Waste Minimisation (Waste Disposal Levy) Amendment Bill

The House is resumed. We are on the Waste Minimisation (Waste Disposal Levy) Amendment Bill. We are on the fourth call, and I call Laura Trask.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pretty excited to take a call on the Waste Minimisation (Waste Disposal Levy) Amendment Bill. A little bit of a story: my great friends Jodene Turner and Owen Conlon had a baby on 30 May—which happens to be the same day that we’re here; bit of a Groundhog Day—named Stevie Conlon. They live in place called Mandeville—and, Matt Doocey, you’re in the House; I’m pretty excited to see you. Why this is important is Mandeville’s in Waimakariri, really close to Christchurch. It’s on the “Waimak” River, and just up the road there’s a town called Oxford—

SPEAKER: This is all fascinating—

LAURA TRASK: It’s definitely about the bill.

SPEAKER: —but are you going to tell us now that they’ve decided to name the baby “Matthew”?

LAURA TRASK: No. They called the baby Stevie and she was a girl. So just down the road is Oxford, and if you know Oxford well—and Matt Doocey probably knows this issue—there’s a quarry there that they’ve been trying to convert into landfill for quite some time, with quite a lot of public opposition. It’s not yet consented, and we don’t know what that outcome will be. But this levy is really important because, you see, this quarry sits in a landscape buffer zone, so it’s on the side of some of really critical waterways that head straight back down the river and into the Kaiapoi area.

It’s a really important area, and this levy here will actually ensure that we have these environmental protections in place. So I stand by this bill, and I commend it to the House—and congratulations to the Conlons.

It’s great to be here this morning. Look, listening carefully to the debate last night, it was very, very clear that there is strong agreement across the House about most of the bill. There is strong agreement around the ability to be able to use the levy for emergency management purposes. There is strong agreement around the issues around contaminated landfills and remediation of those. The only area of disagreement seems to be about whether the levy can be used for wider environmental projects. And I ask the other side of the House to think about that, because those are exactly the kinds of great projects that Kahurangi Carter was actually talking about—for those kinds of things to be able to be supported by the levy.

She also referred to over $2 billion in infrastructural deficits in 2020. I’d just like you to think about what the assumptions behind those numbers might be, what might be the quality of investment which is involved there, and what might be already funded. Just because there’s a deficit back then doesn’t mean it’s not been funded already and somebody’s going to go and do it. I think there is also a general agreement around increasing the levy, although I would note, for that side, that a lot of that will fall on the least well off, which seems to be in conflict with some of the other things that you’ve said over the last little while.

The last thing I wanted to say before sitting down is that I’d like particularly the Labour Party to remember the policy bonfire at the beginning of last year and what went on that policy bonfire. I have to say, at the time, I was very, very disappointed to see that there was a deferral of work on a container return scheme that would see small refunds for returning containers. That would have taken a lot of product out of the waste stream and got it reused. It is a shame that that was done, and I hope that’s something that comes back. But I would like the other side of the House to think about that so that they are not preaching from quite such a high pulpit at us. I commend this bill to the House.

This is a split call. I call Tangi Utikere.

Good morning, Mr Speaker. Thank you. It does seem like Groundhog Day because I think last night at about 11.20 p.m., I followed Mr Foster on this bill, and I’ll do the same today.

You know, Mr Foster is right: there is some agreement around what this levy could be spent on. But the problem is we are progressing this bill through urgency. And this is the second reading, so, by now, usually in the normal scheme of things, this would have gone to a select committee, we would have heard from the community, and the select committee would have generally, for a matter of months, considered that bill, turned its mind to it, and provided a summary to the House as to what communities of interest—wherever they might be in Aotearoa New Zealand—might have to say about this bill, the changes, and the provisions therein.

So it’s disappointing that it’s been less than 12 hours since the first reading and we are now moving on to the second reading. The difficulty that I and members on this side of the House have is that members of the public have not had a chance to have their say. For a bill that talks about a 50:50 split between central government and local government, I think local communities around New Zealand would absolutely take up the opportunity, if given it, to share their views—well, I know they would—and tell us what it is that this money would go towards, what other opportunities it could go towards, and what other forms of innovation exist in communities.

Now, last night, just like others in this House, many of us took a call, and we alluded to our experience in local government. My colleague Lemauga Lydia Sosene, last night, talked about her experience in local government. For those of us that have sat around local decision-making tables, we know that when it comes to waste minimisation, you often hear from individuals who would otherwise not talk about, or share their views on, many things. Why? Because they’re passionate. They’re passionate about the environment; they’re passionate about the community. So for this Government to basically move straight to second reading without the opportunity for select committee process to take place is an indictment and really quite unfortunate.

I recall, actually, when we were in our city pulling together our waste minimisation plan, we heard about the difference of, yes, rubbish but also recycling. We did hear about compost, actually—that was mentioned in the House last night—and we heard about other innovative opportunities as well. Mr Foster and others have talked about the need for emergency works. Now, what my colleague the Hon Rachel Brooking has consistently said, over the last 12 hours, on this bill that we support the widening—well, we would support the widening of criteria. However, what is proposed goes far too far, and if we don’t allow the public to have a say on this, that makes it even more confusing and more difficult, I would suggest.

Last night, we talked about the distinction between the levy and the tax. This is a levy that is directed specifically—whether it’s a 50:50 split or some other differential between the central and local government split—and targeted for waste minimisation, in this context, particularly around waste disposal. So when I look at the bill—and no doubt we’ll have plenty of time to explore this when we go through committee stage, and I know there are a number of Amendment Papers that we’ll turn our minds to around that—this is a bill that proposes to widen the scope of additional matters that would be funded. I’m looking at the list here. The first is around environmental harm reduction or what would increase environmental benefits, and that would be something that the Secretary for the Environment would effectively be entitled or empowered to spend revenue that’s generated from this levy on.

The waste-related emergency spending—we don’t deny on this side of the House that there needs to be a provision for emergency works. The question is, where does that appropriately sit, and without having an opportunity to hear from people and without having an opportunity on this side of the House to engage directly with the very advisers and officials that would work with select committees at this point in time, it is very difficult to have a fulsome understanding on behalf of the community as to what that might look like.

Of course, a further bullet point is around the funding for the ministry, which would require it to undertake the various duties that it would have. Now, clearly, the duties would be expanded as a result of this, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister in the committee of the whole House around that and what that might look like. But, fundamentally, we are at second reading. Our colleague Kahurangi Carter, last night, talked about the $2.4 billion infrastructure deficit. This here does not seek to tackle that, and without public input, it is very difficult to support, but we’ll see what the committee stage might bring.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Mōrena, Aotearoa New Zealand. It’s Saturday morning, and you’d like to be watching your kids playing football, because we are human beings; we’re not just ciphers for capitalist annihilation, but this crackhead coal-ition Government smashing through—[Interruption] That’s right, that’s right. You said it. You named yourselves the coalition Government. They are wanting to—

Simon Court: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Point of order. Point of order. Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: I heard the comment.

Simon Court: Yeah, I think the comment is unhelpful to maintaining order in the House at this time in the morning.

SPEAKER: It was, and I’ve had discussions about this very matter with whips at the Business Committee, so I would ask the member to reconsider the use of that term in the House. It’s unacceptable to make blanket allegations against other parties. Carry on.

STEVE ABEL: Thank you, Mr Speaker, I’m presuming I can call them the coal‑ition Government, though? That’s OK? Yeah. Because, you know, they’re barking “coal” from the other side of the House, proudly, all the time. That is relevant to this bill because whilst we may be wasting our time and wasting nature and indeed—

Tanya Unkovich: It’s called democracy!

STEVE ABEL: —wasting democracy, that’s right. We are wasting democracy because the public don’t get a say on this, but this Government listens intently to its lobbyists. One of the interesting cook-arounds on this particular piece of legislation—one of these interesting factors here—is that they’ve been listening well to the big-polluting lobbyists. So, yes, as my colleagues to that side of me—on the left side of the House, but on the right side of me—point out, rightly, we need a waste levy. A waste levy is a good thing—that is broadly supported—but it should be a waste levy.

When the Minister says that it’s for improving and protecting the environment from harm, in fact, what this Government is doing is removing tens of millions of dollars in this Budget that are there for protecting the environment from harm. Protecting the environment from harm is not remediating previous harms or existing harms, and this waste levy that people are paying to reduce waste—they say it’s for waste minimisation—is, in fact, going to be used for cleaning up the mining industry’s mess.

It says here that it’s for decontaminating mining and industrial sites. That is not what a waste levy is for. If we are to accumulate the necessary funds that we need to rightly build the infrastructure to deal with waste, which is a cost burden to our society and to our environment, we should be putting that money towards reducing waste, not to cleaning up contaminated industrial sites. But, of course, what the very effective lobbyists from the mining industry say to this Government and whisper in their ears—and this Government does listen intently to its lobbyists—is, “You can spend that money that people think they’re spending on cleaning up waste. You can spend it on cleaning up our mining mess that we left behind, our acid mine drainage, and our massive cyanide-laden tailings dams in Waihi. And when an extreme weather event causes that tailings dam to fail, you can take money from the waste levy to clean that up.”

Absolutely we should be cleaning up contaminated mine sites. Absolutely we should be cleaning them up, but we should be making the industry most closely associated with that mess pay for it, not the construction industry. So when someone dumps their landfill and they’re going to get charged more for the levy, they’re thinking, “Why am I paying more for this?”, and the response is, “Because we’re trying to reduce waste. Oh, but also, we’re actually going to use the money you’ve just paid on that levy to clean up the coal industry’s mess.” That’s actually what this legislation now does.

This is why broadening it beyond waste minimisation is not what this is for. This is why broadening it as it does is, frankly—I’m not allowed to say the word that I want to say.

Simon Court: It’s a great idea, Steve. These are orphan sites.

STEVE ABEL: Orphan sites of the industry that created that mess, the legacy industry—are you telling me the construction industry should be playing to clean up the mess of the mining industry? No. Why doesn’t the mining industry have a levy to pay for cleaning up of orphan sites?

Simon Court: Well, why should good operators pay for bad operators?

STEVE ABEL: Exactly, that’s what it should be. It should not be coming out of the waste minimisation levy. I actually wonder what the legality is of saying it’s a “waste minimisation levy” and then spending it on something other than waste minimisation, because that’s, frankly, not saying what it says on the tin, and that’s not what the public of New Zealand—they’re trying to watch their kids play football and sitting there on the phone going, “What? What’s going on here?”, and the Government is saying, “You don’t get a say on this, by the way.” I think the construction industry would have loved a select committee on this. They could have given their opinion on how good they feel about your using their money for cleaning up mining industry waste.

It is not protecting the environment to clean up a mess made by an industry from which this Government is removing all the protections for the environment, including water catchment—I’ll get back to that. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

What a surreal world we live in when we hear Green Party members arguing against investment and prudent action in terms of the environment. It’s a surreal world. This is a very practical, pragmatic piece of legislation, and I support it and commend it to the House.

This morning, most New Zealanders are waking up to the first day of winter, but in this House, we’re sitting in the cold darkness of 30 May. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Sorry, we’ll recalibrate the member’s time. Just keep it calm, for goodness’ sake. It is Saturday morning, and I know that people are short of sleep and, for whatever reason, quite excited about being here, but contain your thoughts and wait for the committee stage where you can all have a say, if wanted. Glen Bennett, start again.

GLEN BENNETT: Mr Speaker, thank you. It is nice to see the robust debate taking place here in the House today. But as I said, for the majority of Aotearoa it’s 1 June—it’s winter—but in here—

Hon Rachel Brooking: Not in Dunedin—20 degrees.

GLEN BENNETT: It’s 20 degrees in Dunedin, the Hon Rachel Brooking says. But she’d rather be here. She doesn’t want to be in her electorate today; she wants to be here, supporting the environment and supporting initiatives to make sure we protect our precious nature—that we only have one left of—all of nature. As the Hon Rachel Brooking mentioned in the first and second reading of this bill, there are parts of this that we do support. And we’ve been looking at it very closely, and, obviously, waste minimisation and the disposal of waste is important.

Now, I live in New Plymouth. In fact, my community of Marfell sits right next to an old dump site that they turned into a park. But that park can’t be used because of what was dumped there many, many years ago. And a lot of people in this House will know when it comes to what this bill is trying to achieve and what it does is around how we remediate some of those old landfills—and it’s really obvious and really clear for me and my community, as we sit and surround what seems like a beautiful park, that once upon a time soccer was played on it, once upon a time there was BMXing, and once upon there was rugby as well, but none of those things are able to be done any more. In fact, none of those things have been done for probably more than 25 years because of the issue of what is under this beautiful looking, pristine park, and the issues—people fell and had parts of their body infected because of what was under there.

Now, we know, and lots of people in this House will know, about the Dow AgroSciences plant in New Plymouth. Again, they created some pretty awful chemicals and toxins, and some of those were buried in Marfell Park. So back in 2009, and I was there—and it came to the attention of the Taranaki Regional Council and the New Plymouth District Council that there were real issues with some of the chemicals that had been buried there many, many years ago, and one of the issues was bleaching. So this bill had only, I believe, just come into Royal assent in 2008, and this was 2009. And I know the regional council and district council spent up to $27,000, and then Dow AgroSciences put in another $50,000 to try to remove these chemicals and deal with it. I think, when I go back to the electorate of New Plymouth on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday next week—whenever we get there—I will be sort of checking in around what this looks like and what this bill does.

The thing that we don’t support is—it feels like it is an overreach. It feels like it isn’t targeted as much as it has been, and it’s been working. So when we look at what they’re trying to achieve, they’re wanting to broaden the criteria to many environmental issues and problems. And, as we know, that comes back to the point around the Budget and, in fact, how little there was in the Budget for the environment. So they’re having to find somewhere and some way of finding some money and support to ensure that they can fund initiatives to help protect our environment.

Now, none of us—well, I hope that none of us—want waste, and I hope that those in this House are conscious consumers when they go to the supermarket or when they go and buy a new fridge or vehicle or whatever it is, because when I look at Marfell Park and the issues of the old landfill that sits there as an eyesore within our own community—200 cubic metres of soil were taken away with contaminants in, but we know there’s far more. So when I go back to New Plymouth, I’m going to be looking at this work and what we can actually do to work again with regional council and with the local district council to ensure that the people of Marfell have what they deserve—they have a decent park, they have a decent playing ground, they have a decent place for the kids to play and for sports activities to happen and for people to walk their dogs.

And looking at this—and they widen the clauses—I just think we need to be cautious and careful. In the committee stage, I know that the Hon Rachel Brooking has some really thoughtful amendments that she’ll be putting on the Table—some really thoughtful amendments—to actually support the Government in terms of what they are trying to achieve, because we want to be constructive. We want to make sure that we get it right for nature—that we get it right for nature.

And when we look around the country and we look at what’s going on in a lot of sites with climate change and with the challenges, I know there’s a number of dump sites that were close to the ocean. And with the seabed, as some of those areas are reclaimed by the ocean, we see the issues that come with those dumps getting out into the environment. So we want to find ways to move this forward. We want to find ways to ask the Government and work with Government to say, “Hey, look, this is a waste disposal levy—that is it. That is the parameter, and we’re not going to stray either way from that.”

Now, Andy Foster spoke before, and he spoke about needing to think about the expansion: “Come on, let’s get on with it, and why not widen it? Come on, let’s just do that.” But I just think, and I come back to my point, this needs to be targeted; this needs to be tight. I believe you said, “Think about the expansion of how the levy can be spent.”, Mr Foster, and I think that’s what we are thinking about and we’re working on, and we’ll make sure that we do.

Now, when you look at the Ministry for the Environment and the offer of voluntary redundancies, when you look at the Public Service and the hundreds of jobs that are going in terms of jobs related to the environment, we are going to need to fight really hard, and we’re going to need to work really hard to make sure that something like this doesn’t just become this big, open piece of work where the levy that is taken doesn’t just end up going here, there, and everywhere, and it misses the challenge of cleaning up Marfell Park. It misses the challenge of making sure, where there have been dumping sites and there have been other chemicals buried in places, that they don’t get forgotten and left out, because we’re spending money over here for the environment, which we, of course, support. We want to spend more money on the environment. We would love the Government to reconsider their Budget. We would love the Government to reconsider their cuts. We would love the Government to make choices about how better they protect our environment and how they protect nature and how they protect our climate. But we’re here—we’re here. We’re looking at this legislation, and we’re trying to figure out how we can make it better.

I want to just take a moment to have a look at the supplementary analysis report. And it does talk in here about the Government’s decision and priorities that are relevant to this proposal. And it goes on to say, “The Government’s priorities include a number of areas that require proactive action to prevent significant environmental harm and/or manage cost pressures.” And it all talks about the cost pressures and the need to claw back money in the levy. It talks about addressing environmental harm associated with closed landfills. In addition to this, it talks about supporting the identification and remediation of all types of contaminated sites.

It also goes on to talk about supporting waste management costs associated with emergency events, such as storms and earthquakes. And, as you would know, Mr Speaker—you went through the experience and disaster of the Christchurch earthquakes—there is a need for the legislation to be right to ensure that the amount of waste that had to be put somewhere, and there needs for there to be good processes in place to make sure that waste is disposed of in a safe way. We look at last year, and we look at the Auckland floods. We look at the East Coast and the storms over there, and we look around New Zealand at what’s been going on in recent years. And we know that when there is such destruction and when there is such waste, we need to find ways to make sure (1) we have the costs in place to ensure that we can dispose of it correctly but also that we make sure that legislation is set so it isn’t so wide that, sadly, when there is another Kaikōura earthquake, or, sadly, when there is another Cyclone Gabrielle, or when, sadly, there is another Auckland floods, we have a tight piece of legislation and we have tight rules around how levies will be spent to ensure that we get it right.

So we’re really looking forward to the committee stage and looking forward to offering ideas to support the Minister to ensure that she can make this bill a lot better.

Good morning, Mr Speaker. We’re all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on this side of the House today, and we’re very excited about getting the environment and the country back on track. It’s a great bill. I commend it to the House.

This is a split call. I call on Reuben Davidson.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and tōfā for Samoan Language Week, and I’ll explain why it’s tōfā shortly. But it is my absolute pleasure to take a call on the Waste Minimisation (Waste Disposal Levy) Amendment Bill. I said “tōfā” partly because it’s Samoan Language Week but also because tōfā means goodbye—goodbye to responsible environmental policy, practice, and funding, and that’s what the waste minimisation bill does. I would also like to say, before I go further, tālofa to those celebrating Samoan Independence Day at the beautiful Christchurch Town Hall this morning—a stunning building, a jewel in the Crown for Christchurch.

Now, it’s a long Thursday, it’s a very long Thursday, and someone said to me this morning as I was getting my coffee, “Gee, you must be getting tired.” I said, “No. We’re just getting started.” We are just getting started, and that is why it is such a pleasure to start this part of Thursday talking about the Waste Minimisation (Waste Disposal Levy) Amendment Bill. The three things that I think it’s important we come back to, about what this bill sets out to do, are: activities that reduce environmental harm or increase environmental benefits, waste-related emergency spending, and—this is the really crucial one—funding the Ministry for the Environment to undertake its functions and duties and exercise its powers in relation to waste management and minimisation and hazardous substances. Well drafted, ill intentioned. It’s a money grab to make up for what we have seen, and what we have seen is ruthless cuts to responsible environmental funding.

I’d like to give you an example of a school in Christchurch that I went to that was built on the site of a former landfill. It was a contained landfill beside a river, because back in the day, we always thought it was great to put landfills beside rivers and beside the sea in low-lying coastal areas, because nothing was ever going to change, right? That site became one of the 10 most toxic sites in New Zealand, and it was home to a school. It had very high levels of lead and arsenic, and it took hundreds of thousands of dollars to remediate that site so that it became a safe site to have a school on.

This is not an isolated issue to parts of Christchurch or parts of the South Island or parts of the North Island. This is a New Zealand - wide issue, and if we broaden the scope of this bill, we rob communities and schools of the ability to access the funding that they need to remediate their land. The hypothecation of the funds drawn by this bill, and the broadening of that, literally robs communities and robs schools of creating safe environments to live, work, and play in, and that is definitely not a good thing.

Some people have suggested that the broadening of this scope actually turns it into a fast-track clean-up fund, a resource that’s available to tidy up some of the messes that might be created by things like new mines, by irresponsible, reckless environmental activity in places where we shouldn’t be carrying out that kind of activity. I think there’s a real risk that the huge cost that will be required to remediate damage done through that activity will take everything out of the waste minimisation fund and take away its intent, take away its ability to do what it was set up to do.

So I cannot commend this bill to the House, I cannot commend a weakening of the funds available to remediate sites, and I cannot commend what in real terms is a cut to responsible environmental practice.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and good morning. It’s great to be speaking on the Waste Minimisation (Waste Disposal Levy) Amendment Bill. After all that rubbish we’ve just heard from the previous member, Reuben Davidson, it’s quite ironic that we’re talking about waste minimisation. I think most people watching from home can’t believe that the Opposition would actually argue against spending on environmental projects and outcomes, and I use that word “outcomes” very specifically because that’s what we’re going to be doing. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a real pleasure to take a call on the Waste Minimisation (Waste Disposal Levy) Amendment Bill. On this side of the House, we’ve had contributions made by our colleague, the Hon Rachel Brooking, who has highlighted why we agree with some of what has been proposed by this Government. However, it is far too broad.

Part of the summary of initiatives that has been outlined—it has been very interesting, because we are not going through a select committee process, so the public does not get the opportunity to raise questions, to raise concerns, and to really scrutinise what is before Aotearoa at this point.

On this side of the House, I want to explain, in my contribution, why we are opposed to this levy that has been hypothecated to be expanded, because if you expand it too much, you lose the focus of the waste-related and environmental activities that are really important. They are important issues to our community. We have a lot of young people, a lot of rangatahi, that are very concerned that this specific levy that will be for communities and industries up and down the country—it is really important to have that specific focus.

One of the things that I want to raise is the education on environmental activities. So I’m just going to highlight some of the activities that the levy was helping under this legislation introduced in 2008. Waste minimisation is part and parcel of a movement. We New Zealanders have to be (a) educated, and (b) have strong legislation to guide communities and to guide industry as to why we are going to look after Aotearoa. In terms of the activity, we all have a responsibility to make sure that the whenua that we live in, that we use every day—it is important that people get to have their say.

When I read through the supplementary analysis report, I appreciate what has been highlighted under the Waste Minimisation Act 2008. It’s really important that we have a focus on emissions from the remediation of contaminated sites. In my local rohe in South Auckland, in Māngere, because of activity that has been taken by early gardeners, there has been a lot of contaminated soil that has been produced over time—but also by the big housing developments. And there has been a lot of work by Auckland Council in the local communities. Last year, with the Auckland floods, the community, like other communities, was up in arms that the remedial activity that had been taken by Auckland Council was not enough. It just wasn’t enough, and communities suffered a lot of harm in terms of losing everything that they’d had.

I want to specifically focus on communities that have English as their second language—specifically for te reo, specifically for Pasifika, and even ethnic communities—where they understand that legislation is there because previous Governments have put that in. However, they don’t understand completely the relationship of the legislation to Auckland Council and to some of the activity. So some of our communities really suffered and lost everything.

So I come back to the bill. If the funding is going to be too broad, how then will communities like ours be able to participate and be able to be educated about the environmental harm that will come our way? The impacts are not good when you’re cutting funding from the environmental activities.

I really look forward to the committee of the whole House stage, so that we are able, as members on the ground in our local communities, to ask the Minister specifically about her understanding about analysis and the modelling and specifically impacts, because if you don’t have the opportunity to have really good stakeholder consultation when you are producing legislation that the Government is so strongly focused on, then that leaves out communities who could have benefited from well-written, well-traversed legislation.

I want to highlight a local situation in my local community that members will not be aware of. There was a particular policy by Auckland Council to do with drains—drains that are on everybody’s road where the water just goes down the drains. We had a problem in our local community where one of our young rangatahi—and I know members are all looking at their phones because they don’t want to listen—died in a drain because the drain was open. The lid of that specific drain was able to be lifted.

I roll back to the legislation. It is important for the public to have their say so that members that are sitting around the table on that specific select committee or members of the Government of the day understand the different situations that occur if you don’t have good environmental objectives and if you don’t have a clear process where the community can come along and provide views of the different situations in their local communities.

On this side of the House, we are opposed. We are opposed to the definitions or the wider range being expanded, because you need to have a specific focus, and it needs to be clear to the public why good legislation that is put in by the Government of the day then goes to the territorial local authorities so that, then, communities can understand what these effects are and they could change their behaviour to help with understanding environmental harm in local communities.

So what I can say in terms of the modelling that I understood, the information that has been provided in the analysis report, is that it just does not go far enough, and broadening the purposes of the levy, where it is supposed to be spent, diminishes that link. It diminishes the link between those paying the levy and the outcomes—the specific outcomes—that are being funded by this levy.

I cannot emphasise enough the importance of having very good environmental education, because that explains to communities the cause and effect. It also helps communities on the ground, in terms of the levy that is being proposed, so that people understand the intent behind the policy and they can understand the problem that we are all trying to diagnose.

In terms of the investment of this levy, there are contaminated sites that require remediation up and down the country. For specific councils, like Auckland Council, there was a specific focus on communities, especially the communities that cannot afford some of the costs. This Government has made their announcement—in terms of the Budget, there are just cuts everywhere. People are trying to manage their households, and so their focus is not on environmental initiatives, not if they’re trying to get ahead, not if they’re worried about school lunches, not if they’re worried about their children getting to school and the increased cost of public transport.

So I come back to this bill that is being proposed today, and we absolutely oppose the broadening of the new legislation, because it is important that the future of our rangatahi is really clear on environmental harm. It may influence the change of their behaviour, to choose better careers or a better education, because they understand the actual problem. So I’m very pleased that I’ve been able to take a call on this matter. Thank you.

Look, I don’t want to waste any more time, so I’m going to minimise my contribution and commend this bill to the House.

This bill is set down for committee immediately. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Waste Minimisation (Waste Disposal Levy) Amendment Bill. Thank you.

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to principal Act