Estimates Debate — Environment Sector (continued)

Members, when we were last progressing the estimates debate we were debating the votes in the environment sector—volume B.5, volume 3. They are Vote Conservation, Vote Environment, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Scott Simpson had the call, and he has 2 minutes and 20 seconds remaining, if he so wishes. Before giving the call to Mr Simpson, I would like to remind the select committee chairs who are allocated calls, who lead the sector debates, of the requirement of the Business Committee to set out the major findings of their committees in relation to the estimates. Mr Simpson has set an excellent example in this matter.

Mr Chairman, I appreciate the acknowledgment and also the opportunity to conclude with a couple of minutes’ rounding out what, for me, is a very important part of this Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill discussion and debate. It relates exactly to the environmental sector, where two very competent Ministers preside over the most important environmental decisions and the stewardship of our precious environment. Looking forward to the future, they are putting in place excellent protections, excellent stewardship, and excellent advances that have not previously been considered by other Governments.

In the field of conservation, the Minister of Conservation, Maggie Barry, is doing an exceptional job. She is a person who has devoted her entire working life—not just in this Parliament, but her entire working life—to ensuring the advancement of conservation matters and of our environment. In terms of the Minister for the Environment, Nick Smith, he too has made a greater contribution—dare I say it—than any other member in this House in terms of protecting and ensuring the enhancement of our natural environment.

I want to highlight one or two matters that came before the Local Government and Environment Committee during the estimates hearings. I was particularly impressed with the work that the Department of Conservation is doing in partnership agreements with independent bodies and commercial organisations to leverage the funding and access of resources for the further advancement and protection of our environment. I particularly want to comment on, with appreciation, and note the work that Fonterra is doing in terms of its Living Water programme. One of those projects has relevance in my electorate on the Seabird Coast at Miranda and Kaiaua, where excellent work is being done to protect the wetlands there. That is just one area where partnerships are proving absolutely that they can add value to our conservation message and to our conservation objectives.

Another one is the rat eradication on Great Mercury Island, also within the boundaries of the very beautiful and lovely Coromandel electorate. There Sir Michael Fay and David Richwhite have entered into a programme with the Department of Conservation to eradicate rats on that very precious and important island. There are some who object to that, but I think that is a wonderful move, and it is certainly something that is going to enhance that island and also the greater area.

It is my pleasure to take a call in this section of the estimates debate and to listen to the words of the member who just sat down, Scott Simpson—and very fine words they were. You would believe that everything was hunky-dory with the environment. You would not actually realise that this is a Government that is failing in some key issues of the environment, or that we have a Government that is not being straight with New Zealanders on a range of issues, from the housing crisis right through to a number of issues. We certainly have a Government that is not being straight with New Zealanders about the state of our environment.

I just want to pick up from where Mr Simpson was concluding—he was talking about the wonderful work in terms of our waterways. We have just received a report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment that gives us the facts about what the state of New Zealand water is, the impacts of dairying on our waterways throughout the country, and what they are.

To stand in the House and say that everything is fine is just a symbol of how this Government is governing. Government members are closing their eyes to the reality and they are closing their ears to what is happening around them. They are certainly not being straight. In this area, our environment is being left behind.

In my address today I want to deal primarily with two key issues that we covered off at the hearings, and my colleague Ruth Dyson will pick up on further areas. One is Resource Management Act reform. You might remember Resource Management Act reform. It is something that this Government has been talking about for a very long time. It is also something that this Government has been spending quite a lot of money on. So when we have a look at the appropriation that this Government is putting in under Resource Management Act reform, we see $3 million there for contractors. One has to assume—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: What?

$3 million—that is right. There is $3 million for contractors, because this is a Government that is failing to get its reforms across the line.

It is also a Government that is failing to take the offer from Labour to work with it on the sensible bits of Resource Management Act reform. We will—we have put that offer in. Nicky Wagner is looking confused. She might like to look at the papers—it is in there. Labour has put the offer on the table. We have said that we will work with National on a national policy statement around housing and sensible reform—things that can be achieved. But that has been reacted to with blankness.

There is no intention to work together for sustainable, enduring solutions for such a linchpin piece of legislation as the Resource Management Act. Instead, we have got $3 million in this appropriation for spin doctors and contractors to play catch-up because the Minister for the Environment has dropped the ball on Resource Management Act reform. He has mucked it up from go to whoa, and not only in terms of what National was intending to do around gutting the fundamental provisions of the Resource Management Act. He has also mucked up relations with the coalition partners, and he cannot get it across the line. The taxpayer is left holding the $3 million bill for Nick Smith’s ineptitude in this particular area. The taxpayer is, of course, footing the bill for Nick Smith’s ineptitude in a range of areas, but in the area of Resource Management Act reform let us just call it $3 million.

I want to turn my attention to the issue of climate change. This accounts for 48 percent of the Vote Environment budget. It is a substantial part of the environmental budget, and even more, actually, if you factor in the money that is set aside for the emissions trading scheme. So after hearing speakers in the previous debate say that Labour is the conservative, fuddy-duddy party that does not want to see progress, I have two words for Mr Bishop—11 percent. That is the paltry sum that this Government is thinking it is going to take to the Paris talks. It thinks that is a credible position for New Zealand to take to the Paris talks about what our emissions reduction target should be, but it is not.

This is a Government that is being criticised all over the world for its negligence in this area—it is certainly not enough. This is a Government that has absolutely let the emissions trading scheme fail to do what it needs to do, through letting the price of carbon collapse. It is a Government that is not incentivising the things we need to be doing around planting forests, and it is a Government that will not take the hard decisions it needs to take around what we need to do around carbon dioxide emissions reduction. It is a Government that will not have the sensible and needed conversation about how we account for methane in our emissions target profile and about when we bring this in. This is a Government that is content to be a laggard in the world and to be criticised by other nations for not doing its bit. Thank you.

Kia ora, Minister, members. Mr Chair, ngā mihi nui ki Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, tēnā koe.

[Thank you, Minister and members. Much accolades to Māori Language Week, and to you, Mr Chair.]

It gives me great pleasure to stand before this Committee this afternoon and take a call on the appropriations. From the point of view of being the Minister of Conservation, it is very important to me that we understand the nature of the struggle that we are involved in. It is important that we have enough money to do what we need to do, and in order to make taxpayers’ money go even further, we need to work in collaboration. So in my call today I am going to outline some of the more successful collaborations, including collaboration with the Australians.

Two weeks ago I was a keynote speaker at the inaugural Threatened Species Summit in Melbourne, where I discovered that the Australians have vastly more money than we do to spend on many things. However, what they envy us is the level of collaboration that we have been able to knit together with partners, philanthropists, and businesses so that we can work as a whole team to overcome our obstacles. As New Zealand has experienced, and so too has Australia, our vulnerable species are prone to being predated upon by mostly eco-invaders. Ironically, here in New Zealand one of the worst offenders for us is a treasured, protected species of possum in Australia. I did offer to ship over a couple of million to solve both our problems, but Australia refused that kind offer.

However, where we were able to collaborate was around the need to have a strategy and to have what we are about to announce, which is a threatened species ambassador. This is an individual who will help us to develop a strategy and a series of guidelines for acting with partners, so that we will be able to do the good fight together.

I will give a couple of examples that are working successfully at the moment. One of them is Air New Zealand. Air New Zealand is going to part-fund this threatened species ambassador’s role for the first couple of years. That is building on a successful, long-term partnership that has been worth $7 million over the past 3 years with Air New Zealand, and it gives significant gains for conservation, our New Zealand economy, and also Air New Zealand. It is a classic win-win, which is why it has not only sustained but it is also being built on. Air New Zealand through its in-flight entertainment and advertising has contributed to the success of the Department of Conservation’s Great Walks. As we know, tourism is now our biggest earner in New Zealand. It has overtaken dairying. By teaming up with Air New Zealand and promoting our walker numbers, for example, those have gone up by more than 30 percent since the partnership began. So, in round figures, that is up from 79,000 overnight stays to now more than over 100,000.

The Department of Conservation has also been working a lot with Genesis Energy. That was a partnership that began 4 years ago. Over the past 5 years, $2.5 million has been specifically aimed at supporting and protecting the blue duck, our whio, or whio whio as it is called in the middle part of the North Island. So what that partnership has meant is that we have been able to double the amount of conservation work. We now have eight secure sites to maintain a viable population of ducks that breed, and we take out the baby ducklings—the whio whio—to actually get what we call a boot camp for ducklings, which is where they get training in having to swim upstream on some very rapid bits of water, so that when they are released to the wild, they are then made fit for purpose in the wild. It is a fantastic thing. So welcoming partnerships with philanthropists is also something that the Department of Conservation has encouraged in the past couple of years.

NEXT Foundation, for example, is running $100 million of strategic philanthropy over the next 10 years, in partnership with the Department of Conservation and other entities. NEXT Foundation commits something like $5 million and up to $15 million a year, and it ring-fences three major projects including Zero Invasive Predators, or ZIP as it is known. Along with NEXT Foundation, Fonterra, the dairy industry, the Department of Conservation, and the philanthropists, we are all working together. The target is a big one. To the members of this Committee who understand these things, to be able to be predator-free and to have that as a measurable target and goal by 2050 is indeed a very ambitious target. It is only by involving philanthropists and an army of volunteers to help us that we will be able to get there. Zero Invasive Predators is focused, as we are as a Government and as a department, on excluding pests from all the parts of the mainland where they have been eradicated.

The Department of Conservation is extremely good and effective—and is known to be so nationwide and internationally—at looking after pest-free islands. Our ambitious goal now is to transfer those skills to the mainland. There are many excellent projects that this department and this Government are involved in. I am very proud of them, and we will continue to do our best.

Tēnā koe , Mr Chair. Thank you. Tuarua, ki ngā mema o tō tātou Whare tēnā koutou katoa.

[Secondly, greetings to you all, the members of our House.]

Appointing one threatened species ambassador is not going to solve our biodiversity crisis. The Government has done very little in this Budget to tackle that. The Department of Conservation is not being adequately funded to tackle the conservation challenges that it faces, and the dump of Budget documents was very revealing. It showed that Treasury, as explained to it obviously by the Minister of Finance, does not believe that increasing the funding for the department to assist kiwi is consistent with the Government’s overall priorities. The Cabinet may have overruled that, but it is clear that the Government has not got a priority of protecting our biodiversity.

Since Aotearoa New Zealand was settled 800 years ago, 53 bird species have gone extinct, 15 of those since 1850. Currently, we rank the worst in the United Nations for the protection of threatened species. We have more species threatened with extinction than any other country. Yet, what did we have in this Budget? No increase for the Department of Conservation; in fact, there was a reduction of $7 million in the funding that the department puts towards the management of natural heritage. This Government, despite the Biodiversity Strategy having a clear objective that all Government agencies agreed to in 2000 of maintaining our biodiversity, of halting the decline, is failing to invest adequately in the protection of our native plant species and wildlife. So the Department of Conservation has been left to manage a third of New Zealand’s land area and over 40,000 square kilometres of marine reserves on a pitiful budget.

Last year, for example, the department was supposed to be managing 159 threatened species actively. What happened? The department was so distracted by the restructuring and the loss of staff with technical expertise that it was able to actively manage only 104 threatened species. What is the target for this financial year? Managing 104 threatened species actively. The department is winding back its goals because the Government, and this Minister, is not investing adequately in baseline conservation funding. National is completely out of touch with what makes New Zealand special and out of touch with how our wild landscapes and our native plants and wildlife contribute to our identity as New Zealanders, and how much Kiwis value them.

We had the Department of Conservation recognised recently as the eighth most influential brand in New Zealand, up there with Facebook and Google, and surpassed only by TradeMe and Air New Zealand as other New Zealand entities. The 1,000 respondents in that Ipsos survey were asked to score 100 national and international brands on five factors: leading edge, trustworthiness, engagement, citizenship, and presence. The fact that the Department of Conservation scored so highly shows how much Kiwis value conservation, yet National has looked the other way when it comes to investing in the public sector in conservation.

What it is also failing to do is use the Resource Management Act. A lot of our threatened species are on private land, so the decisions that Māori landowners and private landowners make about what happens there have a major impact on whether species like grasshoppers, like whio, and like a lot of our native fish have got better prospects, or not, for their future. Yet we have seen this Government proposing to spend, Nick Smith, nearly $21 million, which is allocated in this Budget for improving resource management, for providing more advice and more tools. Yet this will not be going to strengthen the Resource Management Act in relation to indigenous biodiversity.

Given the National Government’s past plans to gut the Resource Management Act, we are likely to see it further weakened and see the powers of private landholders to make whatever decisions they like increased. In fact, some of the past plans that the Minister had to change the Resource Management Act have included providing for councils to compensate private landowners if the council includes rules in the plan that affect the ability of private landowners to use their land. That will hinder the prospects of threatened species. It will hinder our biodiversity, not support it.

Under National, private property rights reign supreme. We have had major evidence of that in a recent report that Environment Canterbury has put out. It showed how agricultural intensification is destroying areas of riparian wetland and shrubland habitat along the margins of internationally important braided rivers in Canterbury—rivers like the Waiau River, the Rangitata, the Hakatere River, or the Ashburton River. Alongside those rivers those areas of wetlands and shrublands are some of the only areas on the Canterbury Plains where indigenous species can survive. They are habitat for kowhai, for cabbage tree, for our native brooms, for some of the divaricating mat plants like the Raoulia. They have not been cultivated, so they remain as habitat. Yet between 1990 and 2012 over 11,000 hectares of those areas were destroyed and converted to pasture. That is an average of 530 hectares each year.

The Resource Management Act is supposed to provide some protection for significant indigenous habitats and significant indigenous vegetation. It is supposed to control the environmental effects of land use. Yet this grasp for more pasture to increase the milk supply is leading to the decimation of remaining wild nature and indigenous habitats on the plains. National has done absolutely nothing about that. The Department of Conservation and Land Information New Zealand have failed to enforce the Resource Management Act, even though 40 percent of that 11,000 hectares was actually Crown land or conservation land or Environment Canterbury reserve. The Resource Management Act needs strengthening to ensure that it protects our biodiversity, not further weakening, as National is proposing in its reforms.

One of the other areas where this Government is failing our biodiversity, also under the Resource Management Act, is the recently released National Environmental Standard for Plantation Forestry. Although it is desirable to have some consistency in the rules that apply to forestry across the country, we are not going to get it under this national environmental standard. That is because it has got very weak provisions to protect indigenous biodiversity. It has got quite clear rules around the shading of plantations on roads to prevent icing, yet it allows exotic plantations to be established in indigenous grasslands, and in shrublands, and it provides the requirement for resource consent only if these areas have been identified as significant in district and regional plans. Most councils have got a very limited list of significant natural areas. They cover only a tiny proportion of the indigenous habitats in the district. So this National Environmental Standard for Plantation Forestry is going to provide a means for private landowners to destroy more areas without getting a resource consent.

Again, with the biodiversity crisis, the Government could have picked up the National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity and made sure we had some consistency in rules around the country in terms of vegetation clearance control. It has failed to do that. In 2011 it could have progressed it, but it dropped it like the proverbial hot potato because, who opposed it? Landholders and business interests. So National has failed to implement the national policy statement under the Resource Management Act on indigenous biodiversity. There have been two goes at that, yet this Minister and her colleague Nick Smith have totally dropped the ball. That allows a permissive approach to the destruction of habitat on private land to continue.

This Government is out of touch. It does not recognise that Kiwis really value our indigenous plants and wildlife, and our wild landscapes. It does not recognise that we need to protect these areas as the basis of a healthy economy. It allows private property rights to prevail. It thinks that appointing a threatened species ambassador is going to address the major challenges that we face with the highest number of threatened species in the world. It fails to invest in the Department of Conservation by increasing its funding. Instead, it cuts its funding. It is all just about optics, as my colleague Russel Norman talked about in an earlier speech—the optics of a threatened species ambassador, but not the substance of investing in conservation and ensuring that our law actually protects our wild places and our indigenous habitats on private land.

I want to speak on the Environment sector in the Committee stage of the Appropriation (2015/16 Estimates) Bill, and specifically on climate change policy, ready for Paris 2015. This Government has a half-hearted approach to climate change policy, and I think it has actually lost sight of the real objective. The need to greatly reduce the planet’s greenhouse gases arising from human activity is the most serious issue of the age. The effects of climate change will be as serious for New Zealand as for the rest of the world, and maybe they will be even more serious given New Zealand’s reliance on agriculture. New Zealand, in fact, is in a better position than most other nations to make a positive and exemplar commitment to its targets and, contrary to Government claims, there is no need for any risk to the New Zealand economy by doing so. In fact, as President Clinton used to say, what is good for the environment is good for business. Indeed, there are bound to be significant benefits for the New Zealand economy, our physical environment, our social systems, job growth, and, of course, our international reputation from a genuine commitment to a climate change target. Most of all, we could make the greatest contribution possible to future generations of Kiwis by committing to a genuine and significant target for 2030.

The Government’s recently announced target of an 11 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2030 has been called feeble, unambitious, and embarrassing. I would have to agree. I think it is pathetic. We in New Zealand First do not aspire to make New Zealand First a leader in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but we do think there needs to be a genuine target for that and, in particular, we think we need, as a nation, to take effective measures to ensure we actually achieve our target. New Zealand so far has failed. Instead of doing more, this Government has decided to take longer and to do less. There is far too much reliance on carbon credits from plantation forests established many, many years ago. As a result, our actual greenhouse gas emissions will be 33 percent higher than in 1990 and we will be worse, on a per capita basis, than the United States. Our targets are now so low that we may not have to do anything at all to reach them, and that applies to both the 2020 and 2030 targets. That is an utterly inadequate response, when there is no satisfactory reason for not at least doubling the 2030 target that the Government has announced, if not more.

The Infometrics study for the Ministry for the Environment has calculated that at worst it would cost New Zealand as little as $500 per household—not per capita but per household—per year, until 2020 for an additional and much more ambitious and effective target for New Zealand. In fact, a rise to a 40 percent target instead of an 11 percent one is achievable at this reasonable and affordable cost. If you think about the amount of $500 per household, per year, that is less than $10 per week, or, to put it another way, it is the cost of about two cappuccinos for two people per week. It is a very low cost indeed. That, in fact, is the real cost of an effective climate change target, which is not what we have got under this Government. We can afford it. We can afford a much better and much more ambitious target, as part of our national budget. But what we cannot afford are the risks of climate change, by doing too little.

We in New Zealand need to show the rest of the world that we are going to genuinely play our part, not just to make a statement to the rest of the world but for our own New Zealand benefit, especially for those of future generations. For those reasons I believe that we must upgrade our target for Paris in December—not just to make such a statement, but to achieve a better economy, a better social system, and a better environment for New Zealand. I want to take this opportunity to call on the Government to revise the target it has announced and to adopt a much more ambitious one.

In these estimates I want to emphasise that our National Party Government does not proclaim to be the greenest party in this Parliament. What we do proclaim is that we are the party that is able to marry together good economic stewardship with responsible management of New Zealand’s treasured environment.

I firstly want to respond to the challenge from Eugenie Sage around biodiversity. My colleague Maggie Barry, the new Minister of Conservation—against the advice of Treasury—secured $11.5 million in this vote for ensuring that the ongoing decline in the kiwi population does not continue, and if there is a portion of our biodiversity that every member of this Committee should treasure, it is the survival of our iconic kiwi bird.

I want to respond to the contribution by New Zealand First in respect of New Zealand’s climate change target and the work that Tim Groser is doing internationally. I want to put on the record of the House, as a member who has taken an interest in climate change for all of my 25 years here, that I have not known a climate change Minister to be as influential in the international negotiations as Tim Groser, and every member of this Parliament should be proud of the contribution that he is making. Mr Denis O’Rourke challenges us on the target of a 30 percent reduction of emissions by 2030. I have a simple challenge for New Zealand First: we could have been much more ambitious in those targets if it were not for the fact that emissions went up by 25 percent in the term of the previous Labour Government, which New Zealand First was part of. So it is rich for New Zealand First to come to this Parliament and claim that the target is not ambitious enough when, during its watch, when its members were in the Cabinet room, emissions went up by more than in any other term.

Look back at the projection—the actual record of emissions between 1990, when we entered the framework convention on climate change, and today—and the very worst period was in the period from 2005 to 2008. At the same time that the previous Labour Government was talking about carbon neutrality—the very period when New Zealand First had ministerial warrants—New Zealand’s emissions went through the roof. I ask those members to contrast the fact that the actual record of this Government in constraining the growth of emissions has been more successful than any Government in the records since 1990.

What these estimates provide for is a real focus on the environmental issues that are important to New Zealand. The biggest increase in my vote is in terms of the work around fresh water. I think every member of this Committee would want that to be a priority for the Government. Let me give the numbers, for a matter of record. These estimates enable us to lift the overall contribution during our period in Government—our commitment to freshwater clean-up projects—to $350 million over the 9 years that we have been in Government. Let me compare that with times when there was a lot more cash for the Government, when the previous Labour Government spent just $50 million. That is one-seventh of the amount that we have committed, and that is why I say to members of this Committee that this Government has a record of real commitments in fresh water.

But it is not enough just to commit the money; we need to get the proper rules and management in place to manage fresh water. That is why, in 2010, we introduced the first National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and why, in 2013, we introduced national standards, known as the National Objectives Framework, and why, in this next year, we will be taking the next steps around the invertebrates index, around the issues of exceptions to the policy, and around the very tricky, challenging issue around Māori rights and interests. With these estimates we will be able to take those next key steps around fresh water.

I also want to say that these estimates provide the resources for the Government to take the next steps in ocean management. An important step that we will be taking later this year is for the Environmental Protection Authority to take responsibility for the pollution regulations in that part of the exclusive economic zone that makes up more than 20 percent of the area that we are responsible for in terms of jurisdiction. That is why a very important part of our next steps for our Bluegreen team is around reform of New Zealand’s legislation in respect of marine-protected areas.

This is a complex piece of work. It involves a large number of Government agencies—foreign affairs and defence have an interest, and both my ministry, the Ministry for the Environment, and the Department of Conservation. There is a big interest, of course, from the Ministry for Primary Industries, and Nathan Guy is taking an intense interest in it. This year we will be putting out a substantive discussion document on how we can improve the legislative framework, and that is something we are going to do in the next year and we would welcome Labour’s support for a piece of work that has been promised for—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Got a time frame yet?

I will just remind the Labour member that it was in Labour’s policy in 1999. You had 9 years in Government and made no progress. Look forward to the progress that we will be making in the next year around that important piece of work around marine-protected areas, which was mentioned in the Speech from the Throne at the beginning of this year.

The other specific area that I want to mention is the importance of resource management reform. In that area we are going in the direction of a greater degree of national consistency. If we are to get good environmental outcomes but bring the compliance costs down for sectors, what we need to have is a greater use of the national instruments under the Resource Management Act. That is why right now, with the support of these estimates, which provide a substantive increase in funding, we are looking at a national environment standard on telecommunications. Why? Because my colleague Amy Adams, the Minister for Communications, is going for broke to make sure that New Zealand is a world leader in the extension of ultra-fast broadband and cellphone technologies.

But it is no good doing that if we cannot actually get those new networks consented. Having every single one of our councils across New Zealand having a different set of rules around where you can put Wi-Fi, ultra-fast broadband, and cellphones does not make sense. That is why these estimates provide for our concluding this year a national environment standard around those communications. I really do challenge the Green Party, which has come out publicly and opposed that national environment standard, and I say that it is holding back New Zealand’s connectedness and New Zealand’s competitive advantage in not wanting us to have a greater degree of consistency in that area.

I will also mention one of New Zealand’s really important export industries, the forestry sector. You know, members give lip-service to the issue of regional development. What are the regions of New Zealand where forestry is a critical industry? It is Northland. It is the central North Island. It is areas like Nelson, Marlborough, and Southland. If you talk to the forestry industry, one of the real concerns that that sector has is differentiation of rules under the Resource Management Act, which drives up their costs and undermines their international competitiveness. That new national environment standard, which we are consulting on right now, is going to provide for good environmental outcomes. In some areas it will mean tougher environmental rules—that is true—but it will result in better environmental outcomes and a huge reduction in the amount of bureaucracy and consents that are required for New Zealand’s fourth-biggest export earner.

Alongside that piece of work is important work around the Resource Management Act, which is also critical in respect of the key challenge New Zealand has around housing. A key part of these estimates provides support for the development of the Auckland Unitary Plan. Why does that matter? Well, Auckland is actually one-third of the country. This Government is providing support to Auckland to be able to finalise a plan for that city in the next year, which is so critical to its economic growth and housing, as well as ensuring that we have good environmental management in that year.

So this programme in the conservation, climate change, and environmental areas shows a very active blue-green agenda by this Government. It does the things that will make sure we better manage our environment, our water, our marine space, our biodiversity, our air quality—those things—while also supporting a strong economy.

Undermining all that work, then, is a revolutionary step in the way in which we actually measure how we are doing.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Did you say “undermining” or “underlining”?

Underlining—absolutely underlining it. Let me tell the member who has interjected why. It is this: if you ask me what is one of the two most important pieces of legislation that a National Government has passed that has made New Zealand do better, I would highlight the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994, because we, as a country, should be ashamed of our record preceding that Act in the management of our public finances. And in the 20 years hence we have done so much better.

Rau rakatira mā, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou i runga i te kaupapa o te rā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[To the esteemed ones of a hundredfold, I acknowledge you collectively in regard to the matter of the day; salutations, greetings, and accolades to you and to us all.]

It is a really important debate that we are having and I want to acknowledge everyone who has contributed to it. It is the one opportunity in the year that select committees get a chance to hold the Ministers of various portfolios to account, and I want to acknowledge the Ministers who did front up to the committees and generally answered questions to the best of their ability—not always as well as we had hoped, but certainly to the best of their ability.

There are few comments that I want to make in relation to the conservation portfolio specifically. This is the seventh year in a row that we have seen a reduction in the overall budget for the Department of Conservation, and, frankly, it is getting to the point where every time the department has a bit of crisis on its hands—for example, a stoat on Kāpiti—it puts out the begging bowl and has to ask whether there is anybody who would like to donate so that it can perform its core statutory responsibilities. I think that that is an embarrassment to New Zealand and New Zealanders, and I think the Ministers misrepresent the position that the department has been put in by the lack of support from their Cabinet colleagues.

There are other points of concern that were raised during the debate in the Local Government and Environment Committee that I want to mention. The first is the lack of reclassification of stewardship land and the implication that that might have, particularly in two areas that are of current concern. One is Ruataniwha and the other is the Hurunui, where conservation land is being proposed as part of a land swap for the creation of a dam. Because those areas, in the most part, are currently stewardship land, there has been a tendency to reduce the public concern by dismissing them as land of little value, and we know from the work that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has done on the need for the proper classification of stewardship land that that land is often not of low value at all. I would really urge the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Conservation to take the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and do something with it.

The second concern that I want to put on the record is the fact that the Minister for the Environment is now responsible for leading our marine reserves legislation and change, and I want to say that that is not because of the personality of the Minister for the Environment. Few National members are more passionate than he is about marine protection, and I acknowledge the work that he has done over recent years in particular. That is not the concern that I have. The concern I have is that as Minister for the Environment, he operates under different criteria.

The current marine protection legislation led by the Minister of Conservation has preservation and protection as the basis of that legislation, whereas the exclusive economic zone legislation, which is where the Minister for the Environment is likely to lead, has a sustainable management ethos. They are quite different foundations and that causes a considerable concern in the transfer. So it is not about the personality of the Hon Dr Nick Smith. I am quite comfortable with him, amongst all of the National Government Ministers—in fact, he is the only one amongst all of the National Government Ministers who, I think, gives a toss in this area. It is about what the basis of our future marine legislation is going to be. So I wish him every success in ensuring that conservation and preservation are the basis of future legislation.

The next point I want to mention is the inability of the Minister of Conservation to answer, on time, some of the questions and her refusal to answer questions about unsuccessful Budget bids. She is the only Minister I have seen before a select committee who has refused to acknowledge that in some areas her bids were unsuccessful. She should have been up front and honest with not just the committee and Parliament but the public of New Zealand. I have seen other Ministers front up to those questions; she refused. I have subsequently asked the Prime Minister; he has refused to have anything to do with that as well.

The last point I want to make is in regard to conservation partnerships. Of course these are a good thing—working with philanthropic organisations, with business, with individuals, and with community organisations together to progress a shared goal—but it goes over the line of partnership when the department is dependent on donations in order to fulfil its core functions. It has got that way in the area of pest management and control, it has got that way in areas of planting, and it has got that way in the area of education. Those are core statutory functions that the department is unable to perform on its own.

E Te Whare tēnā koe; tuarua, ki ngā mema o tō tātou Whare, tēnā koutou katoa; tuatoru, mihi atu ki Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[I greet you the House; secondly, salutations to you all, the members of our House; and, thirdly, I acknowledge Māori Language Week. Greetings to you and to us all.]

I am addressing my comments to the Vote Environment budget. The revenue line shows that the waste disposal levy is expected to remain the same for the 2015-16 year as it did for the 2014-15 year. Currently, that budget is $32 million.

This revenue is the result of charging $10 on every tonne of waste that goes to landfill, and I would just note that that is in the Waste Minimisation Act 2008, which was a member’s bill initiated by the Green Party that got cross-party support. That levy of $32 million is shared between local government and central government to fund waste minimisation activities and initiatives. Basically, that is what it is used for.

The Government’s Budget line shows that waste minimisation is not working—certainly not if it is going to keep the revenue level at the same amount as this year and last year—and I guess that is not really a surprise when you consider some of the schemes that the Government is funding. The classic example is the one that the Minister announced on the Saturday before last, which was a voluntary product stewardship scheme from the packaging industry, where it would set up collection points at supermarkets as a 3-year trial to collect single-use plastics and soft plastics, including single-use plastic bags.

The Government has allocated $1.2 million to do this for the 3-year trial, but it is an example of “greenwashing”, and nobody is fooled. One just has to look at the New Zealand Herald editorial on Saturday, which basically explained why it is “greenwashing”. Again, today in the Dominion Post we have the headline here, “Plastic bag scheme won’t work”, over an opinion piece from Massey University’s Dr Trisia Farrelly. It will not work because the scheme is an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, and it does not deal with the problem of single-use plastic bags in the environment. We use 1.6 billion of these single-use plastic bags every year. That generates about 6 to 11 tonnes of carbon per year, and if we got rid of them, it would be the same as taking about 3,600 cars off the road permanently.

Plastic bags are designed to be disposed of. Yes, they do not make up a huge amount in the landfill, but that is because they are incredibly lightweight, and this is where they have a devastating impact on the environment. They can be ingested by marine animals—up to 2,000 different marine species, including whales and turtles, are known to ingest plastic bags and die from them—and they break down into micro-plastic, which is eaten by fish and then it enters the human food chain.

This Government scheme does not work to change consumer behaviour, so it does not minimise the amount of soft, single-use plastic, and it targets the same environmentally aware consumers who already take their reusable shopping bags to the supermarket in the first place. This is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, once we have failed to avoid, refuse, and reduce, and then we have got into recycling, but this is not going to fix it.

Prevention is the way to go, and for single-use plastic bags, that would be done by introducing a disincentive to use them. We could join hundreds of countries and States across the world and phase them out entirely, or we could introduce a point-of-sale levy. International evidence shows that having a levy reduces single-use plastic bag use by between 70 percent and 95 percent, depending on how much is charged. Local government bodies really, really support doing this. They voted on the Sunday before last to call on the Government to introduce a levy on single-use plastics because they are the ones that are cleaning up the waterways and cleaning up the drains that are getting blocked by this pest and this terrible product, which is having a huge impact on our environment.

E Te Heamana e mihi atu ana ki a koe.

[I acknowledge you, Mr Chairman.]

I would like to spend just a few moments talking about the conservation partnerships, but if I can just acknowledge the Minister in the chair, Nick Smith. He spoke to the key messages that he actually spoke to at the select committee. He spoke about our reform agenda over the last few years and how effective that has been. We have the National Policy Statement for Freshwater, the National Objectives Framework, the Environmental Protection Authority—there is a huge list of reforms and, of course, there are funding initiatives to support that. But, in particular, I would like to spend a few moments just reflecting on the conservation partnerships that we now have in place, have had in place for a number of years, and intend to continue to invest heavily in over the next 2 or 3 years.

When these conservation partnerships were introduced a few years ago under Nick Smith, and under Al Morrison’s leadership as the chief executive, there was a typical reaction from the Labour Party and the Green Party in particular. They were very anti them—a typically ideological reaction from those who think that conservation and business cannot work together and are in fact, in their view, very incompatible bedfellows. But these partnerships have proven that wrong. The philosophy that we were privatising the Department of Conservation, that private-public partnerships are evil, and that conservation is simply the preserve of the Government reflects a tired and captured ideology that, in my view, is holding them back.

These conservation partnerships, which Minister Barry and Lou Sanson stepped us through in the Local Government and Environment Committee, are successful and are working. The reason they are successful and working is that they are partnering with people who are on the ground. They have the expertise of the Department of Conservation, which is in the particular region, understands the ecosystem pressures, and can identify what the appropriate interventions are to give the best outcome. You have local communities, be they iwi or be they local non-government partnerships, that are energised and are passionate for their particular area, and they can be partnered with business in a way that delivers real benefit. It is not a failed ideology of privatisation, which gets barked at us from the other side. It is, yet again, an example of a pragmatic framework that is working and is delivering, and I am very pleased to able to be part of a Government that supports that and to hear from Minister Barry in terms of the various partnerships and how they are progressing.

Some of this is pretty personal to me because of the Fonterra Living Waters programme, which was launched 2 years ago in partnership with the Department of Conservation. I was part of that; I saw it being introduced. Five areas across the country that are under pressure are having an immediate turn-round, with the community, Fonterra, and the Department of Conservation working together to get a better ecosystem outcome. It is the same with Air New Zealand. There is a list of them, and it is worth just reflecting on these conservation partnerships and how they are impacting across the country, from Air New Zealand’s conservation partnership—which was initially focused on supporting the kiwi and has now been broadened to supporting Great Walks, marine reserves, and other coastal gems—to Dulux New Zealand. Obviously, I have touched on Fonterra’s partnership. There is Genesis Energy and its support in terms of the Whio Forever Project. Minister Barry, of course, at the select committee spoke on the Kiwis for Kiwi programme and the significant investment that we are putting in for that programme, and the Mitre 10 Takahē Rescue programme is also an example of that.

What is coming to be very clear to those who are involved in these partnerships is that once you actually get around the table likeminded people—people who are concerned about ensuring a better ecosystem outcome—and businesses that are prepared to put their money and support and energy behind that, over time, as they work together on that particular programme, other opportunities come from that. As the relationships become deeper and as the community, the Department of Conservation, and the business have an established track record of being able to work together for effect, the community is presented with more opportunities to take up.

I want to reinforce that that is an example of a public policy that is working. It is working today, and it deserves ongoing support and credit, not the blind opposition based on ideology that we are hearing from the other side.

Earlier on we had Eugenie Sage talking about the fact there was no new money in this Budget for conservation. That is wrong. There is $11.2 million of extra funding.

Tēnā koe e te Kaiwhakahaere. Ā, koutou rā, te Pāti Rōpū Reipa, Ngā Kākāriki, Aotearoa Tuatahi, me ngā Kahurangi he mihi tēnei ki a koutou katoa.

[Thank you, Mr Chair. To you, the Labour Party, the Greens, New Zealand First, and the Blues, I acknowledge you all.]

I would like to take a short call in the estimates debate around the environment sector. From listening to the different views from both sides of the House, indeed the glass on this side of the House is half full, or over half full, and on the other side, unfortunately, it is empty, or half empty.

I just want to also acknowledge the last speaker, my colleague Todd Muller, who talked particularly about the relationships that have been developed and fostered, particularly over the last three terms of this Government. I particularly want to acknowledge Lou Sanson as well, because when we look at the work that he has done, particularly with iwi, mana whenua, and tangata whenua, there has not been a time ever during the history of the Department of Conservation when iwi relationships have been so high. That is a true reflection of the way that the Department of Conservation acknowledges Te Ao Māori, the world of the Māori, and particularly because the other part of it is a whakataukī, or an interesting proverb, that goes “Whatungarongaro he tangata, toitū he whenua”. What that means is that people move on, but the land remains. That is really the basis around true partnership and relationships when we talk about the environment.

There is one part of the estimates vote that I would just like concentrate on, and it particularly concerns the Minister of Conservation, but that is not to forget the other two Ministers, Minister Groser, particularly with climate change, and Minister Smith as well, for the environment. The Minister of Conservation appeared before the Local Government and Environment Committee to update us around the programmes to tackle kauri die-back. I want to just really concentrate on this, because some years ago I spent some time working in tourism up in Northland—particularly up in Waipoua working with the iwi of Te Uri o Hau, which is an iwi that operates right inside the Waipoua Forest—and also working with Footprints Waipoua, which does tours, particularly to Tāne Māhuta, and really tells this incredible story around the spirituality of Waipoua.

While I was there I really did gain an appreciation for how much of a taoka, or treasure, kauri are to tangata whenua of the Tai Tokerau but also to all New Zealanders. In the area sometimes referred to as the Kauri Coast, kauri contributes to a growing tourist industry as well. I had the opportunity when I was up there in Northland at the beginning of the year to visit the Kauri Museum at Matakohe. That also demonstrated the really important part that kauri plays in the local economy.

I just want to say that it is fascinating when you look at those people who work on this kauri die-back programme, because it really reflects the partnership that the Department of Conservation has developed with them. You do have these individuals, you have conservationists, you have iwi, and then you have the Department of Conservation working together. So when we look at this—when the Minister came to the committee she expressed the frustration that I think we all feel that we do not know enough about the invisible killer of the kauri. What we do know is that the pathogen is carried through the soil, and that it is easily spread from place to place on our shoes and by visitors.