Brooking RachelHon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you Mr Speaker. Look it's interesting to be here at just on 11 o'clock on a Friday night talking about the waste levy but luckily for me the waste levy is something that I'm very happy to be talking about at any time of the day or week.Of course the waste levy is something that was increased around 2020 and in a hypothecated fund the idea being that money gained from waste being disposed of would go to initiatives to decrease waste. That's how hypothecated schemes work. As the Minister the Hon Penny Simmonds has said this levy was split in half; half of it goes to the local council where the waste is taken and half goes to central government. Under the Waste Minimisation Act different councils have to have waste minimisation plans and we all know that our local council our city council our district council or our unitary council depending where you live around the country does a lot with waste. So it makes good sense that half of that money goes to those local governments. The other half stays with the Government and the Government has funds—the Waste Minimisation Fund and the Plastics Innovation Fund—that then are contestable and can go to projects around the country. We heard the Minister say about the importance of waste infrastructure around the country and I'm sure she'll talk some more about that sort of waste infrastructure but some of it is for the often quite complicated kit that is used for recycling or it might be for largescale composting and a range of issues. So the waste levy is a good thing.The criteria are very tight at the moment in the legislation and Labour's position is not in opposition to the loosening of the criteria in part. However this bill goes far too far in the widening of those criteria and I'll talk more about that in both the second reading speech and of course in the committee stage as we're under urgency and this isn't going before a select committee. The question is: why does it go too far? I'll talk more about this as well. The supplementary analysis doesn't talk about how far this bill goes. The idea that the criteria should be extended to remediation of contaminated sites—so the landfill issue that the Minister referred to at Fox River—no problem with that. The idea that when there are emergency situations such as we had in the Hawke's Bay and other areas of the North Island last year—no problem with that extension. The problem is that the bill says any other environmental thing whatever and there's no nexus to waste. And this is a levy it's not a tax so there does have to be some nexus and it's the absence of that nexus that we are opposed to. I have Amendment Papers on the Table that will fix that problem will still allow the extension to remediation and emergency but not go to just anything that's not related to waste at all.So why do we have a bill in front of us that seems to change the process to now extend to wider environmental issues? The reason is of course that this Budget is terrible for the environment. Everything is cut. We knew of course that there were those cuts in the mini-Budget to environmental programmes and to the Ministry for the Environment and now we have that 7.5 percent cut. We know of course—and we've had this throughout the past six months—that every single climate mitigation initiative has been cut and we've got rid of of course with this Budget the climate emergency fund. We know that the Department of Conservation is being cut. That's all on-the-ground conservation work. We know that the Climate Commission has been cut. Programmes for installation have been cut. Half-price public transport—cut. So all of these reasons all of these cuts—we do need to do some things for the environment. What we see here and what we see with this bill with this widening of the criteria is that it's for the waste levy to pay for all of these things. And of course it doesn't pay for all of those cuts—not at all—and it is needed to continue with what the Minister spoke about.We do need funding for the remediation of landfills. We do need funding for the increase of waste infrastructure. But this bill goes too far so we will be opposing it. We do have Amendment Papers for the Minister. If she is of a mind to change her mind that position can change.