Estimates Debate — Environment, and Oceans and Fisheries

Good evening, members. When we broke for the dinner break, we were debating the Estimates. We now have the Minister for the Environment and for Oceans and Fisheries. The Minister is available from 7 p.m. until 8 p.m.

I’m pleased to report from the Environment Committee, which examined Vote Environment, Vote Conversation, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, but we’ll focus on Vote Environment here. There are three very comprehensive reports on the committee’s examination of each of these Votes, and, of course, Vote Environment also included Vote Climate Change on Parliament’s website.

In terms of Vote Environment, it’s $2.9 billion, but the Minister for the Environment, who’s with us today, is responsible for nearly $557 million of that. There has been a significant increase in funding in Vote Environment, largely because of the significant programme of work in resource management and water management reform since 2018-19, and quite an increase in this current financial year 2022/23 in funding for waste management water reform and policy advice there, and, of course, for resource management reform. The committee was interested in the significant increase in the staff of the Ministry for the Environment—up to 825 staff compared to 372 in 2018-19. A lot of those staff are working on the resource management reform programme, also in the Essential Freshwater programme which, of course, really got up to speed in 2020. We looked at things like the amendments to the wetlands regulations and the major investment in Budget 2022—some $35.6 million in farm plans for fresh water.

One of the other issues the committee considered was the funding for the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), and, because it relies quite heavily on revenue recovery from its fees, the revenue has dipped by half a million dollars in the current year compared to last year, and that means it is under some pressure—for example, it’s got 43 chemicals that it has identified as a priority for reassessment, but it can only do one or two of those each year. But we were heartened by the fact that there is a review under way of funding for the EPA, which the Ministry for the Environment is involved in.

I’m really pleased that there’s quite a significant increase in both funding for waste minimisation through the increase in the waste levy, which was initiated last term, and a lot of work being done on policy in this space in terms of the container return scheme; a long-term infrastructure plan for waste; Government’s plans to divert organic waste from landfill; and a new waste strategy. The committee also looked at Jobs for Nature, both for Vote Environment and Vote Conservation, and heard that some 378 projects have been contracted across the programme, and 8,000 nature-based jobs created as part of that.

In terms of the climate change appropriations, there has been quite an increase there and, obviously, a big programme of work with the emissions reduction plan and the new Climate Emergency Response Fund, which takes the proceeds from the emissions trading scheme which are earmarked for spending for action to reduce emissions. We also heard a little of the new Climate Change Chief Executives Board, which, given the 300 actions in the emissions reduction plan, has chief executives across Government agencies working to coordinate that.

So a huge body of work is happening both in Vote Environment, in Vote Conservation, and the work of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and I do encourage members and the public to look at the committee’s reports. Kia ora.

I call the Hon Stuart Smith—oh, sorry, the Hon Scott Simpson.

He will soon be, Mr Chair—soon be. Not long to wait now.

The Environment Committee chair, the Hon Eugenie Sage, has actually done, I think, a very good job in summarising the nature of the hearing that we had back in June to discuss Estimates with the Minister for the Environment. But when I was listening to her assessment of what we discussed, I could not help but draw the conclusion, actually, that, for the last five years, we have heard very similar commentaries from the select committee chair: a lot about what’s going to happen, a lot about the money that has been spent and the increase in taxpayer money that has been allocated, a lot of talk about the increased number of people working in the Ministry for the Environment, but almost no delivery, in that five years. Very little—still talking about the same things that this Government was talking about five long years ago.

Now, we find that the much-vaunted resource management reform programme appears to be utterly mired, stuck somewhere either within the Government caucus or the factions that lie within it, or in the Ministry for the Environment’s huge staff numbers. But somewhere in amongst all that, it seems not to be making progress. We were told that the Minister hoped to introduce the two fundamental pieces of legislation in October, and so one of the questions I have for him is: is he still confident that that date will be met, and will the natural and built environments legislation and the strategic planning legislation come to this House before Christmas? Will it be in this calendar year, and, if not, why not?

One of the issues that I want to traverse is the $178 million that was allocated over four years for implementation of the new legislation, and the new regulatory environment that will accompany it. What I’m keen to know from the Minister tonight is: how much of that $178 million has already been spent? What has it been spent on, and, by whom, and where? And what are the benefits so far, to date? We heard back in June, from the Minister, that the select committee—we were given an assurance that the select committee process would not be truncated, that it would be a full select committee process, even though the two pieces of legislation would be considered by the select committee and the Parliament simultaneously. That, we know, creates difficulties and challenges for the committee, but also difficulties and challenges for those people who are interested in submitting—for councillors, for councils, for stakeholders, for environmental NGOs, and for citizens. That will be a tricky call.

So those are my first few questions, and I’d be happy to hear from the Minister on those.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Can I thank the Environment Committee for the work that they did examining the Estimates, and thanks for the chair’s summary.

Responding to the Hon Scott Simpson’s questions, the suggestion has been made that we’ve been dragging our feet on Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms, so I thought I would explain to the committee the process that has been run. Of course, in the nine years of the National Government, there was a suggestion that the RMA should be reformed, and it never was. We came to office—

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: That’s because Labour opposed every single initiative.

It’s because Labour opposed it? Actually, we weren’t in Government; the National Party had the votes, but they didn’t choose to prioritise that. Notwithstanding the fact that the RMA has, for a long time cost too much, it’s taken too long, and it hasn’t properly protected the environment; nor has it enabled the development outcomes that we need, as evidenced in part by the lack of housing opportunities that we have in New Zealand, which have driven land prices so high.

So when we took office, we realised that RMA reform was necessary, but we also realised that there were two urgent matters that needed to be addressed first. One was making advances on land supply, which we’ve done through instruments like the National Policy Statement on Urban Development, and the medium-density residential zone, which the National Party, together with the Green Party, cooperated with us on. And we also needed to make progress on water quality, because freshwater quality has been degrading in the country quite badly, to the point where the majority of rivers and lake sites that are monitored by councils for safe swimming are not safe to swim in, in summer, according to World Health Organization standards.

So we made significant progress on both of those issues during the last term, and then, towards the end of last term, kicked off a review of the RMA system led by the Hon Tony Randerson QC, a retired Court of Appeal Judge. He, in turn, built on earlier reviews, one of which was done under the National Party—and I thank them for that—by the Productivity Commission. Other reports were by Local Government New Zealand, through the Environmental Defence Society, the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern) Inc., Infrastructure New Zealand, the Property Council, and, of course, another report by the Waitangi Tribunal. We then said, “Look, we’ll broadly implement the Randerson report.” And we are following that. The $178 million that is in this Budget moves towards implementation of that.

The implementation money is spread over four years. We’re already starting to spend that this year on putting together the national planning framework, which is the consolidated form of national direction that provides guidance. If you have the Natural and Built Environments Act (NBA) and Spatial Planning Act (SPA) sitting at the top, the next layer of rules sits in the national planning framework, which then inform the SPA and NBA plans. So in order for the new system to operate, you need the national planning framework to be in place. We also have money for draft plans, including assisting probably three regions with their first SPA and NBA plans. Plan formats and some electronic tools are being developed. All of those things are necessary to make sure that this new system launches efficiently, because, I think, one of the lessons that we’ve all learnt in this House, across the House, is that the lack of national direction, the lack of standard plan formats, the lack of central government assistance in the first plans to manage out, if you like, unnecessary complexity and divergence between plans—so I think that answers the member’s question about money for implementation and RMA time frames.

Final point: yes, we are intending to introduce legislation in October, and we still expect a full six- month select committee process.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, the Infrastructure Commission stated that consenting infrastructure cost New Zealand about $1.3 billion in the last year. That’s just the paperwork—just getting the consents. That’s not building a sediment detention pond, that’s not turning up on site and moving the owls or shifting the frogs—that’s just the paperwork, Minister.

Auckland quarries have been, essentially, sterilised by the freshwater rules, which prohibited developing anything that is a wetland—and a wetland being a 3-square-metre patch of bulrushes in a wet field. That’s regulation that the Ministry for the Environment produced that you signed off and that is now affecting the ability of infrastructure projects to proceed. More recently, consents have been declined to extract sand from off the North Auckland coast—that vital special sharp sand used for making concrete in the City Rail Link project and in the Central Interceptor waste-water project; a project to keep sewage off Auckland beaches. Without these consents for vital resources, Minister, infrastructure cannot proceed, even if we could afford $1.3 billion just to get consents.

So, Minister, I have three questions for you this evening. How will enshrining race-based co-governance in planning legislation make it easier to consent vital infrastructure, say, for example like Port of Tauranga’s wharf extension; Transpower’s transmission lines over Tauranga Harbour?—question 1.

Question 2: in reply to a written question that I asked the Minister about the Port of Tauranga being refused the opportunity to use the fast-track Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) consenting process to consent their vital wharf redevelopment—which they believe is vital in order to avoid major blockages in the supply chain for New Zealand’s largest export port by volume and revenue—the Minister has declined to allow that consent to proceed through the EPA fast-track process. So, Minister, how will the Natural and Built Environments Bill (NBE) reforms and Spatial Planning Act reform make it easier, whether it incorporates co-governance—or what other methods would make it easier to consent this type of infrastructure? Because that’s just not clear from the reform agenda or from the information we’ve had back from officials, Minister.

Finally, there’s been great apprehension expressed at the Environment Committee recently on the emissions reduction plan, no less; that the Resource Management Act (RMA) as it currently stands and the Natural and Built Environments Bill—the replacement bill for the RMA, which we’ve analysed as an exposure draft at Environment Committee—will actually make it harder to get consents to achieve a renewable energy target. They claim that the environmental bottom lines, which are included in the NBE Bill—a lack of provision for offsetting environmental effects by this inevitable dilemma we face: if we want to build infrastructure, whether it’s a renewable energy, whether it’s a waste-water treatment plant or a road, we build it in the natural environment, and the submitters have claimed that without the ability to offset environmental effects, they’re not going to be able achieve our renewable energy targets.

So, Minister, could you please provide assurance? Will you be enshrining race-based co-governance in your resource management reform? Will you allow for fast-track consenting for vital infrastructure now—right now—and in any subsequent reform? And will the natural and built environments—or whatever the replacement is for the RMA—allow for offsetting for environmental effects? Thank you, Minister.

Thank you for those questions. In respect of the first comments around infrastructure and costs of infrastructure, one of the objectives of this reform is to reduce those costs because they are absurdly high in New Zealand. The cost of consenting infrastructure, according to the Infrastructure Commission—an organisation that this Government created in the last term—it had an investigation into those costs and they have increased for mid-size infrastructure by 150 percent over about 10 years, so those consenting costs are now 250 percent of what they were a decade ago; an absolutely absurd waste of money. One of our objectives is to reduce those costs, and we will.

How are we going to do that? In a number of ways. The new national planning framework (NPF) will include a development chapter which addresses infrastructure matters, and that work is being led by the Infrastructure Commission with assistance from other agencies. It’s not being led by the Ministry for the Environment; it’s being led by the Infrastructure Commission. That chapter in the national planning framework will be one of the few new chapters in the NPF, the rest being transitioned in from existing national directions. Otherwise, you just can’t land it.

The effect of that will be that spatial plans identify routes for, for example, a new highway or new rail route, or they might identify another area; once you have population growth, it ought to be opened up to housing and therefore needs roading infrastructure or a school or a hospital or a police station. Those sorts of things will, at a high level, be identified in a spatial plan under the Spatial Planning Act, and they will then flow through into Natural and Built Environments Act plans, including designations which can last for longer. And the activity, once a trigger is met—it might be population—means that we need a new rail link out to the south of Auckland or something like that, that will flow a lot easier and, on occasions, will be a permitted activity rather than something that requires a complex consent.

Now, in order to do that, some of the complexity that lies in bespoke conditions of an individual consent has to be standardised. So there will be a series of standards that are promulgated, for example, for sediment control. And there might be a series of standards—there might be standard A for a small project or standard B, C, or D if it was becoming more complex. The sediment problems in the likes of Transmission Gully would be more complex than in a small subdivision. And so the applicant might say, “We’re proposing standard A.” and the council might come back and say “Standard C”, but in either case that standard doesn’t need to be set out in bespoke detail.

In respect of the question about direct referral and the Tauranga example, the applicants and the council agreed to refer that directly to the Environment Court. It is a contentious project and it’s one that we thought the public should have the opportunity to make a submission upon, which they don’t get the opportunity to if the fast-track process was used. That was one of the reasons why I, as the responsible Minister, declined to put that through fast track.

One of the problems that they’ve encountered in that case is a dispute as to who should be notified. Currently, under the Resource Management Act, those disputes can only be resolved by way of judicial review of the non-notification decision to the High Court. That can slow processes down and add cost, and it’s being proposed that plans are a lot clearer as to the classes of people that should have to be notified and shouldn’t have to be notified. And in the event that there is still doubt—because you can’t cover every eventuality in the plan—those disputes will be resolved by the Environment Court rather than judicial review to the High Court.

In respect of the questions around wetlands, the member is correct that there have been some problems with the definition of “wetlands”; we didn’t get that quite right. The member is wrong to suggest that has meant that we can’t supply concrete to Auckland, as evidenced by the fact that concrete shortages have not been in the news; Gib shortages have been. But we’re building twice as many houses as were built when we came to office, and we’re supplying them all with the concrete that they need.

In respect of the changes to the wetland provisions, an exposure draft was provided to the industry because there is a lot of important detail in it, and we have received feedback on that and we’re expecting those changes to be promulgated—is it by October? Yes, my officials confirmed by October, we’re expecting the final document.

Stuart Smith.

Thank you, Mr Chair. You missed the “Hon” you gave me earlier; I was hoping that might stick around a bit longer.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): I’ve been put right in the interim, thank you.

Well, you’ve got a version of it. Thank you. And thank you, Minister, for the answers that you’ve given. I want to talk about, and get some information about, seabed mining. The Minister will be aware that the Prohibition on Seabed Mining Legislation Amendment Bill has been introduced to Parliament—a member’s bill that seeks to ban seabed mining and retrospectively ban existing seabed mining consents.

I’d like to point out to the Minister that he will be well aware that the oil and gas ban had a very significant effect on New Zealand’s reputation in terms of our sovereign risk. I know from feedback from business contacts that significant lending institutions overseas now view New Zealand as very high risk in terms of sovereign risk, and that has a chilling effect on investment right across—not just in the oil and gas sector or in mining sectors, or extractive industries—that is “New Zealand Inc.” is seen as a sovereign risk. So I would like the Minister to clear up: does he have any intention to ban seabed mining, and, if he does, does he have any intention to retrospectively ban existing mining consents—seabed or otherwise? And what evidence has he seen—if he has seen any—that shows that seabed mining can be carried out without detrimental environmental effects? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We haven’t, in the Labour Party, taken a position on the Prohibition on Seabed Mining Legislation Amendment Bill that the member refers to, which is a Māori Party member’s bill. So I can’t illuminate the member any more in respect of that. In respect of the earlier ban on the issue of additional mining areas other than on land, we stand by that decision because we recognise that you can’t keep developing fossil fuels and meet your climate targets, as a world, and we think that was appropriate. New Zealand isn’t running out of gas—

💬 Simeon Brown: We’ll just import the coal from Indonesia!

The member opposite said we just import the coal from Indonesia—that’s got absolutely nothing to do with the offshore oil ban. And the member will be aware that, under the New Zealand electricity system, in a dry year, we are reliant upon Huntly and supplies of coal for it. Until we get to the point where we can retire Huntly, we’ll continue to need it, which reminds me of a question that Simon Court raised that I didn’t answer, which was this tension between climate and consenting renewables. That is a very real tension. You can’t resolve all of those tensions through legislation, because you can’t say that all renewables ought to be always consented. Sometimes they ought not to be, because there’s an alternative project that would be better, with less environmental damage. But members will be aware that I’m quite interested in quite a controversial plan down south in respect of Lake Onslow that would be controversial to consent, but should still be able to be properly considered as being part of the energy mix that we need in the future so that we can retire Huntly, for example, and therefore not need to import coal in a dry year.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. The Minister is responsible for the Rangitāhua/Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill. Vote Conservation allocates $1.86 million over four years for progressing that bill. So is there any prospect of the bill being progressed and having the sanctuary established in the current financial year, given that $345,000 has been allocated to that, or does the fact that the funding has been allocated until 2025-26 mean that we won’t get a sanctuary until then? What recent discussions has he had with mana whenua Ngāti Kuri and Te Aupōuri about the sanctuary, and is it correct that the agreement that the Minister and his officials may have negotiated with Te Ohu Kai Moana may not be accepted by mana whenua—my first question. And then, in terms of the south-east Otago marine protected area network, public consultation on that finished in August 2020. There were two rounds of consultation under the Marine Reserves Act. There was also a quite diverse stakeholder group, which consulted the public and provided its recommendations. So why, some two years later, has there been no announcement about the establishment of new marine protected areas? What are the barriers to their establishment, and when does the Minister expect to announce any progress?

Look, Mr Speaker, I don’t mind answering these questions, but those are Vote Fisheries. Are we having this debate together?

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Yes, yes—just for the information, members, these debates will be held together.

Thank you. In respect of Rangitāhua, or Kermadecs, the member asks when I last spoke with northern iwi Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kuri, and a third, whose name I forget—I apologise for that forgetfulness. In fact, I’ve spoken with representatives of all three iwi in the last week. When would have been the last time I spoke with them? Probably, with two of the three, I would have spoken with them during the prior month. Have I spoken with other parties? Yes, including Te Ohu Kai Moana Trustee Ltd. Is there a prospect of this being finalised this year? That’s possible. Is it certain? No. I think that answers that question.

I’ll give the call to Jo Luxton. Just as a consequence of explaining that the Minister’s two portfolios will be heard together, it’s appropriate that the chair of the Primary Production Committee have a call.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call as the chair of the Primary Production Committee. I’d just like to acknowledge my fellow committee members; we are a great committee, very collegial, and we get some really good work done. This year, we looked at the fisheries appropriations. The total appropriations this financial year are $82.6 million. It’s estimated to be 13.7 percent less than the estimated actual expenditure of 2021 and 2022, and $65.4 million is to inform, assist, direct, and enforce adherence to fisheries laws. We heard from the Minister about this.

We spoke to the Minister about several things. We questioned him about changes to fisheries enforcement and monitoring, funding for research and development, marine protected areas, frequency of fisheries stock assessment, the risk of ecosystem shifts, and increasing cost of marine fuel. When we asked the Minister what he expected the outcomes to be for the $65.4 million that was going to be going into enforcement and monitoring, he felt that it would improve compliance and that would largely be through the introduction of cameras on fishing vessels. He noted that was something that would likely be able to happen through the Fisheries Amendment Bill that was actually before the select committee at that time. Cameras on fishing vessels has come about through successive work by the last few Governments wanting to make that happen. So that’s a really positive thing that we heard from the Minister.

Regarding the funding for research and development, the committee noted that despite there being funding available, there didn’t seem to be a lot that was put in to research and development. The Minister actually agreed with that, and said that he felt that there was enormous potential to increase profits by being more resourceful with fishing catch, and that new technologies would actually be key to increasing productivity and reducing environmental harm from fishing.

We’ve heard, as I said, that the Minister was happy with the frequency of fishing stock assessment, even though it had reduced from around 200 days a year to 60. So, all in all, we heard just a few things from the Minister. The fisheries, we feel, is going to be in really good shape.

I just want to acknowledge the Minister and the officials and the clerks of the select committee who put a lot of time and work into preparing these reports for us. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’d like to come back to resource management issues. In particular, I’m keen to know from the Minister what progress has been made on the templated plans, and, if there has been progress, when will they be made public?

Secondly, has he finalised which three regions will be selected to develop the first Spatial Planning Act (SPA) and Natural and Built Environments Act (NBA) plans?

There is work that is being done by the ministry to develop templates. They’re not finished yet, and they will be developed as the first three model plans are prepared. To a certain extent it’ll be “trial by doing”. We did consider having one format and just doing one trial plan, but we thought that we would learn more if we had three running and took the best of them rather than just thinking we would get it right in one.

In terms of which areas will be the three, we haven’t finalised that. We’re anticipating that decision being taken by about November—I think it is, from memory; might be October. I think it’s November. We’re looking to have a variety of different regions. I would like one region to include the mix of a metropolitan centre, rural issues, and provincial centres and their suite of environmental and development issues. Another one, which could be a unitary authority which covers both regional and district council functions, and a third where there are complex overlapping iwi issues.

Which reminds me that another question that I didn’t address of Mr Court’s was whether we’re proposing a co-governance model. We’re not proposing a fifty-fifty co-governance model, but we are proposing that Māori have a role on the planning committees. But it won’t be a co-governance arrangement in the manner that he describes.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Minister, if we could just go back to Vote Environment again, carrying on: essential fresh water and $35 million spent for farm plans. It’s sort of come to my attention that 60-odd percent of those farm plans have been enacted and/or enabled, and that, suffice it to say, leaves a fair old percentage that are not. Is he concerned about the overburden in that regard, and how that is reconciled? Then, for the love of all things common sense, how do you that in play so that by 21 November—as you can imagine—these winter-grazing realities to do with those winter farm plans can, in fact, be enabled?

I’ve heard anecdotally that many councils are now concerned that they are going to have to go through a whole lot of consent regimes, and the sanctioning or granting of those consents because of that. How does he reconcile that with the exorbitant amount of money that’s being spent, and is he concerned that this will then, by virtue of the fact, create an animal feed shortage, especially for those farmers that use it?

In respect of farm plans more generally, as opposed to the intensive winter-grazing module, having farm plans as an alternative to resource consents was an idea that was promoted by the farming community, which Government accepted. It allows a farm-by-farm solution to local issues. The farming community wanted this, and, in the end, the regional council sector and Government officials agreed that that was the way forward. In order for them to be a substitute for legally binding resource consent conditions to control adverse environmental effects, they do have to have some rigour about them, and people have to be held accountable if they’re saying they’re going to do something a certain way to, for example, reduce sediment load.

Now, we have serious problems in New Zealand with sediment load getting into our rivers, to the point where we haven’t just got clogged-up estuaries without any flounder left and dead cockle beds; we’ve also got degraded inshore fishing areas. We have kelp beds that are far, far smaller than they used to be, and the kelp beds that are remaining are much thinner. An example was given to me recently by a fisherman who is in his late 60s or 70s now. He said that when he started fishing, you couldn’t drive through kelp beds in your fishing boat at low tide; now you can, because they’ve thinned out so much. This is because of a lack of photosynthesis in deeper water caused by increased turbidity, which is caused by more land-based sediments getting into the water, and I think most people in New Zealand, including farming groups, want to do better on that.

Now, you can try and do that by way of rules and plans, but you’ll end up over-regulating some things and under-regulating others, and it can become more complex than it need be. So we’re going to use farm plans as a substitute for that. A farmer might say, “Look, these are the critical areas that are the source of sediment on my property. It’s that face over there. I know that we all need to do our bit. I’m going to fence that off so that the cows can’t get in there”—or the sheep or whatever—“and we’re just going to let a bit of vegetation regrow in that and plant a wee bit extra.” Now, that will be recorded in a farm plan and someone will give it the tick as saying that this is an adequate farm plan, and then someone one day will come back and check that it actually has been fenced, because otherwise it’s less likely that it will be.

So that farm plan regime is being stood up, including with assistance from central government. Now, these systems aren’t new to the country. Some regional councils already have similar systems, so we’re just trying to take best practice and push it out to the rest of the country.

In respect of the issue about intensive winter grazing, we know that in the parts of the country that are reliant on supplementary crops, or fodder crops grown in winter, if that’s done in the wrong way—and it has been at times in New Zealand—then that creates a lot of sediment. We’ve all seen the pictures of cows just about up to their udders in mud in a way that’s not good for animal welfare, and it certainly can spoil adjacent rivers all the way down to the estuaries.

So, again, we developed a standard. The standard was said to be impractical, so we pulled the plug on that and pushed it out another year. We worked with industry groups to develop an alternative winter-grazing module, which we’ve landed, and that’s intended to be in place by the end of this year. For those people who don’t meet the terms of that intensive winter-grazing module, they can still apply to the council and say, “Hey, I can’t do it that way, but I can do it this way, and that’s fair enough. Can I have a consent for it?”, and there are some who say that that’s inappropriate and that you have to get a resource consent outside of the intensive winter-grazing module. That, at the moment, is the law as it currently applies.

I’ve had some representations, as it happens, just today from Federated Farmers, saying that we should look again at whether we need to just delay that implementation to enable full farm plans to come in. I’m not yet convinced that that is necessary, but I will consider it.

Thank you, Mr Chair. And may I take this opportunity to congratulate you for being elevated to that position. I have some small questions on Jobs for Nature; it’s something that we hear a lot about in Environment Committee in both annual review and Estimates, and the Ministers from the Ministry for the Environment. I was wondering if the Minister could give some examples of where Jobs for Nature is doing what’s on the tin, where it’s working for nature, and how this will continue to deliver for New Zealand’s environment.

Thanks for that question. You know, when we responded to COVID and things were pretty dire, particularly in some of the economies reliant on tourism, we decided that part of the stimulus and the support that we would have to keep people in employment would be through Jobs for Nature, which was a term we used to cover a range of projects that were divided between the Ministry for the Environment, the Department of Conservation (DOC), Land Information New Zealand, and the Ministry for Primary Industries. It’s been remarkably successful, indeed. Recently, when Kevin Hague retired from Forest and Bird—a former member of this House—he said that it was the most influential, practical on the ground project that he’d seen in his working life, essentially. He was very complimentary about it, and I do have some stats here as to what’s been done.

There have been plants planted. There’s this sort of riparian planting and the like; there is an estimated 14.7 million that are going to be planted, of which 4.3 million have been. Wilding conifer areas controlled—that was a bit easier to get racing earlier, because there were already wilding pine control programmes in the country and we just had to ramp them up rather than do something new. There is a projected 2.5 million hectares controlled, of which about half have been done—1.25 million. Other pest control across 670,000 hectares—330,000 has been done. Wallaby control; we’ve got a problem with wallabies spreading in the South Island, particularly—681,000 hectares were predicted to be done and we’ve done 522,000 roughly so far. These were as of the end of March; more will have been done since. In other animal pest control—this is primarily DOC work—2.6 million hectares predicted, 1.6 million so far done. So far, as of the end of March, there have been 3.5 million hours worked. There have been 8,000 people employed—“employment starts”, we call it. People currently employed at the end of March was 3,315 out of lifetime fulltime-equivalent roles of over 8,000 people.

The other thing that this has done—it’s enabled a lot of communities to come together and agree as communities that they want to continue on with things like catchment management groups, which are also being funded. Coordinators are being funded by central government. Groups of farmers and interested locals are getting together and geeing each other along and encouraging each other along so that they can make improvements. So this project is making a big difference but perhaps its greatest influence long term will be bringing communities together to do even better in the future.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’d like to go back to Lake Onslow—the New Zealand Battery Project—which the Minister brought up before. I’ve been, and I’m sure the Minister has been there—probably several times, I’d imagine. I’ve certainly been there; it’s a beautiful place. I would like to know if he’s satisfied about whether that project will not damage, should it go ahead—and I think if the Government changes it won’t, but that its environmental impacts don’t outweigh the viability of the project.

The last that I heard, the feasibility work or the investigations that are going on there still don’t have one of the consents. It’s around lizards, and they’re going to be affected by that investigation work. I understand they have to put in lizard fences. The mind boggles when you think about a lizard fence, but is the Minister aware of that? And is the Minister satisfied that the environmental effects of the construction of that dam, should it go ahead, and the lake and how much bigger it will be, that those environmental effects are worth the project?

I’d also like to know that—unfortunately, the Cabinet paper that’s been released doesn’t identify where, if the water take is below the Roxburgh Dam, it will require another pond. That’s clearly going to have to be built somewhere on probably highly productive farmland. Is that why that was redacted, so that people wouldn’t know where they were going—whose property was going to be up for the requiring authority to take that off those people? So I really look forward to the Minister’s answers. I know he’s looking forward to giving them.

Well, I have limited ministerial responsibility in this, in that that feasibility study is being done under the auspices of the Minister of energy, although I am aware of the local environmental issues, and I’m happy to talk a little about those.

Of course, the underlying thesis is that New Zealand, although we’ve got one of the best electricity systems in the world, as another member has already observed, in a dry year, we’ve got a reliance on Huntly and coal, and as we have more renewables, we become more vulnerable to renewable intermittency and dry-year risk. So there are ways that that has to be ameliorated, and one of the ways that is being considered is whether we increase our hydro reserves by building a giant battery, effectively, in Lake Onslow, by raising the level of that. It is actually already artificially raised a bit.

The environmental damage that would be caused by that—and I would observe that any form of electricity generation carries with it some environmental damage, whether it’s the visual effect of a wind farm or, you know, the serious effect of changing a running river or climate-changing emissions from coal power. You can see that there are no easy choices here. The local environmental effects there would include a scroll plain that leads into Lake Onslow, which would be a loss. It would be contrasted with the scroll plain in the Upper Taieri, which is a much more significant feature.

In respect of lizard reserves, I can inform the member that I’ve volunteered at the Aldinga lizard reserve close by, near Earnscleugh, which is predator-proof fenced, and we actually have the return of giant Otago skinks and other lizards which are protected in that reserve in a way that they didn’t used to be. So these things are possible.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. So going back to the oceans, total funding allocated for fisheries, as part of Vote Agriculture, Biosecurity, Fisheries and Food Safety, in this financial year is $82.6 million—that’s 14 percent and $13 million less than what was allocated last year. The Minister told the Primary Production Committee that the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd’s deep-water research vessel the Tangaroa, which provides a platform for research on fish stocks, is doing less than a third of the number of days at sea. It’s been a reduction from 200 days to 60 days annually. The Minister said that the fishing industry was not particularly keen on increasing the frequency due to the cost recovery involved. So does the Minister accept that there’s a risk of the public seeing him and the Labour Government as being unduly influenced by the fishing industry when it relies on their reactions to determine how many days the Tangaroa goes to sea, and when the Government has failed to increase the funding for fisheries science, which is a basis of doing the ecosystem-based management which the Government says it’s interested in?

Thank you, Mr Chair. A couple of quick questions. The Minister hinted that or confirmed that there would be no fifty-fifty co-governance arrangements in his new resource management reform package, but that there would be iwi involvement in the planning committee. So I wondered whether he could just expand on the nature of that, please.

Second question is: what progress has been made to the long-promised standardisation of kerbside recycling nationwide, and why is it taking so long?

Thirdly, what’s happened to his plans to set up a container deposit or return scheme? If he is intending to proceed with that in the 15 months or so that his Government still has in office, is he committed to the 20c per container price setting?

💬 Simon Court: Mr Chair?

I call the Hon David Parker—given there’s a large number of questions there—and we’ll have time to come back to you.

I’ll try and whip through them reasonably quickly. In respect of funding for the Ministry of Fisheries, there’s no change to the funding for core services at the Ministry of Fisheries, including research. There is a significant impost on the fishing industry in the next few years coming from cameras on boats, although there is a taxpayer subsidy for it that is still an additional cost to the industry. So more environmental services, if you like, are being cost recovered from the industry in respect of that, though I do accept the point made that the number of days that Tangaroa is sent to sea has decreased over the decades. I think some of that is explicable from the fact that, at the start, they were gathering completely new science. Now they’re updating existing datasets, and they probably don’t need as much time at sea to do that. There may also be some other technological advances in modelling that enable them to have less time at sea. But, none the less, I accept that is an issue that we need to keep an eye on.

In respect of the make-up of the joint planning committees, I won’t go into that in detail but I would refer the member to a speech that I gave to the local government conference where I laid that out.

In respect of kerbside recycling, the consultation on the standardisation of kerbside recycling has concluded. I’m not sure of the date offhand, but I can get back to the member informally at the end of this, after I find it out, but it’s this year.

In respect of container deposits, no final decision has been made as to what the level would be. Although, I would observe that the rate of recovery of recycled containers is substantially lower at a 10c deposit compared with a 20c deposit.

Just coming back to recycling, Minister, currently glass and aluminium have very high recovery rates. It appears that it’s the plastics that have little value and are therefore the problem to solve with recycling. We’ve heard from packaging industry representatives and brewers that the container deposit scheme could add $6 to $8 on to a box of beer—$6 to $8 in the middle of a cost of living crisis at 20c a can; $6 to $8 to those of us who like a beer. Yet the packaging industry have said they would be prepared to set up their own scheme at no cost to the taxpayer and they believe that they can get recycling rates up to something that the Ministry for the Environment believes that the Government could with its own scheme.

So would the Minister give assurances that any container deposit scheme will, firstly, not impose a cost on business? The scheme, as currently devised, proposes to locate container deposit banks in supermarket car parks and to force supermarkets to accommodate these things—busy supermarket car parks in urban environments, which are already under pressure, already struggling with supply chain issues, health and safety issues in car parks. So would the Minister give an assurance that a container deposit scheme won’t add any extra cost on to that box of beer for those of us who like a beer and like to buy it in bulk; it won’t add any cost to households; and certainly won’t add any administrative costs to taxpayers who, unfortunately, under this Minister’s Government, appeared to be carrying the can for a whole lot of bad policy, Minister?

Look, I won’t try to compete in the recycling puns. I can absolutely assure the member that his beer’s not going to go up by $6 to $8 a pack of beer. The Queensland Productivity Commission recently did a report on the container deposit scheme that’s been introduced in Queensland. Virtually everywhere in Australia now has one, a lot of countries in Europe have them and, indeed, New Zealand used to have them for beer and fizzy drinks and we think it would be progress if we went back to that. I would refer the member to that productivity commission study. I won’t quote the figure because I think I might get it wrong but the cost per beverage container has turned out to be much lower than was even modelled and certainly was much, much, much lower than the apocryphal stories that were told by critics of the scheme over there before it was introduced.

In respect of the supermarket issue, I do find the criticism ironic, really, given that most of the waste streams that we’re trying to deal with actually come out of supermarkets in the first place. So I don’t have too much of a problem making it convenient for people to return their containers when they’re going to the supermarket. When they’ve got them in their boot, they can take them and put them into a reverse vending machine in large supermarkets. It won’t happen for every supermarket but we know from overseas experience that the success of these schemes depends, in part, on the convenience of the return venues that are accessible to people who want to return their containers.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just want to come back to Jobs for Nature and particularly focus my last question on the funding. The $1 billion or more that was invested in the Jobs for Nature programme was, of course, part of the Government’s COVID stimulation package to pump money into the economy. Some of the projects have been very worthwhile—there’s no denying that—but some have been less effective.

My question to the Minister is: what is going to happen to the effective projects that will require ongoing funding when the money runs out? I’m particularly concerned about the conifer and wilding pine eradication programmes that require ongoing treatment to ensure that seed viability over sometimes a decade or more doesn’t just wipe out the good work that has been done to date.

Thank you for that question. I agree that there’s not much point funding things that rely upon continued effort to be sustained, if you can’t rely on the continued effort. I sat on the panel of Ministers that approved projects and that was one of the things that we quizzed officials on, in respect of projects. That’s obviously true of some of the Department of Conservation predator control work in respect of native forests. They assured us that the projects that we were funding were likely to be enduring.

In respect of wilding pine control, the member will be aware that there’s been some decades of work done there already. We’ve managed to give it a gee along, but it won’t be finished in the time that Jobs for Nature finishes. There is some good news about that, in that there are new control techniques including some selective poisons—herbicides that didn’t used to be available—which meant that there was a much more expensive form of wilding pine control involving actually physically cutting down the tree. But now sprays are able to substitute that.

I expect, in the future, there will be new technologies including, probably in our lifetimes—touch wood—the use of drones and other things to particularly target individual, or groups of, trees.

I move, That the committee report progress presently, and move to consider the Overseas Investment (Forestry) Amendment Bill.

Motion agreed to.

Progress to be reported.