Muller Todd: Environmental Reporting Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMuller Todd: Environmental Reporting Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 19 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3377. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I rise to speak in favour of the Environmental Reporting Bill. If I could have the House’s forbearance for perhaps 30 seconds or so I do want to acknowledge in the context of local government and environment the good work of the Tauranga City Council and staff in response to the tornado that hit my electorate late on Thursday. I saw there an example of what actually happens when you have a natural event of some magnitude and the impact that it has on individuals and families. It was a very distressing scene amongst a couple of dozen homes that were dreadfully affected that Friday morning when I walked around and saw them all but by lunchtime most of the obvious effects had been cleaned up and cleared up. That was a great example of a local government working in tandem with its community and I do want to put that on record to acknowledge Tauranga City Council for what it did there. Well done.You can also see actually the best in community collaboration when it coalesces around an idea that is supported by good data. I think we are seeing examples of that around the country at the moment as various councils reflect on the obligations that have been imposed on them by the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management—a superb piece of reform that this Government brought in over the last few years that requires real action in respect of water quality improvement. Those conversations have begun around the country. They are not easy conversations. In many respects they are quite hard because the data is not complete and there are various trade-offs that are required to get streams and rivers to mahinga kai - able to drinkable to swimmable. It is very challenging for communities particularly when they do not have that full complete data set but it is great to see that that is under way.It is a real achievement of this Government. I appreciate that there are few on the other side who would give us any credit for this but this is a Government that takes a reform-based approach to managing the environment and that has actually delivered outcomes for communities. What we got when we arrived here in 2008 was a complete vacuum—a vacuum of ideas. There was a vacuum of frameworks and processes to deal with this. There is shaking of heads on the other side but you had 9 years to deal with this. You are great on rhetoric but actually putting frameworks in place—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!TODD MULLER: Sorry—the Green Party and Labour are great on rhetoric but in terms of putting frameworks in place that are enduring and that get results it does not happen on the other side. It happens on this side and it is great that the Hon Dr Nick Smith is in the House today to get some acknowledgment for this side for the reform agenda that he and Amy Adams have driven through over the last few years.It is easy to forget that at that time—2008—you could take water without needing to measure it. There was no National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. There were no national objectives frameworks. There was no Land and Water Forum. There was no framework to enable stakeholders—who only ever saw each other in the courtroom—to actually sit around a table and say: “How are we going to deal with this? How are we actually going to progress this debate in a meaningful and enduring way?” and that is what this Government under the leadership of Nick Smith and Amy Adams has brought to the table. This is why this Environmental Reporting Bill is so important. It builds on and continues that 7 years of reform that I touched on.As my colleague the great Matt Doocey from Waimakariri—what a fantastic MP; what a great part of the country that is—noted only moments before we are one of the few OECD countries that currently does not require independent reporting as has been mentioned and I think this obviously is going to be redressed shortly with the passing hopefully of this bill. But I do want to make the point that it reflects a party philosophy on this side of the House around progressive transparency. You saw that many decades ago with the Financial Reporting Act but—as mentioned by I think Nick Smith himself when he spoke to this bill—an example more recently is the national standards. We heard it again from Matt Doocey earlier in terms of the Environmental Protection Authority which is an example and of course there are the various Better Public Services targets that we have in place. This is a party that says that unless you can measure it you cannot manage it. So forget the nice rhetoric—put frameworks in place that enable you to measure it. Then from that evidence base you can drive improvement forward and that is what we are doing here in this case. In short in respect of this bill we are not the party of hollow rhetoric; the other side certainly is and I will come back to that shortly.Essentially to protect our environment while enjoying and encouraging economic prosperity we need to be able to have an honest debate about the interactions between the environment and the economy and we need to have a clear picture of the trade-offs and opportunities that are in place and that are on the table and of the impacts particularly of the choices that we make. Any argument that presents only half of that picture is a very undercooked argument indeed. That is why the Environmental Reporting Bill is so important and is a key piece of the reform agenda that we have driven in this space to enable an evidence base to build over time to enable those conversations to be deep and have some meaning so that communities can reach the right considered outcomes.I think it is appropriate that we have very clearly specified the domain areas of water quality air quality biodiversity and of course managing our oceans. The approach of being really specific in terms of the pressures on those particular environments the current state of them and particularly the impacts of various approaches allows you to take a broader view of these issues. As I have noted I think this will lead to more informed debate and better options for the public. I think it will be very helpful that we have the 3-yearly synthesis reports to enable some trend analysis. I will touch on that shortly.What is very important and has been completely lost in some of the nonsense that we have heard in this debate over the last half-hour and certainly a couple of weeks ago is that the topics must be selected on the basis of significance of statistical rigour of evidence and of a strong connection to the environmental state and this requires significant consultation. The debate that we have heard around clause 18 particularly from the other side I think is quite frankly nonsensical—to hold a view that somehow it is inappropriate for the Minister for the Environment to have a view as to what the topic should be and ultimately through the Cabinet process sign off what those should be particularly when you consider the philosophical underpinning of the parties on the other side that are suddenly now talking about the importance of purity and independence. Every sinew in their political body calls out and cries out to getting involved in people’s lives. They cannot help it; that is the way their political philosophies have been built up. It is absolute nonsense.Sometime in the future in the mid-2020s when eventually the Green Party forms a coalition with New Zealand First and Labour—and will not that be fun—they will stand over on this side. To think that the Green Party Minister for the Environment will not want to hold a view as to which topic might be covered in an upcoming domain report is absolute nonsense. From my perspective and from our perspective it is not underpinning the reality of what is going on here. It is absolutely appropriate for a Minister for the Environment to hold a view. The changes that have gone on and the various clauses that we have reflected on to ensure more consultation with iwi and affected local government talk to a process that has rigour and will deliver the right outcome for this country and not some sort of straitjacket nonsense that we have been having to listen to over the last half-hour or so.I do want to spend just a moment before I conclude talking about the value of the synthesis reports particularly in terms of being able to build up a picture of trends over time. I am sure that when the first domain reports come out the reporting will be very binary. It will be black and white. I suspect on one side all the negative connotations will be pumped up and perhaps on the other side we will be talking about the positive inclinations of what those reports say. But the real value for me is what that will say over time because it shows trends in performance and improvement and trends in terms of where the pressures are building. If you are really true about building an environmental picture that can inform public policy and community discussion then that is where the value is and that is the value that is inherent in this bill. It deserves acknowledgment and in my opinion deserves support.In conclusion I do want to acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams who started this and the Hon Nick Smith who is concluding it. The rigour of their intellectual—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired.The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Local Government and Environment Committee by majority be agreed to.