If we know now what the topics are—if the counterfactual is true and we actually know what these topics are that are going to be put into regulation, they are not going to change a lot over time, and there is not going to be a lot of churn and flux around those topics—then why not have them in the primary legislation?

So it seems to me that the worry is that this is indicating that those topics are going to change and we are not going to have consistent reporting, or we are going to be reporting on different things, because, if not, then why would we not put it in the primary legislation? Why would we not make that stuff as clear as possible? These are the long-term things that we are going to be reporting on and these are the topics, and they are not going to change over time, because if they did, that actually undermines the integrity of trend data. So that is where my nervousness over clause 18 comes in.

Again, with the greatest of respect, I also have to say that I appreciate the assurances from the Minister that these regulations are going to be used for the good of the environment. We were given those assurances on the exclusive economic zone legislation as well. We were told that things would not be done in regulation that would take away a community’s right to have a say on offshore exploratory oil drilling, for example. And then what happened, in fact, was that—it is interesting that Minister Adams is sitting next to Mr Phil Heatley; I would love to hear that conversation—Minister Heatley actually promised that communities would be able to have a say through the marine consent process, but that was taken away under regulation.

So I guess this is a case of not looking just at the bill but looking at it in the context of the kinds of behaviour we have seen from this Government around regulation. We have been burnt. We were very burnt over the exclusive economic zone regulations, where promises were made, we were told that these regulations were minor and technical and would only ever be used to ensure the easy running of that regulatory framework, and, in fact, the regulation was used to seriously undermine the regulatory framework. That is another reason why we would like to see as much of this as possible locked down in primary legislation and as little as possible left to regulation, which I actually think is good parliamentary practice as well—as little left to regulation as possible.

There is just one other interesting thing, which again jumped out at us, that I am sure we will look at in the select committee. Clause 7 covers the introduction of economic benefits in a bill that is about environmental reporting. One of the things that will be reported on—and I note that this actually is in primary legislation, so this is not being left to regulation; we have been quite up front and clear that the Government wants this to be reported on—is the economic benefits derived from utilising natural resources. I would question how appropriate it is to have that in this environmental reporting legislation.

Those are our concerns with the bill as it stands. As I said, we will work very constructively in the select committee to address those concerns. Hopefully, we will end up with a bill that we can support, because environmental reporting is something that the Labour Party has supported for a long time. But those issues of ministerial guidance over what topics should be covered is an area of deep concern because, again, with the greatest of respect to the Minister, I think this has been one of the worst Governments for the environment in living memory, quite frankly—one of the worst. I can completely understand concerns that the general public have that when the data comes out, the Government will use its influence to sway what is actually being reported on. That is why this must be seen to be completely independent.

💬 Maggie Barry: Think back to your own administration—36 wells dug without any kind of permits. Disgraceful, Moana.

Let us go through it, shall we. The exclusive economic zone legislation, you want to gut the Resource Management Act, not listening to the Land and Water Forum, mining on conservation land, giving the Minister of Energy and Resources the right to have a say on mining on conservation land, the introduction of economic benefits tests for mining on conservation land that no one else gets—the list could go on and on and on and on. This Government has been an appalling Government for the environment—absolutely appalling. So it is really, really important that an environmental reporting scheme is seen to be completely independent. I do not see how a scheme that has Governments deciding what topics are going to be reported on can be seen to be completely independent.

We will work very, very hard at the select committee to make this better, and we will work constructively, as we always do. Environmental reporting is important. But let us not do it in a half-hearted kind of way. Let us do it properly. Let us get this absolutely right—absolutely right—so that our communities, individuals, NGOs, Governments, and MPs of all political stripes can have confidence that there is no Government influence on what is being reported on, and they can have absolute confidence in the credibility of the statistics provided.

I stand to support the first reading of the Environmental Reporting Bill. I was intrigued by Moana Mackey’s discourse, saying that the Government is in some way interfering with the process because it is deciding what areas are going to be reported on. As it happens, we have decided that the areas to be reported on are air, atmosphere and climate, fresh water, land, and marine, with biodiversity as a theme across all the domains. What we have decided is that it will cover everything. I am not sure whether the Labour Party is upset because we have missed out the spiritual realm, we have missed out the fourth dimension, or we have missed out outer space. We are not reporting on outer space. It is true that Amy Adams has said the environmental reporting will be on the five environmental domains. It covers everything—air, atmosphere and climate, fresh water, land, and marine. I say sorry to the Green Party that it does not include the spiritual realm, it does not include the fourth dimension, and it does not include outer space, but apart from that it does, in fact, cover everything.

This bill creates a national-level environmental reporting system—which, incidentally, the Labour Party never had in the 10 years it was in Government—reporting on the environmental condition of these five domains on a regular basis. It will be independent and trusted by the public as independent, fair, and accurate. I am glad because the reality we have seen in the past, particularly with the Green Party over the last 5 years, is that it will bring statistics from here, statistics from there, statistics from elsewhere and anywhere in the world when that might suit its argument, but very rarely does the Green Party use statistics from New Zealand. I will give you an example from the oil and gas industry. The Green Party never holds up New Zealand’s oil and gas industry’s track record, because that is so very, very good. What it does is it picks out isolated incidents that might occur elsewhere in the world, however rare. It always does that. It never talks about Taranaki and how successful that has been environmentally. It decides to pick out what has happened elsewhere, in other parts of the world.

I would like to thank Amy Adams for bringing this particular piece of legislation forward, because it fulfils a key commitment made in our 2011 environment manifesto. It provides comprehensive, mandatory, and independent environmental reporting. New Zealanders will be better informed about the state of our environment and they will get the information regularly. The plan is that reporting on each of those five domains—fresh water, land, marine, air, and atmosphere and climate—along with biodiversity, will happen at least every 6 months. Every 6 months there will be a release on one of those domains and then, at the culmination of a 3-year period, there will be an overarching report on the five of them and how they interact with each other. So 3-yearly we will get a comprehensive report on each of those five and their interactions, and that is a huge step up from the environmental reporting that has occurred previously, particularly under previous Governments. So I thank Amy Adams for bringing this bill forward now as part of our policy manifesto going into the 2014 election.

I know that a considerable amount of work has been done. I thank the Green Party for its support on the bill. It is supporting it. I am disappointed in the Labour Party. It is not supporting any of National’s good stuff. I am not sure why. I think it just wants to make a point, but the Green Party sees the environmental benefits of us doing this. The Labour Party does not. The Labour members are just sort of opposing it for the sake of it—good for them. The signals they are sending out there to the electorate are a bit unusual—they are kind of a bit all over the paddock—but there is a game plan in there somewhere. There is a game plan in there somewhere. I do not know whether the leader has been consulted on their stance.

💬 Hon Member: Which one?

I do not know whether David Cunliffe has been consulted on their stance—sorry, Mr Cunliffe the press secretary. I do not know whether either of them has been consulted, but it would be a good idea if Trevor Mallard got off his seat, ran upstairs, and told David Cunliffe what is going on down here. The Labour Party is voting against the environment. The National Party is voting for it. The Green Party is voting for it. I understand that New Zealand First is voting for it. Every party in this House is voting for the environment today except the Labour Party, and I do not know why. I support Amy Adams. Thank you, Amy.

I am pleased to be able to follow that member, the Hon Phil Heatley, and, hopefully, I will be able to fill in the blanks that he has left in some of the conversation about the Environmental Reporting Bill. The purpose of the bill, if I can quote out of the general policy statement, is to “create a national-level environmental reporting system to ensure that reporting on our environment occurs on a regular basis and can be trusted by the public as independent, fair, and accurate.” I have no doubt that the Minister for the Environment’s intention is to deliver on that policy statement. I understand that she thinks that this bill will deliver on it. I think that is her intention. I do not think that she would have signed off a general policy statement that set such a clear vision about public reporting if she did not believe that it would happen through this legislation.

I know that some of my colleagues will say that that is not what other people say about her. I know that is true. Guy Salmon, who is a strong contributor to the Bluegreen space in the National Party, was quoted on television saying that Amy Adams is the first Minister for the Environment who has taken environmental standards backwards—the first ever Minister for the Environment to do that. That was a pretty hard line, actually, from a strong National Party person. Leaving that aside, I do not believe that that is the intention of either the Minister or the legislation.

I support the purpose of the bill. The difficulty that I have and the reason Labour is voting against this legislation at this stage is that reading through the details of the legislation, I do not believe that it delivers on that purpose. This is occasionally the case. Generally, the purpose is what determines the voting of a party on an issue. But in this case, if you read through the specifics of this legislation, it is weak, it leaves itself quite open to political manipulation, and it does not have the robustness or the clarity that we would expect to deliver the vision—which is a good one. Independent, fair, and accurate reporting on the state of the environment is hardly an objective that anybody could argue against. If the targets are not in the primary legislation, how can we as a Parliament have confidence in the independence of those targets? Well, actually, we cannot. The Minister has said that we will deal with that in regulation. We have been tricked before, actually, by that approach. If you are talking about a state of the environment report that the whole of Parliament should support, there is no reason at all to not have the targets in the primary legislation. It would make sense.

It is very interesting that there are some targets in the primary legislation, including the economic benefits. Why, in an environmental reporting bill, would the economic benefits be determined as a target in the primary legislation, but the actual environmental standards be left up to regulation? That is a real puzzle, and I hope that the deliberations at the Local Government and Environment Committee enlighten us as to how the Minister came to the conclusion that economic benefits in environmental reporting are so important as to warrant inclusion in the primary legislation, whereas other targets do not warrant being included in the primary legislation.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: Oh, you mean like ecological integrity is not in there?

The Minister should speak up. She has already apologised to me once today. There are very few things that have given me such pleasure.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: I have not.

It is on the public record. I heard her. I have even tweeted it.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: It was on behalf of the Minister.

Oh, of course—it was on behalf of Minister Gerry Brownlee, who suddenly had urgent public business to attend to somewhere else. He announced a winter heating programme for Christchurch. That was very good. He left it up to his poor, hapless Associate Minister to apologise on his behalf.

The problem with this legislation is that it is not clear that it can deliver on the vision. There is certainly some confusion about why there would be targets like economic benefits in the primary legislation but there would not be environmental targets. There are other confusions, which are made even more puzzling by the lack of clarity in the legislation. For example, if we are going to have independence and accountability to the public, as mentioned, when we are talking about water quality, is the standard that is going to be reported to the public on a regular basis—as was mentioned by the Minister and by the Hon Phil Heatley in his contribution—going to be on individual waterways, or is it going to be on an average across the whole country? That actually makes a huge difference to whether it means a toss or not—whether it means anything at all—or whether it is just a spin document to make the Minister of the time look good.

Frankly, regardless of which party is leading the Government, I do not have any time for that sort of approach. We should have a whole-of-Parliament consensus about what the targets are and how they are measured, and then get agreement so that the trends, the accountability, and our progress on the environment—because I am sure everyone wants to make progress on environmental standards—can be very clear. It has long been a practice of this Parliament—and I am a little surprised that the Minister, who was a pretty well-regarded lawyer, has not seen the tradition of this Parliament as appropriate for this legislation—to have as much as possible in the primary legislation and as little as needed in regulations. Again, why would that approach be taken in something that requires targets to be independent and consistent?

Our side will be proposing strongly at the select committee—and I have no doubt there will be a large number of submissions along the same lines—that the targets are debated, agreed, and included in the primary legislation. If a Minister in the future then says: “That target’s not looking too good; I think we’re getting into a bit of bother here.”, the Minister would have to come back to Parliament to have that target changed, not quietly change it in regulation so that when some less than favourable reporting was due, it would not come to the public’s attention. So that will be one of the things that we are looking at having changed in this.

As I said at the beginning, nobody could argue with the approach that I think the Minister is committed to, and that is, for the first time, to have in legislation a national-level environmental reporting system that is independent, fair, and accurate. The principle of this legislation, the vision of it, is well supported by Labour. What we do not have confidence in is whether this legislation in its current drafting is able to deliver on that vision. It leaves us very vulnerable to political manipulation. It leaves us vulnerable to the Minister of the time—and I am not accusing the current Minister of having this as an intent, at all; I do not think that she has. But it leaves a vulnerability that we could use this opportunity to remove and to ensure that the targets are in the primary legislation, that they are agreed to by the whole of Parliament, and that they are the things that we, as representatives of our communities, think are important. If we are going to have independent reporting, then it should be reporting to Parliament and it should be on the targets that are agreed to by Parliament.

There is a tendency of Ministers to set targets that they know in the future will not be problematic politically, and I can understand individual politicians’ vulnerabilities on those points, but it is not a robust process for independent reporting. It is not an accountability that would be to Parliament; it would be an accountability to the political party that is leading the Government of the time. This is long-term stuff that we are talking about here. We are not talking about short-term measures. When you are talking about environmental standards, it often takes a long time to change a particular standard, and consistency in the standards that are being measured, the monitoring, and then the reporting is the most critical thing, so that we as a whole Parliament can look at the trend and say: “Well, clearly, we are doing the right thing. We are heading in the right direction.”, or, if we are not, we would, as a Parliament, determine action that was appropriate to address that.

I think this is an issue where the debate is something that New Zealand is up to. New Zealanders care passionately about their environment. I know that New Zealanders will want to see the independence, the robustness, and the accountability that this legislation could deliver. It is actually something that has been missing on our legislative frame for some time, and I want to commend the Minister for picking it up. She has done a good job on that. I agree with the vision. I do not think that this legislation will deliver it, but, hopefully, changes at the select committee will allow us to support it in the future.

I am pleased to take a call for the Green Party on the Environmental Reporting Bill. New Zealand has lagged well behind international best practice because we are the only country in the OECD without an ongoing commitment in law to regularly monitor the state of our environment, and that is why the Green Party is supporting this bill being referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee. It is a welcome step towards that and towards catching up with the rest of the OECD. But the Green Party has some quite significant concerns about the bill, and our position beyond its first reading will depend on how those concerns are dealt with at the select committee and whether they are actually addressed.

We certainly need to make sure that regular and independent reporting on the state of the environment is guaranteed by law, because our history has shown that Governments can manipulate environmental data if it suits them. It was in 2008 that the Green Party revealed that the then Labour Government had suppressed the final chapter in the 2007 state of the environment report. The suppressed chapter suggested that increased car use, dairying intensification, and over-consumption were driving environmental decline. That chapter concluded that regulation was needed to protect the environment and New Zealand’s clean, green reputation.

The Government of the day did not want to hear this. It did not want New Zealanders to hear that, so the chapter was suppressed until the Green Party found it and released it. That highlighted the need for this bill and independent state of the environment reporting. But there is an even more acute need for this bill because of what this Government is doing. It has declared war on the environment on a number of fronts. We have seen the outstanding values of the Denniston Plateau opened up for mining; an attack on our key environmental law, the Resource Management Act; and big subsidies for irrigators.

So certainly I congratulate the Minister for the Environment on bringing this bill into the House—it has been long promised by National—but what we have got in this bill is a lot less than what was promised in terms of independence. One of the major concerns we have is that the regime that is being proposed is not fully independent. What we are getting is the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics choosing what topics the reporting should cover, the Ministry for the Environment and Statistics New Zealand doing the work, and Parliament’s watchdog the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment being able to comment once the report is published.

The problem is that the bill gives the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics very wide regulation-making powers to set the topics that would be covered in both the occasional domain reports, which are done on a rotating basis every 6 months, and the 3-yearly synthesis report. If we are to have credible and robust environmental reporting, it needs to be independent, and if we are to have a really independent system, we do not think that Ministers would need the substantial regulation-making powers that are set out in clause 18. Those powers include prescribing the topics to be reported on, the pressures that are changing the state of the environment, and the impacts the changes are having. So that gives the Ministers the power, through regulation, to interfere with and restrict the matters that are being reported on and the type of information that will be relevant, and it is another example of the very centralised decision-making that has been a hallmark of this Government.

We are particularly worried because it has been under this Government that we have seen regulation used under the exclusive economic zone legislation to deny the public the ability to have a say on very risky applications for deep-sea oil drilling. We have seen regulation being used again—this is currently out for comment—to deny the public the ability to have say on things like marine dumping and seabed dredging and to make some of those activities permitted.

Not only have we got those regulation-making powers but also we have got the changes that the Government made to the Resource Management Act last year, where the Minister can direct councils and determine what indicators they should be collecting information on to feed through into state of the environment reporting. If we are to have a credible system, Ministers need to be hands-off. That means that those regulation-making powers in clause 18 need to go, and the topics should either be set by the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment or be set in the primary legislation by Parliament. So we will be very interested in the submissions on this point of the bill.

The second major flaw in the bill is that it enables both the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician to withhold any environmental information or analysis that will be, or has been, used in an environmental report if it is integral to that report or if its release could compromise the independence of the report. The thinking here appears to be that the environmental reporting will be similar to the tier 1 statistics with things like GDP, but one of the problems is that this non-disclosure clause covers the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. It cuts across the powers that she has in the Environment Act to request information from Government agencies. So it is undermining the whole independence of reporting and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s powers by ensuring that this non-disclosure clause applies to her as well as to Ministers.

Our concern is that it potentially would allow the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment to block the release of quite considerable environmental trend and state of the environment information that will be being collected to prepare things like the synthesis report. It will also make it potentially impossible for researchers to question the accuracy of published environmental reports and the conclusions that are drawn if they cannot request this information. The bill says that the non-disclosure clause applies “despite any other enactment.” That means there has been a deliberate decision to override the Official Information Act, which is the commitment to open government and freedom of information. That also means that there is no opportunity for the Ombudsman to review the non-disclosure decisions.

The other major area where we have a problem with the bill is that it requires reporting to describe the impact that the state of the environment, and changes in it, may be having on “economic benefits derived from using natural resources:”. Under a progressive Government, that might include an analysis of the financial damage that our polluted rivers are doing to our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand and our marketing platform, but National’s economic policy, with its focus on resource exploitation, makes that sort of analysis unlikely. Our concern is that this provision risks being used to legitimise further environmental degradation and the trading off of environmental quality against short-term GDP and job benefits from big new irrigation dams and increased water takes.

Those three major flaws are what we will be particularly interested in at the select committee and in terms of the submissions from the public. We support the bill going to the select committee because it is a step to give a statutory base to environmental reporting. But we do not see it as being fully independent and fully robust, because of that provision for the Minister to set the topics in regulation and because of the way in which the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s powers to request information have been eliminated with that non-disclosure provision. They are quite significant shortcomings in the bill, which we hope can be addressed through the select committee. The Minister has indicated that on the non-disclosure provision there will be some discussion, but we definitely want to see that provision changed. Thank you.

I am very pleased to speak in the first reading of the Environmental Reporting Bill and very pleased to see that the Greens are supporting the bill, but mystified as to why Labour has chosen to oppose it. I did actually listen to Ruth Dyson’s speech, which was a bit like somebody dancing on the head of a pin as she tried to justify Labour’s opposition to what is actually a pretty good bill, and justifying it on the grounds of it being weak and lacking robustness and clarity. That is when that member lost any clarity in her argument, because, quite simply, I did not hear any—any—robust argument as to why Labour would oppose such a useful and sensible bill. It is quite beyond me, so I will be very—

💬 Maggie Barry: It’s just politics.

Well, it is just politics. Is it just politics? Well, it just seems a shame that Labour is prepared to use the environment, which is something that, apparently, was dear to the party, as a political pawn. Well, that is Labour’s call. Its performance is being judged by a lot of people around New Zealand at the moment.

💬 Maggie Barry: And found wanting.

And found wanting—thank you, Maggie Barry.

I am pleased to see that the Greens are supporting the bill at the moment. Again, I guess it is how you look at things, is it not? You know, either the glass is half full or it is half empty. They talk about irrigation as if it is the Devil’s work—you know, irrigation is the Devil’s work. Yet if they took the time to come down to South Canterbury and have a look at the Ōpuha Dam, they would see not only the economic benefits—absolutely economic; bring it on—but also the environmental benefits in terms of water quality, water clarity, and how our plant and animal ecosystems are all thriving because of the Devil’s work, irrigation, in the Ōpuha Dam. So I do wish that some of the Green members would perhaps—I cannot expect it from the Labour members because they cannot be doing with agriculture anyway. They hate farmers. But I would have expected the Greens to show a little more sense.

The concerns of the Green members that I do take a little bit more notice of are around the robustness of the reporting, so I just want to go through very quickly the process in this environmental reporting. The Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics will be responsible for recommending regulations that set out topics to be reported on. So where is the conspiracy there? I am not seeing it yet. That will be done following consultation with the Government Statistician—that is the numbers guy or the numbers person—and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The left loves the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The left side of the House thinks she is the best thing since sliced bread, but suddenly she is not being seen as independent. I believe that those members have completely lost their heads, actually. Well, here is the thing. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has a robust role under this legislation in checking on the efficacy of these reports—

💬 Hon Amy Adams: She likes the bill.

—and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment likes the bill. So please, please, Labour members, get up, dance on the head of a pin, and tell us just why you are opposing the best environmental reporting regime ever in New Zealand.

Of course, they do not have a very good record on the environment. I remember only too well back in 2007 attending a major water industry conference where a guy from the Ministry for the Environment under the then Labour Government got up and talked about Labour’s water plan of inaction. So, given that history and given that record, no wonder Labour is all at sea with this very good piece of legislation.

The matter before us might come as a bit of a surprise to the National Government, in that New Zealand First, likewise, is not supporting this legislation, the Environmental Reporting Bill. It is surprising that perhaps the National Government has not sought to ask our views about this before—

💬 Hon Amy Adams: I did. I wrote to you and asked for them.

Yes, and I did not provide them.

💬 Hon Amy Adams: No, exactly, but I did seek them.

But you assumed that we supported it, and we did not provide them. So like the changes to the Resource Management Act last week, where the Minister for the Environment was reported as saying that we were supporting those changes, again, that was incorrectly reported. We do support some streamlining and some tweaking of the Resource Management Act, but certainly in terms of Part 2 of the Resource Management Act we do not support it. That is certainly not the position of New Zealand First.

It is interesting when you look back through this. We looked at the Cabinet paper that Nick Smith presented to Cabinet on 4 August 2013 to the Cabinet economic growth and infrastructure committee. It says in that paper, in paragraph 10: “This proposal also reflects the National Party 2008 election manifesto agreement ‘to introduce a new Environmental Reporting Act requiring independent five-yearly State of the Environment Reports as a new function of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’.” That is what the National Party was saying in 2008—that there would be a new function of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Sometime in the interim period between then and 2011 it changed that—because I do not think it was getting quite the right answers from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—and decided that it would do something a little bit different, that it would take some of this outside the realms of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and put it under a different bit of legislation so that the Minister can pull the strings and dictate how he or she wants it. The independent commissioner reports to this House, to Parliament—they do not report to the Government—as do the ombudsmen and as does the Auditor-General, but the National Government decided that it would politicise it and move it more under the Minister’s control.

I will just read out the functions of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. When you are listening to these functions, ask why this would not simply come under the Parliamentary Commissioner. “These functions are drawn from the Environment Act 1986 … and the Commissioner has wide discretion to exercise them. They include: Review the system of agencies and processes set up by the Government to manage the country’s resources, and report to the House of Representatives; Investigate the effectiveness of environmental planning and management by public authorities, and advise them on remedial action; Investigate any matter where the environment may be or has been adversely affected, advise on preventative measures or remedial action, and report to the House; Report, on a request from the House or any select committee, on any petition, Bill, or any other matter which may have a significant effect on the environment; Inquire, on the direction of the House, into any matter that has had or may have a substantial and damaging effect on the environment; Undertake and encourage the collection and dissemination of information about the environment;”—I will repeat that: “Undertake and encourage the collection and dissemination of information about the environment;”—and, lastly, “Encourage preventive measures and remedial actions to protect the environment.”

The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has considerable powers and powers of recommendation to this House in relation to the environment. So why would you not, if you have already got this Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, build or expand that briefing to provide the 5-yearly reports? In 2011 a discussion paper from National proposed that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment would produce a major report on the state of the environment every 5 years. So here we have got a situation where in 2008 National put out its manifesto saying: “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to bring this in.” Then in 2011 it put forward a discussion document saying that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment will produce a report every 5 years on the environment, and that is what we will have.

Then what happens? It all changes, and between 2011 and 2013 National goes away from that and says: “Oh no, no, no! We’re not going to give all this responsibility to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. We’re going to do it under a separate part of legislation, and we will ask her for some input and some auditing and some advice into this reporting, but it will not be the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s sole discretion to provide this information to the Government and to Parliament.” Why is that? The reason is that this Government does not trust the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to independently report both to this House and to the Government, because the Government will not get the answers it wants—it will not get the answers it wants.

So what this is doing, in our opinion, is basically undermining the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. It is taking away the functions from that very independent office and it is making sure that this is done where the Minister can pull the strings and get these 5-year reports according to how the Minister will want them. We have already seen the Minister of Conservation, Nick Smith, getting involved with the Ruataniwha Dam. The Department of Conservation put forward a report, which he did not like the look of, and it went back to be altered so that the Minister got the report, in terms of the Ruataniwha Dam, that suited the Minister. This is a very dangerous area. Ministries are supposed to advise. They are the civil servants. They are supposed to give independent advice to Ministers that is full, impartial, and accurate. In terms of the Ruataniwha Dam, the department was supposed to submit on the basis of its best advice on the matter. The Minister intervened, and the report got watered down and changed.

I can see the same thing happening here in this situation, where the Minister for the Environment will determine every 5 years which of those air, fresh water, and various other elements will be reported on, and if they do not like the look of how the reports are scrubbing up, we are certain that they will want to manipulate them and change them because they would not want the reports to reflect poorly on the Minister or on the Government. If the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was to do the reports and also commission the statistics and do the various other things required under this bill, she would operate on the basis that she is an independent Officer of Parliament. She has wide-ranging powers to investigate environmental concerns, and being independent would mean that she is independent of the Government of the day in her reports to Parliament. That is pretty simple.

Therefore, New Zealand First—and we have considered this and we have looked at this—says: “Well, why did the National Party, over a period of 5 years when it was in Opposition, say it was all very well to work with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment?”. It is all very well when you are in Opposition and you are sitting on the benches over here, but once you are in Government and you want to start manipulating things so that the reports look good, you take it away from that independent function and you take it down this track. We are very suspicious because in hearing from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment over the last few years, it is very interesting how that office has had to go very quiet in this whole area. It has basically made minimal comment in terms of how this is going. We believe, therefore, that basically that office has been constrained in terms of any comment on this, and it would be very interesting to know what pressure has been borne on it.

We have seen the Prime Minister of this country already threaten the Chief Human Rights Commissioner. He has already threatened and said that the funding might be pulled from the Human Rights Commission if this Government does not get the answers it wants, or if the Human Rights Commission puts out reports that the Government is not very happy with. You cannot deny it—you cannot deny it. There were threats made by the Prime Minister in relation to the Chief Human Rights Commissioner and to forward funding for that commission. The same has happened here, I am sure, where there has been an underlying situation where the reports coming out of the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment have not necessarily all been how the Government wanted them, and therefore this Government is moving to ensure that it does not have that commissioner independently able to advise this House, and all members of this House, in an independent manner.

So New Zealand First will be studying this at the Local Government and Environment Committee. We are sure there will be a huge number of submissions. Will the Government listen to those submissions? Who would know? But at the end of the day this is about reporting to Parliament, not to the Government.

I rise with great pride to speak to the Environmental Reporting Bill. I think that what it does is it provides independence, fairness, and accuracy. These, of course, are completely alien notions to the member who has just resumed his seat, Andrew Williams, and to the Opposition parties in general.

As Minister Adams said at the outset, this is a significant change to the way that we report on our environment. I have to express surprise and disappointment at the way the Opposition parties’ members have questioned the integrity of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and who have also said that the Government Statistician is biased. These people ought to think very carefully about what they say. I think it is appalling to judge these two individuals and these two departments in the way that they have.

We need to look at the track record of Labour. The exclusive economic zone is one of the great moments of shame amongst a tsunami of shame that Labour has been responsible for in the environment. I am astonished at how many people believe the myth that Labour is on the side of good environmental reporting or good governance of the environment, because it manifestly is not. To give but one example—in the time that Labour was in Government for 9 long years, 36 wells were drilled without any controls whatsoever. There was no attempt to put any checks and balances around it—no protections, no governance, no regulations. Labour members proceeded to make it even worse by voting down our exclusive economic zone legislation, and they look likely to do it again with this Environmental Reporting Bill.

I will put to the people of New Zealand that Labour, the Greens, and New Zealand First are not at all interested in the environment. This is a piece of legislation that will protect it, and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. I am privileged to take a short call on the Environmental Reporting Bill. I heard comments from across the House that members were not clear on Labour’s reason as to why we are opposing this bill. Can I make it really clear that we are opposing it because it needs strengthening, we are opposing this piece of legislation because it falls well short, and it is our role as parliamentarians in this House that when we feel that legislation is weak at the knees, we need to apply our might to strengthen it.

The purpose of the bill is to create a national-level environmental reporting system to ensure that reporting on our environment occurs on a regular basis and can be trusted by the public as independent, fair, and accurate. I join with my learned colleagues the honourable Moana Mackey and the Hon Ruth Dyson in their contributions on this bill. From our end, the key parts that they raised in terms of their concerns with this bill are quite clear. On reading the bill, I want to add my weight in highlighting those critical areas that I believe need strengthening. Like Moana Mackey, I also want to say to the Minister for the Environment that national reporting, national standards, need to be commended, but the rubber hits the road when we go to implementation. That is one of the concerns I have in reading this bill and also in looking at the behaviour of the National-led Government in putting across similar bills.

Can I highlight a couple of areas that previous speakers on this side of the House have raised. When I look at the purpose of the bill, again we talk about requiring “regular reports on the state of New Zealand’s environment as a whole:”, and I have got no issue there. We “require regular reports on the state of the air, atmosphere and climate, freshwater, land, and marine domains:”—again, I have no issue there. To “ensure that producers of environmental reports act independently and produce fair and accurate reports:”—well, I start worrying about how independent those reports will be.

The other point we talk about in the purpose of this bill is that it is to “ensure that the expertise of government departments is utilised in producing environmental reports:”. Again, we have seen in this House particular ministries—the Department of Conservation and the Ministry for the Environment—being shut down by this National-led Government around the Tukituki catchment proposal. Again, I doubt that we will have that true independence and contestable advice from those particular Government departments.

Of course, the fifth part of the bill’s purpose clause talks about affirming “the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in reporting on environmental reports and the processes that produced the reports.” Again, having been witness to the report that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has provided on water quality and land use, where that goes to one can only guess, but there are some clear recommendations that she has made, and I have yet to see them surface via this National-led Government.

When I look at the parts of this bill, the bits I want to focus on that give me grave concern are when we talk about the synthesis reports. The Minister for the Environment mentioned them in her opening address. In terms of both the synthesis reports and the domain reports, what I have a particular issue with is the use of the words “reasonable efforts”—“reports information that cannot be obtained by using reasonable efforts.” I think you can drive a truck through that terminology—“reasonable efforts”. Again, colleagues on this side will work at the Local Government and Environment Committee to strengthen this. That is one area that I would like strengthened—“reasonable efforts”. We should not allow that discretionary clause, because this is a serious matter in terms of protecting our environment.

The other area in this bill talks about national and international standards. I have yet to see any standards or targets in this bill when it comes to the environment. Of course, we are still waiting with bated breath for freshwater quality management, but I am sure the Minister is dealing with that in due course. Again, these are the concerns that I have when I look at this bill. Is it strong enough? Does it give us the protection of our environment that it so deservedly needs? Again, I wait on the performance of this National-led Government that the proof is in the pudding, and I think there is still a lot more that can be done to this bill.

The other concern that I have in reading the bill is around the role of both the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician. I actually know the current Government Statistician. She is a lovely woman by the name of Liz, and I have worked with her previously. The concern is not about the person, but, again, it is around the over-interference by Ministers on their chief executives in identifying those target areas. Again, if we are to be true to setting robust legislation in this House, this independence not only has to be seen to be delivered but has to be delivered, and I have grave concerns about Ministers directing chief executives in setting these targets. Like I say, I am joining this side in saying that if we work at the select committee level to strengthen that, I am sure that would abate that concern I have.

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the 2nd GLOBE Climate Legislation Summit, in Washington, DC. I have actually just got back in the early hours this morning after a 26-hour flight. For the purpose of this House, can I read out what the global organisation is about: “The Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International) is an international organisation comprising national parliamentarians from over 80 countries” who are committed to finding legislative solutions to the challenges posed by climate change and sustainable development. GLOBE supports legislators in over 40 national chapters, which provide economic, political, and policy capacity to develop and advance legislation as well as monitor its implementation. One of the key points that came out of the many learned deliverances at this conference was that it is not the quantity of legislation that countries produce; it is the quality of legislation.

So I stand on this side of the House and say that we cannot support this bill, but we will work hard in due course when it gets to the select committee. Kia ora tātou.

I am very disappointed to hear that Labour will not be supporting this excellent bill, the Environmental Reporting Bill. I worked with Simon Upton many years ago when he was Minister for the Environment in 1997 or 1998 when we produced the first state of the environment report. I remember a great bit fat—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: He was known as Hansel at the time. Ruth was known as Gretel.

Yes, well, it is good to see the father of the House over there reminiscing about those days. It was a great big telephone book, and a very powerful piece of work that was. We had high hopes and merry hearts that it would be the start of rigorous state of the environment reporting in this country. Of course, history records that Labour took over afterwards and there was a lot of talk and very little action. When Labour finally did do something, there were concerns about interference.

This bill is about getting into the legislation and making it very clear that New Zealanders have credible, robust, independent environmental information set down in legislation so that we know where we are. Once we have a decent basis from which to work, we can improve the quality of our environment. This is a party that actually does this stuff on the environment. Rather than just talking the talk, we walk the walk. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Well, we have heard a lot of faux outrage from the Government benches. I just want to say to Maggie Barry and her colleagues: drop the attitude—drop the attitude—and get used to the fact that we are debating this legislation. If those members want our side to vote for the bill, then it has to reach a certain minimum level of credibility. To be quite honest, this bill, the Environmental Reporting Bill, does not pass that test. This bill does not pass that test.

As Moana Mackey said in the opening salvo from the Labour team, we support the stated intent of this bill. We support the intention to establish an independent, comprehensive environmental reporting system. That is all fine. There is no problem with that. But this bill does not pass muster. It does not measure up in terms of the independence that the bill purportedly seeks. It falls below the minimum level of credibility, and that is why we are not supporting it. I say to members on that side of the House: you can drop the attitude and just get used to it.

We will, as Moana Mackey said, work at the Local Government and Environment Committee to try to improve the bill because we believe that we do need some decent environmental reporting. What the members on that side of the House do not seem to be able to get their heads around is the fact that if this environmental reporting system was set up truly as a creature of Parliament, lifted above the day-to-day political differences in this House and taken out of the clutches of the Minister of the day, then it would have the credibility and the independence that is needed.

If you look at the bill, clause 18, “Regulations”, says: “The Governor-General may, on the joint recommendation of the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics, by Order in Council, make regulations prescribing the topics to be covered in synthesis reports …”. That is the point. That is the argument that we have been making, which National Party members do not seem to be able to comprehend. The very parameters of the report are going to be determined by two of the Ministers of the day. That is what makes this a political creature. If the National Party was truly intending to establish a report that had independence, that was above party politics, and that would be a creature of this Parliament, then it would not have that clause in there. I think that if—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to leave the chair for the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Let me continue with my attempt at an explanation, for the benefit of the members opposite, as to why Labour is not supporting this Environmental Reporting Bill at its first reading, even though we support the stated intention of the bill to establish a comprehensive and independent reporting regime on the environment.

Our concern is that this bill is like so much of what this National Government has brought to the House over the last few years in the environmental area. It is basically window dressing and it falls below the minimum credibility level that we would need to see if we were going to support this bill, even at its first reading.

Where it falls down is in clause 18, where it mandates the Minister of Statistics and the Minister for the Environment to basically decide what topics the report will deal with, and that is, obviously, pretty fundamental. Labour would like to see that kind of decision making taken out of the hands of the Minister of the day and this reporting regime made a true creature of Parliament. I think that if we look at the success of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, if we look at the Office of the Auditor-General, we can see that our democracy is strengthened by this institutional machinery that is part of Parliament rather than more politicised structures that are open to manipulation by the Minister of the day.

In the whole area of measurement and reporting, if we see how this Government has tackled reporting and measurement in the social sector, how it has weakened the social development reporting while it has been in Government, how it has refused to agree on an official measure of poverty, and how, in fact, it has undermined and challenged Statistics New Zealand’s measure of homelessness, we can see how—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Sorry—your time is all used.

The Green Party loves New Zealand and we want to look after our precious places and our people. New Zealanders know that we all benefit from clean rivers that our kids can swim and fish in. We all benefit from clean air. At the moment, air pollution contributes to our high rate of respiratory disease in this country. We in New Zealand all benefit from our “clean, green” brand, particularly businesses that are selling goods and services overseas. Our “clean, green” brand has underpinned our competitive advantage and the success of some of our biggest exports, including our dairy exports and our tourism. If we do not look after our environment, we will not be able to look after our economy and we will not be able to look after our people.

As any small-business owner knows, what you measure is what you care about. So it is incredibly important that we measure the right things and that we report them transparently and independently so that we can make changes to ensure that we continue to look after our natural environment, which is so critical to the success of our economy.

The Green Party will be supporting this Environmental Reporting Bill at least at this first reading. We have serious concerns and misgivings about the bill. Of course, the goal is a mandatory state of the environment reporting regime and it would be wonderful if that was achieved in a way that actually guaranteed transparent reporting that is independent from Government interference. As we have found, it is not unusual for Governments to manipulate environmental data if the data does not suit them.

In 2008 the Green Party revealed that the Labour Government had suppressed chapter 13 of the 2007 state of the environment report. The suppressed chapter had suggested that increased car use, dairy intensification, and over-consumption were driving environmental decline. It concluded that regulation was needed to protect the environment and our clean, green reputation. Of course, the Government of the day did not want to hear this because it was not convenient and it would mean changing the status quo to get a better outcome in the long term, in the future. The Green Party is here to look after the long term, to look after our planet and our people in the long term. Of course, because the Government of the day suppressed the chapter and did not want New Zealanders to hear about it, the Green Party found it and released it.

The need for independent reporting of the state of the environment is even more acute with this current Government because it has consistently made decisions that are not in the interests of our long-term environment. Just a few examples of its poor record on the environment include the gutting of the water provisions in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2011. Of course, the Green Party fought hard to get the Land and Water Forum to come to conclusions. It made some great recommendations, but the Government did not take them up.

For climate change the Government set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. Of course, its own departmental data shows that by 2028 we will have increased our greenhouse gas emissions threefold over our 1990 net emissions.

This is a Government that talks a lot about the environment, but the reality is that it is undermining the environment at every turn. So we have great reason to doubt whether it is actually proposing a bill that will lead to true independent reporting on the state of the environment that is not subject to manipulation from the Government.

Our specific concerns, which we will be watching very closely through the House, include the fact that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s role has now been reduced to one of simply commenting, rather than her office being funded to actually do the state of the environment reporting. We have concerns about the potential chilling effects of the non-disclosure provisions and the potential for political influence, because the bill requires the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics to set out through regulation the topics to be reported on. Reporting on impacts on the state of the environment must include an assessment of the economic benefits derived from resource use, which will, of course, privilege resource use over protection of the environment. And statistical measures promoted by Statistics New Zealand for reporting may not be the best indicators of the state of the environment.

So the Green Party will, as always, be watching this bill very, very closely as it progresses through the House and we will be standing up for our natural environment, which underpins our economy and looks after our people. Thank you.