Estimates Debate — Environment Sector

Members, we now come to votes in the environment sector—volume B.5, volume 3. The question is that Vote Conservation, Vote Environment, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment stand part of the schedules.

It is a great pleasure to stand and rise to speak in the Committee stage of the Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill. I chair the Local Government and Environment Committee, and it was a great pleasure to have before the committee at the estimates hearings only a few weeks ago three of the most competent, most able, most inspired, and most passionate advocates for our environment, and they all happen to be Cabinet Ministers in this John Key National-led Government.

We had before the committee the Minister of Conservation, the Hon Maggie Barry, who has spent an entire life working in the area of conservation and is dedicated to preserving our natural environment in a way that most New Zealanders understand completely because they have seen her for years on our screens. She has a reputation and a credible track record that is unimpeachable in terms of her commitment to our environment and to conservation in New Zealand.

We had before us the Minister for the Environment, the Hon Nick Smith. He is another person who has dedicated his life and his parliamentary political career to ensuring that the New Zealand environment and the standards we have as a nation are constantly improved. We had before us also the Minister for Climate Change Issues, the Hon Tim Groser, who has brought to that portfolio a level of intellectual rigour that was never apparent when other Governments occupied the Treasury benches.

Those three Cabinet Ministers provided the Local Government and Environment Committee with a very good understanding and analysis of what is essentially this Government’s blue-green agenda for our environment. It is a blue-green agenda that is based on the principles of economic growth and improving the environment hand in hand, at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive. Those principles include an absolute understanding that good science is critical to quality environmental decision-making at every level, and, further, that collaborative solutions developed by sectors and communities working together are far more sustainable and enduring than any kind of policy rant and cant that can occur from members opposite.

There are six priority areas that the Minister has presented to the select committee and they made it clear that resource management reform is still an absolute high priority on this Government’s agenda. I am confident from the messages that we saw—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to report progress.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.