Sage Eugenie: Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 02 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9360. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green):E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe; tuarua ki ngā mema o tō tātou Whare tēnā koutou katoa.[Acknowledgments to you Mr Assistant Speaker; secondly to you all the members of our House greetings.]I am pleased to take a short call on the Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill. You would think the world is going to come to an end given the National Party members’ opposition to this bill—Mr Foster-Bell talking about power for our homes being lost valuable medical research being imperilled by this bill’s passing. All it is doing is inserting “the protection of the environment” as one of the objectives of the Environmental Protection Authority so that the agency actually lives up to its name. So I have been astonished by some of the comments of the Government members and their huge opposition to this bill. I think that just shows that National does not like its lacklustre record on the environment being shown up. It does not like anything that could cut across its “extractivism” agenda in its economic policy—dig it drill it mine it irrigate it. Those members are failing to recognise that we need a healthy environment for both a healthy economy and a healthy society.When you have an organisation like the Environmental Protection Authority which is functionally a Crown entity that is a significant decision maker under our environmental laws then it needs to have protection as an objective. I thought it was very interesting in Mr Foster-Bell’s speech the way he referred to those submitters—and there were only eight of all 206 submissions on the bill—that opposed the bill. Those submitters that opposed it of course were companies like Todd Coal. They were Federated Farmers they were Straterra and the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand—all organisations that are interested in extracting resources; none of them interested in protection. So of course they are going to oppose the bill. Mr Foster-Bell talked about how they had experience of the Environmental Protection Authority processes.Well a lot of those who made submissions had experience of the processes not as applicants for development and use but as submitters and they were quite strong in their views that this additional objective was needed so that the Environmental Protection Authority had an unambiguous purpose and a much stronger focus on protecting the environment.As another speaker Meka Whaitiri has noted in her bill Ngāi Tahu said that this objective would put an extra lens on the Environmental Protection Authority’s decision making. Ngāi Tahu makes quite detailed submissions on legislation usually informed by people with legal understanding. They were quite clear in their submission that this new objective was quite consistent with the six pieces of legislation that the Environmental Protection Authority administers such as the Resource Management Act the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf (Environmental Effects) Act and the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. Certainly all of those pieces of legislation contain quite specific purpose statements about how the Environmental Protection Authority should operate under each of those Acts but we need to guide the overall workings of the Environmental Protection Authority.If I can refer to the Environmental Protection Authority’s own statement of intent for 2014 to 2018 it said that its mission was “to protect people and the environment”. So what on earth is the problem with having a specific protection objective? One of the issues raised by submitters was that at the moment the objective of the Environmental Protection Authority in section 12 of the Environmental Protection Authority Act 2011 was “contributes to the efficient effective and transparent management of New Zealand’s environment and natural and physical resources;”. But what is the purpose of that management? It has got to be “efficient effective and transparent”. Those words “efficient” and “effective” are often used in business parlance. Efficiency in the workplace means the time it takes to do something. It is associated with completing tasks in the least amount of time possible with the least amount of resources and I think this is where the Minister’s preoccupation with fast tracking decision making under the Resource Management Act and under the exclusive economic zone legislation and putting in place very strict statutory deadlines comes from.If you have an organisation that is focused on efficiency and effectiveness that is not the same as safeguarding the quality of the natural environment. It is not the same as ensuring that decisions whether they are about marine consents or resource consents actually enhance the quality of the environment and safeguard the basis for our economy. If we are going to have responsible resource management that requires that we protect maintain and enhance the environment then this bill with its new objective for the Environmental Protection Authority’s work would help achieve that.The objective is even more important because of what the Government is proposing to do to the Resource Management Act with its Resource Legislation Amendment Bill. That bill will result in a politicisation of the decision making of the Environmental Protection Authority under the exclusive economic zone Act because that bill provides for the Minister rather than the Environmental Protection Authority to appoint the hearing panels that will decide marine consent applications to go oil drilling to go seabed mining and for other development in the exclusive economic zone and our oceans. So that politicisation where the Minister personally will choose who sits on the Environmental Protection Authority’s decision-making committees means that we are reducing the independence of the Environmental Protection Authority.To me—and I think to a lot of New Zealanders—we want to have an Environmental Protection Authority that is independent where we can trust that these major applications for oil drilling will be evaluated by independent objective experts not by cheerleaders for the oil and gas industry who are working under the Minister’s thumb. So that whole change in the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill underlines in my view the need for this bill to proceed and for the protection objective to be inserted in the principal Act. That sort of change is typical of what this National Government is doing with the environment.We saw the contortions that the Minister for the Environment Dr Nick Smith went through in question time today to try to justify why his Government has a very weak national bottom line in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management of having rivers that are only wadeable suitable for contact recreation like wading and boating not suitable for swimming. He claimed that that was due to the fact that we have got some streams in geothermal areas and some rivers that get sediment in them after floods. Those were the contortions he was going through to try to justify why we cannot have a national aspiration of swimmable rivers.Again that reflects the objections to this bill of members on the Government benches to this bill. They do not want environmental protection to be at the heart of our economy to be at the heart of our legislation. It is part of this Government’s agenda to weaken the checks and balances on ministerial powers to push much more “extractivism”—dig it drill it mine it irrigate it—and to undermine the ability of the Environmental Protection Authority to actually be concerned about the sustainability of our environment and managing our natural areas so that we look to future generations and having a sustainable basis for the economy.There were a lot of submissions in support of this bill. Sea Shepherd for example talked about how it was really important because it would help uphold our international reputation of having a clean green environment. Because if you have got the Environmental Protection Authority having this key responsibility for regulatory management of the environment then it needs to be clear what the purpose of that management is what its core objective is. And so as Sea Shepherd said it makes sense—not just good environmental and conservation sense but also good business sense—to have this bill pass. The Government is using a lot of exaggeration to oppose the bill. The new objective was debated at the time the legislation was passed; it should have been put in then so that the agency actually lives up to its name of being an Environmental Protection Authority rather than one that just contributes to efficient effective and transparent management. It would ensure that we are looking at the three aspects of sustainable management.This Government likes to look at the use and development aspects but both under the Resource Management Act and under the exclusive economic zone it neglects the protection aspect. That is a core part of sustainable management and this bill which the Green Party is very pleased to support would actually help emphasise that protection aspect. If we want to ensure that natural resources can be utilised for future generations and that they maintain their intrinsic values then we have got to put greater weight on protection and this bill will go a little way to doing that. Thank you.