Donald Rod: Industry New Zealand and Trade New Zealand Integration Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Donald Rod: Industry New Zealand and Trade New Zealand Integration Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 10 June 2003. Volume:609;Page:6091. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I hope Mr Peck will still congratulate me after my speech because in our view this bill has turned Parliament into a farce and is an insult to the democratic process. That is because the Government has not only decided it wants to merge Industry New Zealand with Trade New Zealand but it has already put the structure in place and merely expects this Parliament to rubber-stamp what it has done. 
The Government announced the merger in November last year yet this bill received its first reading only on 25 March 7 days after a letter was sent out from the chair of the establishment board of the new organisation announcing its name New Zealand Trade and Enterprise announcing the departure of the chief executive of Industry New Zealand on 27 March and announcing that the appointment of the chief executive of the new body would take effect on 7 April. 
In other words the new chief executive of the new organisation started his job before the Commerce Committee had even heard submissions on the bill to set up the new organisation let alone report back to Parliament. That has got to be a very very poor process. 
Before agreeing to the merger Parliament should have been allowed to assess thoroughly the benefits of merging those two organisations. Instead the Government set a 1-month report-back date thus denying the select committee the chance to scrutinise whether the new engine room of the Government’s growth strategy is capable of delivering what the Government wants let alone what the Greens think it should be delivering. 
But appalling process in itself is not sufficient reason to oppose this bill. The Green Party does not support this merger. In fact it looks more like a takeover of Industry New Zealand by Trade New Zealand—not the other way round as Mr Shirley indicates. We oppose this merger on substantive grounds. That does not mean we oppose in principle the creation of a combined organisation to provide assistance and support to industry enterprise and business initiative. If we were confident of the outcome of this merger we would support such a move but we cannot vote for this bill in the form in which it has been reported back. That is because the Green Party believes that the purpose of this bill should be to support the development of New Zealand businesses that are not only internationally competitive but also ecologically and socially sustainable. 
The bill provided the opportunity for the Government to give effect to its sustainable development programme of action and in particular to the principles of policy and decision making that include the statement: “Sustainable development must be at the core of all Government policy.” During the committee’s consideration of the bill this member did seek to replace the words “sustainable economic growth” and as Mr Peck said that became the main topic of conversation. We sought to replace the words “sustainable economic growth” in the functions clause with the words “sustainable development” in order to give the Government the chance to live up to its own rhetoric. It refused to make that change because clearly this Government is not willing to walk the talk. Yes the committee did change “sustainable economic growth” to “sustainable economic development” but these words do not mean the same as sustainable development. They clearly imply that economic interests take precedence over social and environmental ones rather than acknowledge that both the economy and our society depend on protecting and restoring the natural environment. The Government’s economic strategy is a house of cards built on sand if it does anything less. 
The adoption of sustainable development would have sent a consistent message that the Government is encouraging industry to reach higher environmental standards and take account of social needs and goals. The need for sustainability to be at the core of Government’s partnership with the business community could also have been addressed by either incorporating a set of sustainability principles in the bill as found in the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act or by requiring the new entity to take a sustainable development approach in its statement of purpose as found in and required by the Local Government Act. In both cases those implementing the Acts would have been required to take into account the health and safety of people in communities their social economic and cultural well-being the need to maintain and enhance the quality of the environment and the reasonable foreseeable needs of future generations. 
I ask Mr Peck why the Government does not want to do that. What is it scared of? Clearly it thinks it is a good idea for the local government sector to take a sustainable development approach to all its activities. Clearly it thinks it is a good idea for the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act to practise sustainability but for reasons that escape me the Government is not prepared to commit to assisting and supporting only those businesses that operate in an environmentally and socially sustainable way. 
The Government is very happy to say the right things. Industry New Zealand even produced a special issue of its magazine on sustainable development. The rhetoric was great: “Sustainable growth has become a catchcry but the wider goal of sustainable development is the more important target.” The content was compelling. “New Zealand’s population rose by 19 percent in the last 20 years but in the same period we used 61 percent more energy registered 67 percent more cars and in Auckland threw out 162 percent more rubbish.” It went on to state: “Many New Zealand companies are still in denial over the need for sustainability.” 
The solutions are obvious. They are in this article: “Triple bottom line reporting is based on the idea that companies do not work in a vacuum but are part of the society they operate in. To concentrate on economic performance alone is to ignore the impact of the company’s activities on the environment and on the community—the sort of thinking that may lead to environmental destruction and social breakdown.” 
It is all there yet the Government refuses to make sustainability a bottom line for New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. Well we intend to try to change that during the Committee stage and that I am afraid is because we have no confidence that New Zealand Trade and Enterprise will implement the Government’s own sustainable development plan of action unless it is forced to. 
Why are we so uncharitable? Because when Industry New Zealand was formed we tried to engage with the Government on sustainability issues and we got fobbed off. We accept that our goals for the economy are radically different from those of the establishment parties but we were prepared to meet Labour in the middle. That is because it makes good sense for the Government to ensure that industries reduce their overall environmental impacts by living within our natural income rather than depleting our natural capital and by improving output while reducing resource throughput. 
It makes good sense to give explicit directions to industry including agriculture to shift to cleaner production methods to shift from more toxic to less-toxic production methods and products and to address waste management in a meaningful way. It makes sense to understand and seek to enhance the ecological systems on which much production—indeed all life—depends but apparently it did not make good sense to the last Labour-led Government so why should we trust this one notwithstanding its sustainable development action plan. 
If this body is the Government’s economic engine room it must embrace sustainable development otherwise we cannot support this bill and we will be doing our best in the Committee stage to make amendments to it so that indeed we can support it. They include a move to import substitution rather than the fixation with export-led growth that this bill entrenches because it is unbalanced. It is trying to fly on one wing by talking only about the export sector and by not addressing the need for import substitution. Yet the evidence is clear that Industry New Zealand and Trade New Zealand are not delivering the right outcomes and we need a Buy New Zealand Made policy to correct that.