Williams Andrew: Environmental Reporting Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Environmental Reporting Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 05 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16368. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First): The matter before us might come as a bit of a surprise to the National Government in that New Zealand First likewise is not supporting this legislation the Environmental Reporting Bill. It is surprising that perhaps the National Government has not sought to ask our views about this before—Hon Amy Adams: I did. I wrote to you and asked for them.ANDREW WILLIAMS: Yes and I did not provide them.Hon Amy Adams: No exactly but I did seek them.ANDREW WILLIAMS: But you assumed that we supported it and we did not provide them. So like the changes to the Resource Management Act last week where the Minister for the Environment was reported as saying that we were supporting those changes again that was incorrectly reported. We do support some streamlining and some tweaking of the Resource Management Act but certainly in terms of Part 2 of the Resource Management Act we do not support it. That is certainly not the position of New Zealand First.It is interesting when you look back through this. We looked at the Cabinet paper that Nick Smith presented to Cabinet on 4 August 2013 to the Cabinet economic growth and infrastructure committee. It says in that paper in paragraph 10: “This proposal also reflects the National Party 2008 election manifesto agreement ‘to introduce a new Environmental Reporting Act requiring independent five-yearly State of the Environment Reports as a new function of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’.” That is what the National Party was saying in 2008—that there would be a new function of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Sometime in the interim period between then and 2011 it changed that—because I do not think it was getting quite the right answers from the Parliamentary Commissioner for theEnvironment—and decided that it would do something a little bit different that it would take some of this outside the realms of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and put it under a different bit of legislation so that the Minister can pull the strings and dictate how he or she wants it. The independent commissioner reports to this House to Parliament—they do not report to the Government—as do the ombudsmen and as does the Auditor-General but the National Government decided that it would politicise it and move it more under the Minister’s control.I will just read out the functions of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. When you are listening to these functions ask why this would not simply come under the Parliamentary Commissioner. “These functions are drawn from the Environment Act 1986 … and the Commissioner has wide discretion to exercise them. They include: Review the system of agencies and processes set up by the Government to manage the country’s resources and report to the House of Representatives; Investigate the effectiveness of environmental planning and management by public authorities and advise them on remedial action; Investigate any matter where the environment may be or has been adversely affected advise on preventative measures or remedial action and report to the House; Report on a request from the House or any select committee on any petition Bill or any other matter which may have a significant effect on the environment; Inquire on the direction of the House into any matter that has had or may have a substantial and damaging effect on the environment; Undertake and encourage the collection and dissemination of information about the environment;”—I will repeat that: “Undertake and encourage the collection and dissemination of information about the environment;”—and lastly “Encourage preventive measures and remedial actions to protect the environment.”The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has considerable powers and powers of recommendation to this House in relation to the environment. So why would you not if you have already got this Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment build or expand that briefing to provide the 5-yearly reports? In 2011 a discussion paper from National proposed that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment would produce a major report on the state of the environment every 5 years. So here we have got a situation where in 2008 National put out its manifesto saying: “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to bring this in.” Then in 2011 it put forward a discussion document saying that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment will produce a report every 5 years on the environment and that is what we will have.Then what happens? It all changes and between 2011 and 2013 National goes away from that and says: “Oh no no no! We’re not going to give all this responsibility to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. We’re going to do it under a separate part of legislation and we will ask her for some input and some auditing and some advice into this reporting but it will not be the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s sole discretion to provide this information to the Government and to Parliament.” Why is that? The reason is that this Government does not trust the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to independently report both to this House and to the Government because the Government will not get the answers it wants—it will not get the answers it wants.So what this is doing in our opinion is basically undermining the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. It is taking away the functions from that very independent office and it is making sure that this is done where the Minister can pull the strings and get these 5-year reports according to how the Minister will want them. We have already seen the Minister of Conservation Nick Smith getting involved with the Ruataniwha Dam. The Department of Conservation put forward a report which he did not like the look of and it went back to be altered so that the Minister got thereport in terms of the Ruataniwha Dam that suited the Minister. This is a very dangerous area. Ministries are supposed to advise. They are the civil servants. They are supposed to give independent advice to Ministers that is full impartial and accurate. In terms of the Ruataniwha Dam the department was supposed to submit on the basis of its best advice on the matter. The Minister intervened and the report got watered down and changed.I can see the same thing happening here in this situation where the Minister for the Environment will determine every 5 years which of those air fresh water and various other elements will be reported on and if they do not like the look of how the reports are scrubbing up we are certain that they will want to manipulate them and change them because they would not want the reports to reflect poorly on the Minister or on the Government. If the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was to do the reports and also commission the statistics and do the various other things required under this bill she would operate on the basis that she is an independent Officer of Parliament. She has wide-ranging powers to investigate environmental concerns and being independent would mean that she is independent of the Government of the day in her reports to Parliament. That is pretty simple.Therefore New Zealand First—and we have considered this and we have looked at this—says: “Well why did the National Party over a period of 5 years when it was in Opposition say it was all very well to work with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment?”. It is all very well when you are in Opposition and you are sitting on the benches over here but once you are in Government and you want to start manipulating things so that the reports look good you take it away from that independent function and you take it down this track. We are very suspicious because in hearing from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment over the last few years it is very interesting how that office has had to go very quiet in this whole area. It has basically made minimal comment in terms of how this is going. We believe therefore that basically that office has been constrained in terms of any comment on this and it would be very interesting to know what pressure has been borne on it.We have seen the Prime Minister of this country already threaten the Chief Human Rights Commissioner. He has already threatened and said that the funding might be pulled from the Human Rights Commission if this Government does not get the answers it wants or if the Human Rights Commission puts out reports that the Government is not very happy with. You cannot deny it—you cannot deny it. There were threats made by the Prime Minister in relation to the Chief Human Rights Commissioner and to forward funding for that commission. The same has happened here I am sure where there has been an underlying situation where the reports coming out of the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment have not necessarily all been how the Government wanted them and therefore this Government is moving to ensure that it does not have that commissioner independently able to advise this House and all members of this House in an independent manner.So New Zealand First will be studying this at the Local Government and Environment Committee. We are sure there will be a huge number of submissions. Will the Government listen to those submissions? Who would know? But at the end of the day this is about reporting to Parliament not to the Government.