Korako Nuk: Environmental Reporting Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKorako Nuk: Environmental Reporting Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 23 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4687. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]NUK KORAKO (National):Kia ora. E te Kaiwhakahaere e mihi atu ki a koe anō. I just would like to take this short call on the Environmental Reporting Bill particularly looking at the fact that was highlighted by the Minister for the Environment and it has been highlighted also throughout our select committee process that this bill is not just about our environment; it is also about the state of our environment. And I think that is a really important and pertinent point.Moving to Part 2 of the Environmental Reporting Bill it was a great pleasure to be able to be part of the Local Government and Environment Committee to discuss debate and find consensus on this bill particularly around two things: the Treaty of Waitangi clause around instead of—it just sort of mentioned the principles—The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! [Interruption] Order! When I stand up the member sits down. It is really important when he is speaking to Part 2 of the bill that he does not speak to the bits that are in Part 1 and he has just started doing that.NUK KORAKO: Moving on from that part on the Treaty through to Te Ao Māori I want to speak about some of the amendments before I get there though. Probably the first one was the amending of clauses 7 and 10 to replace “economic benefits” with “economy” so that both positive and negative economic impacts would be included in the domain and synthesis reports as well. But moving to the next part of it which concerns the first domain report the amendment would remove a specific date for the release of the first synthesis report from clause 8 and then instead change clause 11 to require that the first domain report be published within 18 months of the bill’s commencement.The next part of it that I want to talk about is clause 18 and then also specifically about subclause (3). Basically that amendment concerns the expansion of entities. When we look at it that subclause (3) talks about expanding the number of entities to be consulted before recommending regulations. What that subclause has done is added the general public local authorities and iwi as well. I think that is an important consideration here because the fact is that this is where we start talking in Part 2 about Te Ao Māori which is very much if you translate that around the Māori world view—just to highlight that fact that Māori can bring a unique perspective on environment. Te Ao Māori the Māori world view has an important contribution to make to our environmental management just thinking along the lines of he tikanga tuku iho nā ngā matua tīpuna kua wehe atu ki te pō [it is a custom handed down by the ancestral forefathers who have departed to the void.] That means that those tikanga those ways particularly when we talk about the environment have been handed down from one generation to the next.That Te Ao Māori interpretation also to me in this bill is reflected in that Māori have the opportunity to be able to have their input particularly when we look at the framework when we look at the part where we have where the pressures are what is the state of them and then what is the impact. When we look at the impact of that particularly around when Māori look at their supply of mahinga kai and all of those traditional things that actually revolves around water. So that to me is a very very significant part of the bill—that Te Ao Māori can actually be included in this. Just the analogy when we talk about Papatūānuku the earth mother and particularly the analogy of that when we look at relating it to the body of a human being particularly around when we look at the rivers the major waterways being the arteries and then all of those tributaries coming off them which are the veins—the fact is that we need to monitor it. That monitoring is really part of what we are trying to do here.The next part that I want to talk about is that insert. The previous speaker on the other side of the Chamber Iain Lees-Galloway was talking very much about political accountability. If we look at this part of it we have added subclause (1A) in clause 6 and subclause (2) in clause 9 which would require Ministers to present reports jointly to the House. Political accountability there I believe is very much encouraged. The next part of it is around the funding initiatives as part of the bill. Looking at that increasing funding for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment that is to encourage and assist the reporting function so the commissioner is encouraged but not required to report on an environmental report. So clause 16 is also amended to clarify that the Government Statistician could potentially withhold access to untested and unpublished data prepared for the purpose of this legislation to maintain the independence and the integrity of the report. That was really important too because it was something that was highlighted on the other side of the Chamber around the integrity of the reporting itself.Finally just to cover off is that in the bill itself—and particularly in Part 2—by mandating credible environmental information an accurate picture of the environment is created so debate can focus more on the environmental issues themselves rather than on whether the reporting is accurate comparable or representative which is what has previously occurred. Without genuinely independent regular reporting on the state of the environment we risk again falling into bad habits of the past and simply responding to the next crisis that comes along. That is what has been happening in some ways to date. National is taking proactive steps through this bill to ensure that this does not occur or does not continue to occur. The scope of the reports mandated by the bill will be comprehensive going beyond the programme of environmental indicator updates that the Ministry for the Environment has produced in recent years. The other parts to that are that the reports will cover both the state of the environment and the pressures driving environmental trends and their impacts through easy-to-understand information. Importantly it will show us where we need to make the improvements.The final part—and it was highlighted by the Minister the Hon Dr Nick Smith previously—is that New Zealand is one of the very few countries particularly within the OECD without a legislative basis for national environmental reporting. This new environmental reporting system will for the first time give us the robust basis on which to track how we are performing compared with our trading partners facilitating international benchmarking and comparability. Where possible the system will align with international reporting. That is really just a short overview particularly around what this bill is about some of the important parts of it—particularly in Part 2—and then what is actually trying to be achieved through this legislation. Kia ora.