Natural Environment Bill

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m really interested in going to new clause 219A, in Amendment Paper 710. This is about the delegation of functions by the Minister to the Environmental Protection Authority. This is about the function to actually monitor the implementation and effectiveness of this Act, and that includes regulations in force under it and national instruments. I’m really interested to hear from the Minister responsible for RMA Reform, because I was quite surprised to see this clause in here. It is a new clause that has come in in the Government’s last-minute amendments.

💬 Hon Chris Bishop: Which clause?

Clause 219A, on page 174. Why I’m interested in this is because earlier—and I can’t remember where in the bill, but earlier in the bill—there is a function for the Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport to assess the effectiveness and the efficiency of the bills. I’m interested as to what the differences are here, because there’s very little detail, and when you’re sort of further splitting these things across both MCERT and the Environmental Protection Authority, I think it would be really helpful to understand, particularly when it comes to the assessment of the effectiveness and implementation, why there has been this division and where they have landed on.

I’m advised it’s a carry-over from the Resource Management Act (RMA), so it just clarifies the delegation to the Environmental Protection Authority. It’s a carry-over from existing provisions in the RMA.

OK. Just following on from the previous question, I want to check, in this case, just clarifying: with the joint committee appointed under clause 30 of Schedule 7 of the Local Government Act 2002—so this is clause 231(c). This might be a basic question: are they elected, or can they also be appointed?