Environmental Reporting Bill

I am pleased to stand again to take my 4 minutes on the Environmental Reporting Bill. This is an excellent bill. I just want to recap a little bit about the actual bill itself, given that it has been a whole week since we have been away on an adjournment break. I just want to bring it all back and give a bit of an overview on the bill itself.

This bill creates a national level environmental reporting system. It ensures that reporting on our environment occurs on a regular basis and that it can be trusted—[Interruption]

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! I apologise for interrupting the member. There is too much noise both in the Chamber from members leaving and also from the gallery. If people wish to leave, I would be grateful if they did so more quietly.

As I was saying, the report can be trusted by the public because it is conducted by an independent, fair, and accurate person. I will talk a little bit more about that particular person.

The provisions of the bill require reports from five key domains, and they are atmosphere, climate, air, freshwater, and marine domains. These are set out, as I said, by independent reviewers, and they are the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician. They will also be responsible for making sure that there is a synthesis report that will look across domains at trends and interactions, once every 3 years. It also ensures that the producers of our reports are independent. That is what I was saying about the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment. It also allows our Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who holds a very important independent role, to be able to give some strong analysis and review on the reports being produced.

When I last stood here I talked about the marine environment, and I talked a little bit about the exclusive economic zone legislation that we are putting in. This is making sure that we take out the potential risks and activities within the marine environment, like petroleum exploration, seabed mining, marine energy generation, and carbon capture development, while making the Environmental Protection Authority responsible for consenting and enforcing these activities, which is all part and parcel of the water domain, which I spoke about quite in depth the last time I spoke in this debate.

Finally, I just want to talk about the air domain. This is really important. Just recently I was in Christchurch at an event hosted by the Electricity Networks Association. They talked about the various things that they are doing within the provision of cars run by electricity. This is actually helping to reduce emissions into the environment. They also showed us where they proposed to put, I suppose, all their plug-in areas—instead of petrol stations—that electric cars can park up in to be recharged so they can make the journey. That is from the top of the North Island all the way to the bottom of the South Island.

I believe that this is a very good bill. It is a strong bill. It is the first time that we have had a bill that looks at our environment. It has a step change that we implemented in 2011, and I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

The next call is a split call. James Shaw—5 minutes.

I rise to speak on the Environmental Reporting Bill. The Green Party would have liked to be able to support this bill because we do suffer in this country from a lack of information about the state of our environment. We did support the referral of the Environmental Reporting Bill to the Local Government and Environment Committee. Unfortunately, we are not able to support the bill in its later stages because of the lack of independence over who is going to be determining what gets reported on.

I started my career at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the UK, where we were starting to look at non-financial indicators of reporting, and that included environmental capital, natural capital, social capital, intellectual capital, and so on. What was critically important was that the public and investors actually understood that the criteria that were being reported against were independent and not determined by the company that was being reported on. This bill kind of fails that standard.

One of the previous speakers on this bill did say that they felt that it is better to be doing something than nothing, and given that we have such woeful inadequacy around our reporting at the moment, that is not an unreasonable argument to make, except that doing something like this and enabling Ministers to be able to determine what gets reported on is actually worse than doing something. It is a bit like the Government’s approach to climate change. You see, having an emissions trading scheme enables the Government to say: “We’re doing our bit. We’ve got an emissions trading scheme.” But given that actual emissions are increasing, and will increase by net 48 percent by 2020, it is actually saying: “Well, it’s OK. We’re doing our bit. We’ve got in place an emissions trading scheme. We’re one of the world leaders.” But if your actual emissions are increasing, then the policy has no impact and you might as well not do it. It is merely a smokescreen.

Unfortunately, because of clause 18 in this bill, we cannot support it through to the later stages. There are a number of options to solve this. One is that the Government Statistician could simply decide what the areas to be reported on are going to be. Another option is that the areas that are going to be reported on could actually be laid down in law. I have a member’s bill in the ballot at the moment called the Public Finance (Sustainable Development Indicators) Amendment Bill, which actually covers a number of different areas that would be laid down in legislation, if we were interested in actually having an independent set of criteria where we said: “Well, these are the things that we ought to be reporting on.”

We can only have credible reporting of any kind, including environmental reporting, if it is independent and free from the interference of Ministers. Unfortunately, this bill does not do that. The Minister here actually does have full control over what gets reported. I think that the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee, during his speech on the bill earlier, said that this is exactly the same as in our financial reporting. It actually is not. What gets reported in our financial reporting is actually laid down in law.

I am sorry to say that we are unable to support this bill. We did support it through to select committee. We note that there were well over 300 submitters, and the vast majority of them talked about this matter of independence. I think that if this was an education report, we would have to finish with the words “must try harder”. With that, I am afraid that the Green Party will not be supporting this bill through to its next stage.

I am pleased to join in opposition to this bill, for the reasons that have been outlined by Mr Shaw. Although the Labour Party supports the intent of this bill—and we did support it at the first reading—unfortunately, the main thrust of the bill is its lack of independence. It is all great to have experienced officials—the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment—involved in producing these reports. However, the actual topics that those reports will cover are completely in the domain of the Government.

💬 Hon Member: It’s not true.

It is true. Therefore, there is no better example of our opposition to this bill than the speech from the member who just resumed her seat earlier, Ms Hayes, because she talked about the so-called independence; she talked about the wonderful work that has been going on in the various domains—water quality, air, and various other domains that are covered by this bill. However—and I am referring back to her speech, before she was interrupted the week before last—she was basically giving us the Government’s spin lines, through its blue-tinted lenses, as to what it is doing around the environment. That is the very reason why we are opposing this bill, because that is the very reason why it lacks independence.

We are the only country in the OECD that does not have a legislative basis for independent environmental reporting. All Kiwis want to know and be sure that we have trusted, independent reports on the state of our environment. That is critical. This bill fails. It completely fails, because the actual content, the topics that will be covered by these periodic reports—be they on the domains or the other sequential-type reports that will be coming—will be completely set in place by regulation through the Ministers. So it lacks independence.

But I also want to touch on the irony of the Government because just prior to the last time we were debating this bill we were debating a bill on the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. The members opposite were lauding the virtues of the independence of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. I believe it was Mr Bishop who said in his speech that we are politicians and we are not best placed to make investment decisions. Well, the same could be applied to this independent environmental reporting. We are politicians—that is right—and we are not best placed to make decisions or to actually provide independent reports on the state of our environment. It was demonstrated by Ms Hayes and Mr Bishop that this Government is lost. It really has not got a clue in terms of what is required for providing independent reporting on the state of our environment.

It is a shame on this Government that it is pushing this bill through when there are deep flaws in it—deep flaws. We need to make sure—and this is very important; it is a very important topic—that we have independent reporting on our environment. Well, let us make it independent. Let us take the topics out of the realm of the Ministers, and let us make sure that the independent Government officials who are charged by statute—that is the irony again. If we look at clause 14, I believe it is, the statute says that the Government officials—the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment—have to act independently of the Government. That in itself shows you how flawed the bill is, because how can you have an independent report when the actual topics that will be considered in the report are actually cooked up by the Ministers themselves?

Sure, the Ministers may have to consult and follow a statutory process around how they finalise the decisions, but at the end of the day the decisions, the topics that will be covered under the reports, are completely the domain of the Ministers. Therefore the reports lose all credibility—all credibility—and that is why we oppose this bill. Cheers.

It is an honour to rise to support this very important bill, the Environmental Reporting Bill, on its second reading. Can I first acknowledge the work of our environment Minister, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, for his work in the space of protecting our environment in New Zealand. Also, I acknowledge our Local Government and Environment Committee chair, Scott Simpson, for the dispensing of a very busy select committee, and also the previous select committee chair, the Hon Maggie Barry.

I was not on the select committee at the time of the submissions but, reading them through, overall it is time for this environmental reporting system to be implemented. This bill creates a national-level environmental reporting system to ensure that reporting on our environment occurs on a regular basis. This is important, so it can be trusted—so the public can trust it as independent, fair, and accurate information. Why is that important? Because there are people, parties, and organisations that through political or financial motives want to bring down our clean and green image of New Zealand.

A good example of this was a few years ago when the British Green Party decided it would come up with an approach that our lamb production—growing our lamb in New Zealand and exporting it overseas to the UK—had a bigger carbon footprint than locally produced lamb. As you would expect in the consumer-driven market in the UK, it led to a drop in New Zealand lamb sales in the UK and drove up locally produced lamb production in the UK, until some bright sparks at Lincoln University got together and used evidence—they used research and science—and reported that, in fact, even with the lamb production in New Zealand and the carbon footprint of sending our lamb by plane to the UK, we still had a smaller carbon footprint than British-produced meat. That was because of the intensification of their farming. This is a good example of why we need this environmental reporting system in order to provide independent, fair, and accurate information to the public, so that it will inform and enable informed discussion and debate.

This Government has a great record of environmental management and of balancing our environmental responsibilities, plus our economic opportunities, to preserve and protect our natural environment. It is amazing that we are the only OECD country that currently does not have an environmental reporting system of this standard. So, once again, it takes a National Government to bring in this first for this country, very much like it has brought in the Environmental Protection Authority to protect the environment in the petroleum exploration space, as well as our freshwater standards to ensure that our rivers come up to a national standard and that any rivers that are below that standard are focused on to ensure we have a national standard of freshwater quality and management. Quite simply, you cannot manage what you do not measure.

I suppose that if I reflect on my career in health care before I got into politics, we used the Hawthorne effect, which basically says that when you start measuring something you focus on it and the performance will naturally increase and improve behind that—the Hawthorne effect. It is quite right that we cannot manage this unless we measure it. It is right that we start measuring it through this environmental reporting system. A key part of reporting, data analysis, and interpretation is we have to move past the data quality debate. What happens is that every time we have a report, people who just want to attack it, for whatever reason, will resort to asking: “Is the data quality correct?” and “Is the data valid?”. Having this environmental reporting framework will ensure that.

A good example is found by going to the Salvation Army’s state of the nation report this year. Its state of the nation report demonstrated that child poverty was tracking downwards. It stated that it had handed out fewer food parcels than previous years. Was the first question that was asked: how do we support that continual decline in poverty and food parcels being handed out? No; it was: how can you ensure there is correct data quality? It is right that because we will have this environmental reporting framework, we will move the discussion and the debate past the data quality stage to look at analysis, interpretation, and supporting initiatives, because ultimately we are all working for the well-being of this country. So it is good information on the state of the environment that will allow us to fully understand both natural occurrence and the impact human activities are having.

When we dig a bit deeper and look at the detail of this reporting framework, it is great to see the different domains that will be reported on. There will be five of them. There will be air, atmosphere and climate, land, freshwater, and marine. So each of those domains will be reported on every 6 months, and every 3 years there will be an integrated report that will inform public and political discussion and debate.

It is great to see the insertion of clauses 6(1A) and 9(2), which will require Ministers to present reports jointly to the House so that political accountability is encouraged. I suppose that a key tenet of this National Government is around accountability. That is our blue-green movement. We have seen today the Greens not supporting this bill, which would probably represent their red-green movement, but for us it is blue-green. I know that for an electorate like mine it is very important that we think in this way. “Waimak” is the third fastest-growing electorate by population growth, but in its history it is still very much a proud area of primary production. We know that “Waimak” is like the rest of New Zealand: when farming is doing well, the whole country does well. “Waimak” is no different: when farming is doing well, the whole region benefits. With that primary production, there are risks for the environment, and it will be good that this environmental reporting framework will look to ascertain the current data and the findings around that—the risks of nitrate leaching and the risks of water management.

What we need to do is use reporting like this and use research and innovation to develop and come up with the right solutions to those issues. If we come up with the right solutions not only will it make our land more productive, which means we will export more, which means the well-being of this country will continue to grow, but it means we will actually have come up with solutions that many other countries are currently wrestling with or will wrestle with in the future, and that is great for economic development.

I think that for an asthmatic like me one of the significant domains that this reporting framework will focus on is around air. Two weeks ago was World Asthma Day. We know that New Zealand has the second-highest rate of asthma in the world: 550,000 schooldays every year are lost because of asthma, 69 deaths in 2011 were attributed to asthma, and 7,000 admissions every year in our public hospitals are to do with asthma. So it is great to see a reporting framework like this. We will be able to tangibly ascertain the pollution in our airways. I suppose growing up in Christchurch, which was synonymous with smog, you would go out for a run in the late evening or in the early evening and you would wonder whether you were actually doing more damage in going for the run. But through that we have been able to ascertain by particles in the air that it was things around log burners that we have been able to address, and to drive through the new technology of ultra-low emission burners.

In conclusion, just to recap, you cannot manage what you do not measure. That is exactly right and this is why we are implementing this legislation. It is great to see that we will have this legislation and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker, o te rā. Tēnā tātou katoa. It is my honour to take a call on this very important piece of legislation, the Environmental Reporting Bill 2014. The aim of the bill is to provide for environmental reports including the type of information and its quality and timeliness. When the then Minister for the Environment commented on the first reading of this bill she stated then that New Zealand was one of only a few OECD countries that did not require independent reporting on the state of the environment. The media release stated that the scope of the proposed reports will be comprehensive, going beyond the current non-statutory programme of environmental indicator updates, and would not just cover the state of the environment but also describe the pressures driving environmental trends and the impact of these trends. Comprehensive information will be provided on five key environmental domains: air, climate and atmosphere, freshwater, marine, and land, with biodiversity as a theme across all the domains. One of the environmental domain reports will be released every 6 months and a comprehensive synthesis report covering all environmental domains will be released every 3 years. I needed to remind myself of the importance of such a bill.

In this House when we debate legislation we tend to either support or oppose it. As I stand here, there is almost a third position, which is yes, but not quite. It is fortunate on the Labour side that we stand opposed to this bill for the very reasons that my honourable colleagues Rino Tirikatene and Dr Megan Woods have raised. They were not raised just from our side, but actually raised in the course of the select committee hearings, where over 300 submissions made it very, very clear that the issue of this particular legislation is that it does not provide the independence that submitters were seeking. So I cannot support this piece of legislation because it does not go far enough in ensuring that the Minister for the Environment is not involved in setting what those priority indicators are for both the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment to report on.

Like I said, over 300 submitters submitted to the select committee process. In Dr Megan Woods’ contribution to this bill she highlighted two particular submitters and I would like to again emphasise what they said. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Jan Wright, made it clear that the independence issue was critical for this legislation to have the impact that we also desire, which is independent environmental reporting on issues that make up an important component of our economy, which is the environment. What did Dr Wright actually say? She made it really clear that she felt that the bill itself did not offer the level of independence that a piece of legislation should provide. She made it really clear that she did not think it was actually a satisfactory function for her to play that role, given her statutory function within the piece of legislation. What she was seeking was a more independent voice that set the tone of these reports. So, clearly, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in her own submission made it clear that more independence was needed to ensure that this piece of legislation was not interfered with politically.

Another major group that submitted during the submission process was the Environmental Defence Society, which said: “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.” Like I said, many submitted and I wanted to highlight those particular submitters because of the standing that they have in the environmental space, to ensure that we are putting through legislation that can uphold the very purpose in which it is being presented to the House.

I want to comment on the Government’s chairperson of the Local Government and Environment Committee, who, in his debate contribution, made the statement that this side of the House was opposing a piece of legislation simply for the sake of opposing. Unfortunately, that is the role of the Opposition—to ensure that all pieces of legislation that come through this House have gone through the proper process of a select committee and, more important, has factored in the submissions that were presented to the select committee. It is concerning that the chairperson of that select committee has made a statement in terms of our members who sit on that select committee, who uphold the submitters who come to the select committee. Yes, as you know, in all select committees the Government members outnumber the Opposition members, and it has clearly come through with this piece of legislation coming to the House for this second reading. What I contend is that unless we acknowledge the importance of the select committee process in designing robust legislation, we are almost sending a signal to future submitters that whatever their concerns or submissions are—and in this case the majority have asked for independence—this Government is simply not listening. In terms of coming back to the bill, Labour supports the need for independent environmental reporting, but the bill falls well short of that requirement. It is fundamentally flawed. Labour is disappointed to oppose this bill, as we believe it is a vital piece of legislation to protect our environment.

Like earlier mentioned, for too long New Zealand has lagged well behind international best practice. We are the only country in the OECD without an ongoing commitment in law to independently and regularly monitor the state of our environment, so much so that our colleague—again, Dr Megan Woods—in her contribution offered up Supplementary Order Paper 74 where she suggests that we remove the Ministers from making the decision and replace the Ministers with both the Chief Executive of the Ministry for the Environment and the Government Statistician, thereby ensuring that there is no politicising and there is no political interference and the priorities we set for this legislation, in terms of environmental impacts, will be safeguarded. I really do wish that we had taken that Supplementary Order Paper to heart when this legislation was coming to the House, but it was not to be. It again smacks of the hidden agendas of this Government, which we are seeing time and time again—a bit of out of touch; a bit of promising with one hand and taking away with the other.

Can I end by saying that our environment is an important part of who we are as New Zealanders. We are its guardians, the kaitiaki. What legislation we bring into this House must guarantee that, at the end of the passing of any legislation, we protect our environment and that we leave it in a better state than what we have inherited, particularly for the future generations. I oppose this bill. Kia ora tātou.

I rise to speak in favour of the Environmental Reporting Bill. If I could have the House’s forbearance for perhaps 30 seconds or so, I do want to acknowledge, in the context of local government and environment, the good work of the Tauranga City Council and staff in response to the tornado that hit my electorate late on Thursday. I saw there an example of what actually happens when you have a natural event of some magnitude and the impact that it has on individuals and families. It was a very distressing scene amongst a couple of dozen homes that were dreadfully affected that Friday morning when I walked around and saw them all, but by lunchtime most of the obvious effects had been cleaned up and cleared up. That was a great example of a local government working in tandem with its community, and I do want to put that on record to acknowledge Tauranga City Council for what it did there. Well done.

You can also see, actually, the best in community collaboration when it coalesces around an idea that is supported by good data. I think we are seeing examples of that around the country at the moment as various councils reflect on the obligations that have been imposed on them by the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management—a superb piece of reform that this Government brought in over the last few years that requires real action in respect of water quality improvement. Those conversations have begun around the country. They are not easy conversations. In many respects they are quite hard because the data is not complete and there are various trade-offs that are required to get streams and rivers to mahinga kai - able, to drinkable, to swimmable. It is very challenging for communities, particularly when they do not have that full, complete data set, but it is great to see that that is under way.

It is a real achievement of this Government. I appreciate that there are few on the other side who would give us any credit for this, but this is a Government that takes a reform-based approach to managing the environment and that has actually delivered outcomes for communities. What we got when we arrived here in 2008 was a complete vacuum—a vacuum of ideas. There was a vacuum of frameworks and processes to deal with this. There is shaking of heads on the other side, but you had 9 years to deal with this. You are great on rhetoric, but actually putting frameworks in place—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

Sorry—the Green Party and Labour are great on rhetoric, but in terms of putting frameworks in place that are enduring and that get results, it does not happen on the other side. It happens on this side, and it is great that the Hon Dr Nick Smith is in the House today to get some acknowledgment for this side for the reform agenda that he and Amy Adams have driven through over the last few years.

It is easy to forget that at that time—2008—you could take water without needing to measure it. There was no National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. There were no national objectives frameworks. There was no Land and Water Forum. There was no framework to enable stakeholders—who only ever saw each other in the courtroom—to actually sit around a table and say: “How are we going to deal with this? How are we actually going to progress this debate in a meaningful and enduring way?”, and that is what this Government, under the leadership of Nick Smith and Amy Adams, has brought to the table. This is why this Environmental Reporting Bill is so important. It builds on and continues that 7 years of reform that I touched on.

As my colleague the great Matt Doocey from Waimakariri—what a fantastic MP; what a great part of the country that is—noted only moments before, we are one of the few OECD countries that currently does not require independent reporting, as has been mentioned, and I think this obviously is going to be redressed shortly with the passing, hopefully, of this bill. But I do want to make the point that it reflects a party philosophy on this side of the House around progressive transparency. You saw that many decades ago with the Financial Reporting Act, but—as mentioned by, I think, Nick Smith himself when he spoke to this bill—an example more recently is the national standards. We heard it again from Matt Doocey earlier in terms of the Environmental Protection Authority, which is an example, and, of course, there are the various Better Public Services targets that we have in place. This is a party that says that unless you can measure it, you cannot manage it. So forget the nice rhetoric—put frameworks in place that enable you to measure it. Then, from that evidence base, you can drive improvement forward, and that is what we are doing here in this case. In short, in respect of this bill, we are not the party of hollow rhetoric; the other side certainly is, and I will come back to that shortly.

Essentially, to protect our environment while enjoying and encouraging economic prosperity, we need to be able to have an honest debate about the interactions between the environment and the economy, and we need to have a clear picture of the trade-offs and opportunities that are in place and that are on the table, and of the impacts, particularly, of the choices that we make. Any argument that presents only half of that picture is a very undercooked argument indeed. That is why the Environmental Reporting Bill is so important and is a key piece of the reform agenda that we have driven in this space, to enable an evidence base to build over time, to enable those conversations to be deep and have some meaning, so that communities can reach the right considered outcomes.

I think it is appropriate that we have very clearly specified the domain areas of water quality, air quality, biodiversity, and of course managing our oceans. The approach of being really specific in terms of the pressures on those particular environments, the current state of them, and particularly the impacts of various approaches allows you to take a broader view of these issues. As I have noted, I think this will lead to more informed debate and better options for the public. I think it will be very helpful that we have the 3-yearly synthesis reports, to enable some trend analysis. I will touch on that shortly.

What is very important and has been completely lost in some of the nonsense that we have heard in this debate over the last half-hour, and certainly a couple of weeks ago, is that the topics must be selected on the basis of significance, of statistical rigour, of evidence, and of a strong connection to the environmental state, and this requires significant consultation. The debate that we have heard around clause 18, particularly from the other side, I think is, quite frankly, nonsensical—to hold a view that somehow it is inappropriate for the Minister for the Environment to have a view as to what the topic should be, and, ultimately, through the Cabinet process, sign off what those should be, particularly when you consider the philosophical underpinning of the parties on the other side that are suddenly now talking about the importance of purity and independence. Every sinew in their political body calls out and cries out to getting involved in people’s lives. They cannot help it; that is the way their political philosophies have been built up. It is absolute nonsense.

Sometime in the future, in the mid-2020s, when eventually the Green Party forms a coalition with New Zealand First and Labour—and will not that be fun—they will stand over on this side. To think that the Green Party Minister for the Environment will not want to hold a view as to which topic might be covered in an upcoming domain report is absolute nonsense. From my perspective and from our perspective it is not underpinning the reality of what is going on here. It is absolutely appropriate for a Minister for the Environment to hold a view. The changes that have gone on and the various clauses that we have reflected on to ensure more consultation with iwi and affected local government talk to a process that has rigour and will deliver the right outcome for this country, and not some sort of straitjacket nonsense that we have been having to listen to over the last half-hour or so.

I do want to spend just a moment, before I conclude, talking about the value of the synthesis reports, particularly in terms of being able to build up a picture of trends over time. I am sure that when the first domain reports come out, the reporting will be very binary. It will be black and white. I suspect on one side all the negative connotations will be pumped up and perhaps on the other side we will be talking about the positive inclinations of what those reports say. But the real value for me is what that will say over time, because it shows trends in performance and improvement, and trends in terms of where the pressures are building. If you are really true about building an environmental picture that can inform public policy and community discussion, then that is where the value is and that is the value that is inherent in this bill. It deserves acknowledgment and, in my opinion, deserves support.

In conclusion, I do want to acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams, who started this, and the Hon Nick Smith, who is concluding it. The rigour of their intellectual—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Local Government and Environment Committee by majority be agreed to.