Environmental Reporting Bill

Members, when we were last debating the Environmental Reporting Bill, Dr Megan Woods had the call and she has 7 minutes remaining to speak, if she wishes.

It is my great pleasure to take the remaining 7 minutes. If I can recap from where I was last time, what happened in the last episode was that Labour was incredibly disappointed that it cannot support this bill. We support the purpose of it, which is to have independent environmental reporting. Having independent environmental reporting would bring us in line with what happens internationally, and, in fact, New Zealand is the only country in the OECD not to have such a system in place. But, as I previously outlined at the beginning of my speech, we cannot support this bill because this bill does not have independent environmental reporting.

This is another example of how this Government has lost its way. It is out of touch and does not recognise the need that when we say that we need independent environmental reporting, we should actually have independent environmental reporting, and we should not have Ministers of the day making those decisions instead of having independent bodies doing so. That is something the Labour Party will be more than happy to abide by when we are in Government in 2017. It will not be our Minister for the Environment and our Minister of Statistics making those decisions, because we believe, wholeheartedly, that this is too important, and this is, actually, something that should sit outside politics. We should have that level of independence from ministerial control when deciding what the decisions are to be.

We are not the only people to think that. In fact, most of the submitters who came to the Local Government and Environment Committee—the vast majority of submitters who came before the select committee—shared our view on this.

If I could turn to some of these submissions, there is the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment herself, who did not believe that the bill, as presented by the Government, did offer that level of independence. A number of speakers and submitters before the select committee suggested that it should be the Parliamentary Commissioner who made this final judgment on what it is that should be reported on, but Dr Wright made it very clear that she did not think that that was actually a satisfactory function for her to fulfil, given her other statutory function within this piece of legislation in terms of offering the commentary and that level of oversight. But what she did say was that the way in which this bill is currently before us in the current bill that we have means that the topics would not be chosen independently. Giving the selection of topics to the Government of the day creates the opportunity for political interference. For instance, it would be possible to avoid reporting on an environmental topic that is important but also controversial.

I think that we have a duty to be good legislators in this Parliament, that we have a duty to produce legislation that does remove those risks from our statute book, and that if we purport to say that we want independent environmental reporting that is going to put us in line with the rest of the world, we actually deliver that. It was not only Dr Wright, it was people who understand these issues incredibly well who also came before us and said it.

A very full submission from the Environmental Defence Society went through a number of aspects of the bill. What it had to say on the issue of independence was very telling. It said: “It is not clear how the requirement for the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics to recommend regulations specifying topics to be covered in synthesis reports and domain reports … sits alongside this duty for the Secretary and Government Statistician to act independently or the objective of independent environmental reporting.” It also said that “Allowing Ministers to select topics to be covered in synthesis reports and domain reports will politicise what should be an independent process as topic selection could be utilised to introduce bias into environmental reporting”.

When you are getting learned advice such as this on a piece of legislation, it really does require a committee to take notice. Unfortunately, that was not the case. This was not something that Government members of the committee were willing to entertain. That is the reason why I am introducing Supplementary Order Paper 74, which seeks to amend clause 18 of the legislation to replace the Ministers. It seeks to remove the Ministers from making the decision—that being the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics—and replace them with the secretary for the department and the Government Statistician so that you have the removal of the potential for political interference.

No one is alleging that a given Minister is going to politically interfere. What we are saying with our amendment, and why I am hoping that members will consider supporting this amendment, is that as legislators we should be removing that potential. We should not be putting on to our statute book the very opportunity for there to be bias and political interference in something as important as making decisions around what it is that we are reporting on. There should be decisions made on the state of the environment, not on what is going to be politically expedient or will avoid a potentially politically embarrassing situation for a Government. That is what is going to happen if the Ministers are left to make the decision.

Really, what we have to have is a Government that will stand back and look at the big picture. Instead, this is yet more evidence of a Government that has lost its way, a Government that is arrogant, and a Government that is out of touch and does not understand the very purpose of this legislation. In its 2008 election manifesto it promised us independent environmental reporting. When I began my speech—well, it seems an age ago now—I said that National promised this in its 2008 manifesto, but then it also promised us a surplus in that 2008 manifesto. So I guess that the race for environmental reporting is at least before this House, but National has yet to produce a surplus. That is yet another broken promise from that 2008 manifesto.

I urge Government members to consider an amendment that will allow for truly independent environmental reporting. Thank you very much.

Debate interrupted.