Environmental Reporting Bill

I move, That the Environmental Reporting Bill be now read a second time. I want to begin by thanking members of the Local Government and Environment Committee, particularly the chairperson, Scott Simpson, and the Officers of Parliament Committee, for the very sensible refinements that the select committee has made to this important bill. This bill has its origins back in National’s Bluegreens—in our efforts to improve the integrity of New Zealand’s “clean, green” brand. It was part of the policy that we put to the electorate and I am pleased to be now in Parliament seeing it progress through into legislation. We are actually the only OECD country to not have a statutory framework for environmental reporting. It is an anomaly, out of step with New Zealand’s “clean, green” brand. This new Act will rightly put our environmental management under scrutiny and improve the integrity of New Zealand’s brand.

We should not underestimate the power of open reporting systems to improve performance. I remember in my first term of Parliament New Zealand had had 30 years of pretty appalling management of New Zealand’s public finances. The Public Finance (Fiscal Responsibility) Amendment Act, requiring Governments of whatever political flavour to be absolutely upfront with the electorate about the state of the Government’s books, has been a game-changer in moving New Zealand from having some of the worst public accounts in the world to having some of the best. I would also make the consistent analogy with education. Members on this side of the House, as part of our policy agenda, introduced the national standards legislation, which equally requires open and transparent reporting of how well our children are doing at school, because we believe that providing integrity and honest reporting actually helps improve performance. It has been interesting in the years since 2009 to watch in both the National Certificate of Educational Achievement results and those national standards a consistent improvement in the way in which children are learning maths, learning to read and write, and learning those basic standards that are so important to New Zealand achieving better in that area. This Environmental Reporting Bill is about an equally significant area, where I think New Zealanders want us to do better as a country.

Having standardised reporting in areas like water quality, air quality, how well we are doing in protecting our biodiversity and the survival of important species like the kiwi, and what sort of job we are doing in managing our oceans—all those areas—in my view is a very important step. I am proud to be part of a Government advancing that step. It is part of a broader role in terms of what we have been doing as a Government in strengthening the role of the institutions of, firstly, the Ministry for the Environment as the policy maker, the environmental equivalent of Treasury’s role in the economic space, and, secondly, the Environmental Protection Authority, an agency that was created by this Government to act as the effective independent regulator, not too different to the role that is played by the Reserve Bank in the economic sphere. Finally, just as we have an auditor, we also have an important role for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, whose job it is to provide for the overall independence of our system of environmental management. It is my view that this bill will actually strengthen those institutional structures, which will also play out well for our country.

I want to talk to two controversies in the process of the bill’s being processed, to set the record straight. There are, unusually, parties in this Parliament that I thought would support a good bill like this, which is absolutely well intended and is best practice by OECD standards. However, a great deal has been made of clause 18. This is the provision that sets down which topics will be reported. The controversy with which members in the Green Party and the Labour Party justify their opposition to this bill is that somehow there is something wrong with the Government’s Minister of Statistics and Minister for the Environment setting the topic areas. The first thing I would point out is that the legislation makes plain the five domain areas that those topics must cover. The bill goes further, and requires a process of public consultation with the Government Statistician, with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and with the public, iwi, and local authorities about each of those topics.

My challenge for members who want to criticise clause 18 is this: the exact parallel provisions exist in the finance area. So, indeed, if it comes to measuring things like GDP, the Consumers Price Index, or the labour index, there is no more role here for the Minister of Statistics and the Minister for the Environment than there is in those parallel areas. So why is it that they want to have a separate set of rules when it comes to environmental reporting? I have never heard a member of the Opposition ever raise any questions of integrity in the economic space about the equivalent of clause 18. Nor did they do so in their 9 years in Government. So why would they do so here? I simply say to this House that it is crude oppositional politics rather than actually trying to be constructive.

The second issue that has been raised is why the bill does not provide for greenhouse gas emissions, which, of course, are important to report. There is a very simple explanation. New Zealand is a member of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It requires every single year that greenhouse gas emissions be reported.

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: You wouldn’t know it. Why’d you wreck the ETS, Nick? It’s going to be your legacy, mate.

It might be a lesson for David Cunliffe that during the 9 years of the previous Government greenhouse gas emissions rose very steeply. Actually, I would much rather, Mr Cunliffe, have our record on greenhouse gas emissions than the previous Clark Government’s, which was all talk and no action. But my point is this, to Mr Cunliffe and to members opposite: the framework convention is enlisted in legislation—the Climate Change Response Act. It requires every single year for us to both report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and to table in this Parliament New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. So why would you insist that there be another Act of Parliament to repeat those same reports? Are members opposite really saying that the very robust process of independent, country auditing of greenhouse gas emissions is not good enough for them? If so, again I challenge them and ask: why was it, then, good enough for them in Government? We are a party of minimising bureaucracy, reporting information accurately, and doing it once and not having repeat information in one document after another. And in my view the provisions of the bill in that regard are absolutely sensible.

The last point I wish to make in respect of the role for Ministers and for Government is let us not pretend there is not a cost with environment reporting. The reality is that if we are going to pass regulations requiring regional councils, district councils, and ministries to collect environmental data—it is actually quite expensive to get good quality data. The view that is put by Opposition parties, that somehow parties that are independent of the Government can make decisions about spending, breaks one of the fundamental rules of the way in which our system of government works, and that is that it is only the elected Government of the day that can commit to expenditure, including the expenditure on the collection of environmental data. The system that is provided for in this bill is absolutely transparent, and if Governments of whatever political colour attempt to misrepresent or not collect robust environmental data on the basis of budgetary constraint, it will be as transparent as the day is light. That is proper and that is why the bill is drafted in this way.

This is a good bill. This is a bill that will ensure that New Zealand does not just brand itself internationally as being clean and green. This is a bill that will give honest, open reporting on just how we are doing. It is the sort of bill that a National Government supports. We are a practical Government that wants New Zealand achieving economically and educationally, as well as in this environment space, and we are proud to be a party that is making this significant change to our legislative as well as our constitutional framework—how we manage those natural resources that are so important to this country.

It is not with pleasure that I rise to give this speech. Labour will be opposing this legislation. It is not a position that we wanted to be in. We did oppose the bill at its first reading. My predecessor in the role of Labour spokesperson on the environment, Moana Mackey, made it very clear that we wanted to work very hard during the select committee process to bring about the changes that meant we could support it. I think there are very few people in the world who would not support the stated purpose of the bill, but it is when you get into the detail of the bill that the problems emerge.

As Dr Smith set out in his contribution, this is something that has been on the books of the National Government for a very long time. In fact, it was promised in its 2008 election manifesto that it was going to introduce environment reporting legislation that required independent 5-yearly state of the environment reports. Well, I guess that us being here tonight means that perhaps this Government has beaten itself to a surplus in terms of the Environment Reporting Bill, because that was also promised in the 2008 manifesto.

What this bill does not deliver is independent reporting. For Dr Smith to say that he challenges parties to justify why it is that it needs to be different—well, I would like to hear from a Government contributor on this bill as to how it is that they disagree with the vast majority of submitters, many of them very, very deep in the detail of this bill, who had grave concerns about the independence of the mechanisms that are set up under this legislation. We heard from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who had grave concerns around whether or not this bill would deliver independent decision making around which topics are to be covered.

I am of course referring to clause 18 of this bill, which is the central cause of Labour’s inability to support this bill. You simply cannot have the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics making the decisions on what is to be reported on and claim that you have independent reporting. What we have consistently asked for, and will be asking for again, is that that decision be in the hands of the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician—who does consult with other people such as iwi, and such as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment—and that they arrive at what is to be reported on.

The Minister who has spoken was quite correct. We are the only country in the OECD not to have this. We really wanted to be able to support this legislation and to put in place robust and independent environmental reporting.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.