Mackey Moana: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17606] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 We have now come back to Part 1 which deals with the purpose of the bill. This is another area where the Local Government and Environment Committee made significant changes to the bill as it was introduced. The purpose clause of the bill is extremely important because it sets out the intentions of the entire bill. If there were ever any contest or disagreement about what the bill was trying to do we would often come back to the purpose clause. 
We did not want to limit waste minimisation activities within that purpose clause and I think the general feeling at the select committee was that the way it was drafted—it mentioned so many things—almost excluded things by not mentioning them. We decided that rather than discussing the measures by which we may do waste minimisation and the types of areas we might do it in the best thing would be to focus in the purpose clause on the outcomes and benefits we wanted to achieve. So we went from mentioning “landfills cleanfills and incinerators” and all those kinds of things to simply saying: “The purpose of this Act is to encourage waste minimisation and a decrease in waste disposal in order to—(a) protect the environment from harm; and (b) provide environmental social economic and cultural benefits.” 
I think that really covers everything that is currently being done and everything that will be done. Mentioning “environmental social economic and cultural benefits” aligns the bill nicely with the Local Government Act as well which we have tried to do all through the bill. The last thing we want is to put in front of councils a bill that has differing expectations targets and priorities from their own Act. Given that they are the main bodies that currently work in this area it seems silly to set up a whole new level of expectations and priorities when the ones they already have fitted very nicely with the Waste Minimisation Bill. 
The definition of “waste” took quite some time. There were times when we thought we may have to get another extension of time on this bill simply so that we could get the definition of “waste” right because if we did not get that right then everything else could fall apart. It seemed like this was one clause where every single word mattered and had a potential meaning and a potential down-flow effect and could cut people out or bring in people that we did not want it to. So I really want to thank the officials for the work they did on the definition of “waste”. They came back to us many times and we would throw at them examples of things that we felt might fall inside or outside of that definition. They would go away and come back to us and in the end I think we were able to come up with a working definition of “waste”. I am sure we will hear more debate about that because that is a very important part of this bill. 
The member who spoke before me Nicky Wagner talked about the Carter Holt Harvey case which is a very good example of what can happen if we do not get these definitions right and do not make clear in the legislation what we are and are not talking about. In terms of the commencement date originally the legislation was going to come into effect 12 months after the day on which it received the Royal assent. The select committee has changed that and put in a fixed date. As my colleague Steve Chadwick said we certainly want to see the Waste Minimisation Bill progress. 
We have a Supplementary Order Paper on this bill and I want to thank all the officials who are sitting out in the lobby doing all the work for us and redrafting a lot of these things. This bill is still a work in progress as we go along getting all the wording right and we certainly appreciate the work of officials and officers of the Parliamentary Counsel Office who are taking all our great erudite and brilliant ideas and putting them into words that will actually work and not form part of a terrible judicial review that sees things fall over. I also thank the Minister for the Environment Trevor Mallard for making all this available to the Committee of the whole House so that we are able to get this right because it is important. We have a Supplementary Order Paper here in the name of Dr Russel Norman which I am sure he will speak to soon. I will not pre-empt him as it is his Supplementary Order Paper. 
Again the commencement date might not seem like a big deal but it certainly was an important part of the bill for us. Because the bill took a lot longer than was originally expected and required a significant rewrite the select committee felt that it was appropriate to go back to submitters to ask them to resubmit on the bill. We heard all the submitters who wanted to be heard again at the select committee and although the member in charge of the bill at that time Nandor Tanczos was happy for that to happen the fear was that pushing out the select committee process meant that the date of 12 months from the Royal assent was getting further and further away. We felt that at some point we needed to draw a line in the sand as a select committee. We had a good sense that we were going to report back we knew roughly how long it would take in the Committee and we figured that by 1 July 2009 we would be able to have everything ready to go. 
Part 1 is an important part. As I have said the purpose clause is very important. I think we have managed to get a purpose clause that fits with the local government legislation which gives a clear direction as to the environmental benefits we want to get rather than simply talking about the ways in which we would get there.