Estimates Debate — Environment and Oceans and Fisheries

Kia orana, Mr Chair. As chair of the Environment Committee, I will take a brief call on the Votes that the committee considered, and that was for the 2021-22 Estimates: Vote Conservation, Vote Environment, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The committee was very pleased to welcome back Minister Kiritapu Allan from medical leave, and we also heard from the Acting Minister Verrall.

There is an $800 million allocation for Vote Conservation in 2020-2021. That is a major increase—a doubling on what that vote was in 2017-2018 under the last Government. It’s also an increase for this year on what was allocated last year. The committee was particularly interested in Jobs for Nature, and the $500 million that Te Papa Atawhai is responsible for as part of that $1.3 billion programme. The department is responsible for three major initiatives there: enhancing biodiversity outcomes on public and private land; pest management, including Predator Free Aotearoa; and supporting employment through projects on conservation land.

The Minister highlighted that there were 173 Jobs for Nature projects under way or at various stages of approval. This programme is about both increasing conservation knowledge, people’s connection with conservation, and providing jobs and skills that will long outlast the programme. There are projects that we heard were very diverse, from wilding conifer control in the Craigieburn Range to a big project in South Auckland around urban landscaping. The committee was particularly interested in the accountability measures that the department is using to track progress in spending. I would encourage anyone interested in any of the Votes to have a look at the questions which the committee asked. In Conservation, the committee asked some 358 questions of Te Papa Atawhai, and in Vote Environment, 273 questions of the Ministry for the Environment. The answers to those questions really flesh out a lot of the agencies’ work that’s proposed over the coming year.

Just in Vote Conservation, the committee was also interested in Predator Free New Zealand—the big expansion in that programme in South Westland in the Whataroa area. The director-general highlighted the gains that have been made in predator control, both there and in areas like kōkako in Pureora, where this sustained investment that Government is making in predator control over several years is showing significant improvements in the status of a lot of our threatened species. Going back right to the 1990s, for example, where we only had 830 breeding pairs of kōkako throughout the North Island, now there are some 2,000 breeding pairs. The committee was also interested in a lot of predators like feral cats—the seriousness of the problem of feral cats, both in terms of their direct predation and the impacts of toxoplasmosis. We also heard about the work the department was doing to reduce its climate emissions: a 40 percent reduction in air travel in the last financial year, and a ban on the purchase of internal combustion engines.

I’d like to acknowledge the work of the outgoing Director-General of Conservation, Lou Sanson, who will be standing down in September. He has been the Director-General of Te Papa Atawhai for eight years and been with the department in other roles before that. He’s worked with at least five Ministers and he has led the department with huge enthusiasm and commitment to conservation, and a very deep knowledge of the department’s mahi. He has engaged with people and place and really got the department to be much more outward-looking and much more focused on its Treaty partnership.

In terms of Vote for the Environment, it’s got an appropriation of $1.73 billion. The bulk of this, of course, is due to the allocation of New Zealand emission units and provision for impairment of debt for climate change - related activities. The Ministry for the Environment has an appropriation of $382 million within that, and the committee considered quite a wide range of issues in terms of the ministry and the Minister’s work programme here—$132 million is allocated over several years for reform of the resource management system, with $35 million of that in the current financial year. The Minister highlighted that a lot of this will be used to improve implementation of the reform legislation through the development of a national planning framework, and working in the national policy statements and national environmental standards under that. Waste comes within this area. Of course, the landfill levy has been increased from $10 to $20 a tonne for municipal landfills from 1 July. That will lead to quite a significant increase in funding for allocation to reducing waste to landfill.

I’d like to ask the Minister: how much of the special allocation in Vote Environment funding for delivering his new resource management system will be spent on more staff at the Ministry for the Environment?

I can’t give the member an accurate figure on that. If he cares to put down a question in writing, I can give him that information. I am happy, though, to accept that it’s a big piece of work and that it has required the department to engage more personnel in order to land it.

There’s general agreement across society and, I think, across this House that the Resource Management Act (RMA) is past its use-by date. If you chunk it down, it really hasn’t delivered. It takes too long, it costs too much, and it hasn’t protected the environment. In respect of it taking too long and not having good development outcomes, you don’t really need to look much further than some of the problems that we’ve had in housing. Although they’re very complex problems caused by a lack of infrastructure, a lack of trained workforce, and various other contributing factors, it’s also true that in a country that’s got low population densities, we’ve got very high land prices. That’s in part been caused by the way in which the RMA has been implemented, and although there are some fixes on the way to that through the national policy statement under the RMA, the RMA hasn’t delivered the competitive land markets that we’ve needed. So we think, for reasons of housing as well as environmental protection and enabling development like infrastructure, there is a need to start again rather than just make yet another complex amendment to the existing RMA.

Now, given that the RMA is a cornerstone piece of legislation for the way in which we manage both development land use and the protection of the environment, it’s important that that be done properly, and that is a complex task. I’m sure this will come up in further questions, but our proposal is to replace the RMA with the Natural and Built Environments Act, another piece of legislation that will have spatial planning on a regional level called the Strategic Planning Act, and—to a certain extent separate—a piece of legislation that helps us to adapt to the effects of climate change, and no doubt other questions will arise as to some of the details of that.

How much of that special funding will be spent on converting existing national environmental standards and national policy statements into his new proposed national planning framework?

I would say a small but important fraction. The new system moves from managing effects to trying to manage for outcomes. One of the problems environmentally under the RMA that there’s a general consensus on is that the “avoid”, “remedy”, and/or “mitigate” language of the RMA in the end, in respect of impacts from land use on things like water, ended up being mainly “mitigate”, and the effect of mitigated increases in intensity and land use cumulatively amounted to very significant degradations in water.

In order to overcome that, we think that there’s a need to manage to bottom lines. In truth, those bottom lines in respect of water are now largely coming through the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management that was promulgated last year. That will be transitioned into the new system and will be an example of the bottom lines that the system will be managed for. It is complex, because in some instances you’ve got this tension between strictness of bottom lines and the need to sometimes have exceptions. This has been made clear in a mistake that I was partly responsible for in respect of wetland rules in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, where we probably went a bit hard and chose a prohibited status for nixing of any wetlands.

Now, we do need to be very careful that we don’t lose a lot more wetlands in New Zealand, because, you know, we’ve lost more than 90 percent of the wetlands that used to exist, including national parks. Outside of national parks, it’s even worse. But that wetland exception shows that we didn’t get it quite right and we’re in the process of fixing—it shows that there is the need occasionally for an exception from the bottom line. We don’t want to lose more wetlands, but occasionally you have to; for example, for infrastructure or for a quarry expansion.

Now, how we’re going to manage that in the new system through the national planning framework is that we think that there will be national direction and a positive direction in respect of infrastructure developments so that we make explicit that on occasions the national planning framework, which will include the transitioning in of existing national environmental standards and national planning statements—there will be exceptions that are necessary for infrastructure on occasions, and that’ll also be articulated in the national planning framework.

Total staff numbers at the Ministry for the Environment have increased from 349, when he first became a Minister, to 492 in the 2020 year. That’s a 41 percent increase in just three years. Why?

Because, sadly, New Zealand’s view of ourselves as being good custodians of environmental outcomes has been found to be wanting and there is a desire amongst New Zealanders to do better in a number of areas. Fresh water is one of those areas. There are more people that are employed in assisting regional councils to halt the decline in the quality of fresh water. When we came to office, sadly, more than half of the monitored sites that people swim in in summer are not safe to swim in and put your head under, according to World Health Organization guidelines. So there was obviously a need to do better in respect of oversight by the ministry of freshwater outcomes.

The Hon Eugenie Sage mentioned in her contribution the work that is being done in respect of waste. New Zealand has, I think—we are one of, if not, the highest per capita contributors to landfills on a kilograms or tonnes of waste per person per annum in the world, in the OECD, and so we also need to make progress on waste. So we are doing a lot of work in that space, including updating the relevant legislative code, as well as bringing forward recycling initiatives so that we have more recycling and move closer to a circular economy and less going to landfill.

Then, of course, within the numbers that the member quotes, although they’re not within my vote, Vote Climate Change has also had an increase in personnel to deal with the zero carbon bill and the very difficult transition that we have as a country—achievable, but quite technically difficult in order to advance towards a low carbon economy.

The Minister has often said that his freshwater reforms will be achieved within a generation. How many years does the Minister define as being a generation for the purposes of his timetable?

There are two main parts. Well, actually, there are three main parts to the changes—actually, there are four; I’m going to list the four changes—to our freshwater reforms.

The first was a change to the Resource Management Act to change the way in which water plans are made. That has been legislated. We have a Freshwater Commissioner—currently Peter Skelton, a long-serving judge, Professor of Planning, and one of the commissioners that the National Party appointed to Environment Canterbury, and a very capable man. With his oversight, we are running a new process to help councils put in place good freshwater plans.

The second part was a national environment standard, which has near instant effect, which has some bottom-line rules that everyone has to adhere to and that, effectively, go like regulations directly into plans.

The third part that the member, I think, is mainly referring to there—the fourth part being regulations relating to fencing and things, which I won’t go into in detail—but the third part, which does take some time, is what communities, through their regional councils, want to do in their plans in order to achieve the requirements of the national policy statement on freshwater management. There are various ways that councils can address their issues. It’s for them to decide how they’re going to bring their river health and lake health up to the levels that are prescribed by the legislation, and they do that through plans. And then those plans, once they are in place, give a transition to improve things. We’ve said that we think the improvements back to swimmability and ecological health should take a generation. We actually haven’t defined that; we’ve left that to councils to work out.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: That’s why I asked the question.

Well, we could have prescribed it, but it will differ. In some areas, they’ve got bigger challenges than others and they might take a little longer. But I think most people think of a generation as 20 or 30 years. From my perspective, the most important thing is to get things on the right trajectory, and then I think we’ll be able to relax a little bit and take the time to get back to the state of rivers that we used to enjoy as a country 20 or 30 years ago.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’d like to turn to oceans and fisheries. The Minister recently released seven Cabinet papers and announced the vision, objectives, and principles for the oceans and fisheries portfolio. I would be interested in how the Government’s vision of ensuring the long-term health and resilience of ocean and coastal ecosystems, including the role of fisheries, is to be implemented, because there doesn’t appear to be any specific funding allocated in the Budget for the Oceans Secretariat. And in terms of the appropriation for fisheries in 2021-2022, it’s still at $72.6 million, which was actually less than was spent last year. So the questions are: what expectations and outcomes does the Minister have for the Oceans Secretariat, what does he expect it and its parent agencies to have produced by the end of the financial year, and how is the vision going to be implemented if there is no specific funding provided? And, if I’m missing something, has some funding been provided?

The objectives that we also announced when we set out the vision that the member has just quoted is to promote an ecosystem-based approach to research, monitoring, and management. Of course, there’s already money in the system to do that if we just take a more ecosystem approach to its allocation. To establish a spatial planning framework that optimises the protection and use of marine space and resources—our most recent example of that was our response to Sea Change, where we’ve protected various parts of the Hauraki Gulf, restricted trawling to trawl corridors, and had various other quite complex changes to fishing rules. And the third objective was to support the development of a high marine economy that provides equitable wellbeing benefits. And there are various principles that underlie that.

In respect of some of the changes that we’re already making in this regard, we of course have the benefit of the report of the Chief Science Advisor that came out earlier this year. We’ve already begun implementing some of the recommendations in that report. I think the three most notable ones that we’ve announced so far this year are cameras on boats—cameras on boats were supported by the prior National Government, following operations Achilles and Hippocamp, which showed high levels of illegal activity in the fishing industry, and also high levels of legal dumping of fish as well. The illegal, unreported dumping of fish was of great concern to the then Minister, Hon Nathan Guy, who said that we needed to use technology to bring transparency to these practices. Unfortunately, neither National nor we were able to, in our first term of Government, fund all cameras in boats, although we did fund some cameras on boats for boats fishing in the areas of the Māui dolphin, but we’ve now funded that for approximately 300 vessels, which I think covers more than 80 percent of the in-shore fishery by volume of catch.

The second thing we’ve done is we’re, essentially, banning, with an exceptions regime, the discarding of fish. So if you catch it, you’ve got to land it as a commercial fisher, with some limited exceptions—the likes of spiny dogfish that ammoniate and damage other fish.

And the third change that we’re making that’s significant is we’re changing the penalties regime as a consequence of that transparency and change to some of those other rules. So those are some examples of progress that we’re already making.

So can the Minister confirm that the Department of Conservation, and the Ministry for the Environment, and Fisheries New Zealand will be doing all of this work from their existing baselines and that no new funding has been allocated in Budget 2021 to implement this oceans vision?

Yes. And they already had obligations in that, regardless. There’s a new way of organising them to do that work. But the member is correct that there’s no additional funding for that particular part of the work. The cameras on boats is a $68 million initiative. So that’s a large amount of additional funding going into related enterprises.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Following on from that, in relation to some of the discussion just had around fish stock assessments, I’m really interested to understand a bit more from the Minister around that funding aspect, because I am a bit concerned that the fish stock management is not operating quite as efficiently as it could be. We only evaluated 159 fish stocks; 240 were not assessed at all. Of those 159 scientifically evaluated fish stocks, 28 were deemed to be overfished—that’s just about 20 percent. So it seems that we are saying that nearly one in five of our fish stocks are overfished, and I wonder whether the Minister could give some insight into whether he is comfortable with that figure and, if not, what funding arrangements under this current Budget will be adapted to deal with that.

The quota management system in New Zealand has worked reasonably well—not perfectly—to enforce rules requiring that fishing is limited to a sustainable level of catch. That total allowable catch is then split between commercial, recreational, and, actually, allowances for illegal and other causes of fish mortality. Now, overall, it’s worked well. On some occasions, the research shows that when they do a stock assessment of fish, some of the heavily fished species have dropped below expected levels. The most pressing example of that recently in New Zealand was actually the tarakihi fishery. That is due for reassessment this year. I won’t say much about that in detail because they are decisions that are yet to be taken, but there is, for those that are interested, a recent High Court decision where some of the decisions that were made previously in the tarakihi stock were looked at and criticised.

Where we’re lucky in New Zealand—well, where we’re unlucky—is we’ve got such enormous biodiversity and richness in our fish stocks that, realistically, we can’t assess every one of them. That might change in time with new technologies, but at the moment we can’t. So we regularly assess the fisheries that are subject to the most fishing pressure. Sometimes, we find a problem and then we set a plan to rebuild the stock in accordance with the Fisheries Act. There’s some good news around. The snapper fishery on the East Coast of the North Island has increased in abundance quite significantly in recent years, although there are still some local areas of shortage.

Thank you, Mr Chair. So, following on from that, I’m interested in his view, then, around Snapper 8 on the west coast of the North Island, in which I understand they’re proposing significant increases in the commercial catch there, some 1,500 tonnes of snapper. So what level of confidence does he have in that, given that, as I said, it seems nearly 20 percent of assessed fish stocks are now considered overfished? Is he putting that limit too high? Would a lower limit perhaps be a more appropriate step to transition through that? Did he give any consideration to different levels, or is that 1,500 tonne increase where he’s been from the start with that? Also, then, what level of 28N rights will be satisfied as a result of that increase and change to that particular fish stock?

Whilst we’re on that, because I just wonder whether I will have another opportunity, I’m going to also move into the recreational aspect. We’ve seen more recently a lot of media interest and concern around the pink maomao, a recreationally caught fish stock currently not subject to a daily catch limit. I wonder if the Minister could give an update on any potential prioritisation he’s given to putting a limit in place for fish stocks like pink maomao and whether, indeed, the Minister would consider—and I’ve been fortunate to speak to many recreational fishers, and they’re always very enthusiastic discussions and lots of honest conversations around the size of fish, of course. But the feedback I’ve got from those fishers is that, actually, there’s no reason why we couldn’t just have a blanket limit on all recreationally caught fish stocks currently not subject to a catch limit that would stop this sort of issue happening.

So I guess my question, what I’m asking the Minister, is: will he implement a recreational catch limit on all recreationally caught fish stocks currently not subject to a catch limit, a blanket limit of perhaps 10 or 15? Surely that’s enough, on a daily basis. That will at least address that issue in the interim whilst he’s perhaps coming up with a more refined and more detailed consultation process to determine the accuracy of particular fish stocks, appreciating within that that we can’t assess every fish stock, as he’s noted. But is there any reason why we would need more than 10 or 15 for any daily limit on a recreationally caught species?

I thank the member for those questions. In respect of the decisions in respect of Snapper 8, which is off the west coast of the North Island, in the main, those decisions have yet to be taken and we’re consulting upon them, and so I wouldn’t speculate on the outcome. There are 28N rights to be dealt with as well, as the member obviously knows, and those issues are being worked through. In respect of pink maomao, I mean, I think most New Zealanders were pretty shocked at the fact that the level of greed that was shown in respect of people who were plundering many hundreds of fish was legal because the regulations allow it. So I have sought advice as to whether there needs to be a change to bag limits to incorporate all fish, including pink maomao. Those decisions have not yet been taken, but we’re considering them.

Thank you, Madam Chair. To the Minister: what part of the resource management reforms that the Minister has announced will drive councils to lift restrictions on the availability of land for housing and thereby deliver more affordable housing because, if we look back to 2017, the Speech from the Throne was quite clear there was a commitment from the Labour Government to remove the metropolitan urban limit in Auckland. It was recognised as putting an artificial constraint, a scarcity, on the supply of land for housing. We’ve seen reports that, for an average Auckland house, there is a $50,000 premium applied just because of that one planning restriction. We only have to look at Christchurch, in the wake of the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes, zoning a large amount of suitable land for housing. The average house price in Christchurch is about $550,000, whereas in Auckland $1.14 million is the median house price. So the question that the ACT party has is: how will the Government’s resource management reforms deliver more land for housing and more affordable housing?

I thank the member for the question. I actually largely agree with his proposition that artificial constraints on land supply have driven up land prices and that those increases in land prices have flowed through to the cost of all housing, because it’s the marginal cost of the new that effectively leads the market. Now, the way that we’ve approached that under the Resource Management Act (RMA) is through the only tools that we have under the RMA, which are to issue national direction requiring councils to make room for growth, essentially.

Where I might slightly disagree with the member—and I don’t want to put words in his mouth, and he might actually agree with me on this—is that actually, in terms of building opportunities, it’s important to make them available both within the boundaries and on the boundaries of growing cities, so that we have to allow the intensification that will actually naturally occur if we let people intensify. We also have to allow a release of the pressure on the boundaries of cities by making more land available for new building opportunities.

How we’re going to achieve that under the new system is through a combination of national direction, carrying that forward; some positive national direction in respect of housing, which will go to some of those issues as to land supply; and additionally, signalling to both councils, to central government, and to the private sector where the big chunks of development are likely to come as a city grows. That will be done through the Strategic Planning Act, which will then flow through into Natural and Built Environments Act plans, and I’m happy to answer further questions on that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So there are many environmental bottom lines outlined in the resource management reforms, and we already have a host of national environmental standards and national policy statements which constrain the use of land and make it quite difficult—if not impossible—to obtain consents for certain types of activities, which you have referred to, such as disturbing wetlands. So a question that the ACT Party has is how will the resource management reforms proposed by the Government make sure that more infrastructure can be built where it’s needed and when it’s needed without having a huge hurdle in terms of resource management consenting that currently means that really good projects—like irrigation and water storage, for example—fail to meet the regulatory test and do not get consent in the Environment Court, like the Ruataniwha dam, for example? So would the Minister care to shine some light on how infrastructure might be delivered better?

The Ruataniwha dam was declined for the reasons set out in the judgment, and that was the correct decision. I think that those decision makers made the right decision. We’ve consented a number of water storage projects already—or at least one; I think there’s another in process—through the fast-track consenting process under the RMA.

More broadly, in respect of infrastructure provision, there will be positive national direction in the national planning framework. There will also be shown future arterial corridors, for example, in a Strategic Planning Act, which will flow through to Natural and Built Environments Act plans, and they may well be then a permitted activity. Once it’s come through those things—and the controlling of the adverse effect is more likely to be done through standards relating to siltation, for example, rather than through bespoke rules and a complex application.

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