Twyford Phil: Environmental Protection Authority Bill — In Committee 
Twyford Phil: Environmental Protection Authority Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:672;Page:18490] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 It is often said that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good meaning that if something is good enough it is good enough. But that is not the case with the Environmental Protection Authority Bill. This is a case of the inadequate the mediocre and the unsatisfactory being the enemy of the good. 
Labour members voted for this bill at the first reading because we thought that to establish a strong central independent environmental regulator would have been a big step forward for New Zealand. Disappointingly the bill that has emerged from the Local Government and Environment Committee and come back to the House is really a pale shadow of what it could and should have been. 
We listened carefully to submitters at the select committee and four key problems concerns emerged from that process. The first is that the functions of the Environmental Protection Authority are far too narrow for this new organisation to exercise any real kind of leadership in the environment sector. Second the objectives are inadequate; bizarrely it does not include even the task the responsibility of protecting the environment. Third the Environmental Protection Authority is not sufficiently independent from the Minister for the Environment. Its independence is compromised. Fourth on the question of its need to take into account Maori perspectives in its decision making the legislation is confusing and in fact sets back the environmental legislation in that regard. 
I will first talk about the functions of the Environmental Protection Authority. I point to a couple of amendments that are on the Table in the name of Charles Chauvel. One of them would insert a new paragraph in Part 2—clause 12(c)—which would charge the Environmental Protection Authority with carrying out the administration of the Waste Minimisation Act 2008. My colleague has brought this amendment to the House because we believe that the administration of the Waste Minimisation Act is one of the functions that it was always obvious that the Environmental Protection Authority should be responsible for. It makes complete sense it is logical and we are at a loss to understand why this has been excluded from the objectives of the Environmental Protection Authority. Similarly we are baffled as to why the climate change legislation and the various functions of the Resource Management Act have not been handed over to the Environmental Protection Authority. 
The second amendment in the name of Charles Chauvel to Part 2 is new clause 12(e). It would give the Environmental Protection Authority the responsibility “To protect and enhance the Coastal and Marine Environment and to carry out the environmental management of New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone.” That is of course an issue that is on the minds of everybody in New Zealand at the moment because of the deep-sea offshore drilling that Petrobras is doing off the east coast of the North Island. It is a matter of great concern to all New Zealanders that that drilling should be properly regulated and that our marine environment should be protected for generations to come. We have no confidence that that kind of protection is in place and we are mystified as to why the Environmental Protection Authority has not been given the responsibility to discharge those tasks. 
It is interesting. We have noticed a bit of a trend with some of the legislation that is coming through the Local Government and Environment Committee. There is something about this bill: it is unformed. It is partially formed; it is just not all there. It really should never have been brought to the House by the Minister at this time. He should have waited until more of the groundwork had been done and until there was a more substantial more comprehensive more developed bill for the Environmental Protection Authority. We have seen that in the Building Amendment Bill (No 3) which is currently before the Local Government and Environment Committee. We have seen it with the weathertight homes financial assistance package which has a deferred commencement date because the Government is still negotiating with the banks that are supposed to be providing the finance for that package. 
We have seen it as I said with the Building Amendment Bill (No 3). A number of reforms are being proposed for the building and construction industry yet people in the industry have come to us saying that the cart has been put before the horse the industry is not ready for it and these things are not being sequenced properly. So a bit of a pattern is emerging of inadequate underdeveloped poorly thought-through legislation being brought to this House. One can surmise only that it is because of the electoral cycle that Ministers—not just this Minister but others—are keen to be seen tabling some bill and trying to get some runs on the board before the election at the end of this year. 
We question whether in fact the Environmental Protection Authority being established by this bill is sufficiently credible and substantial to survive. There are real questions about its long-term viability because of the inadequacy of the structure the mandate and the roles that are being put in place. A number of powers and responsibilities are being transferred from existing bodies but it is happening in a piecemeal fashion. 
A number of submitters pointed out the legal situation in regard to the Environmental Protection Authority and its relationship with other key bits of legislation—the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act the Resource Management Act and the climate change legislation. All of those bits of law will have to be read in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Authority Act and vice versa. That will have the effect of making our environmental law more complicated and less accessible and less intelligible to the layperson. 
A related concern we have is that the bill gives the Minister the power to direct the Environmental Protection Authority to carry out additional functions. The Minister has assured the House that such functions are likely to be minor and ancillary to the current functions of the Environmental Protection Authority. We remain concerned that this is an unsatisfactory way of setting up the future development of the Environmental Protection Authority. There is no brightline test to determine whether something is an ancillary or a substantive function; it is up to the Minister of the day. He or she will make a political judgment and that could not only confuse the public but undermine the integrity of the Environmental Protection Authority if that is the way it is going to grow and develop over time. 
The second big concern we have is that as I mentioned the objectives in Part 2 do not include even the explicit tasking of the Environmental Protection Authority with the job of protecting the environment. It brings to mind George W Bush’s Clear Skies Act in the United States which perversely actually substantially degraded the quality of the regulation of air quality in the US. To call this bill the Environmental Protection Authority Bill raises real questions about truth in advertising. It is not really an environmental protection authority and when we look at the bill’s objectives we see that that becomes even clearer. 
Charles Chauvel has put forward an amendment to clause 11(1) which proposes to insert new paragraph (c). That amendment would rectify this defect in the bill by explicitly stating that the job of the Environmental Protection Authority would be to protect maintain and enhance New Zealand’s environment. It is pretty basic stuff but it is a mystery to us why that is not in the bill as we see it.