Smith Nick: Environmental Reporting Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSmith Nick: Environmental Reporting Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:7041. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): I move That the Environmental Reporting Bill be now read a third time. This bill represents the Government’s commitment to bringing New Zealand into line with best international practice when it comes to monitoring and reporting on the condition of our natural environment. It was a policy that the Bluegreens developed during National’s time in Opposition that National campaigned on and that we are now delivering on. It is about giving greater integrity to New Zealand’s “clean green” brand by providing independent and authoritative information on how we match up. Also it represents a major advance in improving the regularity and integrity of national-level environmental data so that New Zealanders will be able to access the information on which to base important environmental business economic and societal decisions. It is very much about the fact that we manage that which we measure.As all parties in the debate on this bill have acknowledged New Zealand is out of step with other OECD countries in that we are the only country not to have a statutory system for regular independent state of the environment reports. The bill that we are now debating contains provisions that will ensure that those reports are regular that they are independent that they are comprehensive and that they are accurate. This means that the public can have confidence in and certainty about the scope timing and quality of New Zealand’s environmental information. It means that we are going to be able to get on rather than just spending time debating the data and whether it is accurate whether it is relevant whether it is timely or where it has come from. With this regime New Zealanders will be able to actually focus and get on and deal with the issues that are important for us to improve the management of the environment.What is under pressure? What is not working? Where is data getting worse? Where is it improving? How can we fix it? These are the sorts of conversations that are far more constructive than some of the arguments that go on in the environmental space about whether we can rely on the information. It is essential that communities businesses local authorities and central government are able to use environmental information to make better decisions on very important issues that affect our environment our economy and our society. In fact I would put it to this House that New Zealand more so than any other OECD country requires robust environmental reporting given the importance of our primary industries like agriculture forestry fishing and tourism which are so dependent on our natural wealth.The scope of the reports produced under this bill will be comprehensive and will go beyond the programme of just the environmental indicator updates that the Ministry for the Environment has produced in recent years. The reports will not cover just the state of the environment; they will describe the pressures that are driving those environmental trends and the impacts of those trends on our lives. To give a bit more detail state of the environment topics will describe what the biophysical condition of the environment is and how it has changed over time. Pressure topics will describe the human activities and natural factors that influence the environment in order to help us understand why it is in the condition it is. The impact topics will look at what the consequences of any changes in the state of the environment are across those five categories. These categories are ecological integrity the economy public health culture and recreation and through the select committee process we have also added with the representations from the Māori Party Te Ao Māori so as to include their view in environmental reports.The impact topics will help New Zealanders to understand how changes in the state of our environment affect different aspects of our society. A good example of this is to look at an issue like air quality which impacts on the health of New Zealanders and whether it is getting better or worse. If the concentration of air pollutants increases exposure to the increase in concentrations can have an impact in terms of increasing premature deaths and hospital admissions and restricted activity days for New Zealanders. Some of these health impacts will be the result because air pollutants can aggravate existing respiratory conditions such as asthma. People in organisations need to understand these links so that they are aware of how the state of the environment affects New Zealanders. Then we can make better-informed decisions about how we expend our resources to improve things.The environmental domains that will be reported on as specified in the bill are the air the atmosphere and climate fresh water land and the marine environment. The bill requires the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician to publish a domain report on each of these five environmental domains every 6 months. Then every 3 years the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician will be required to publish a national-level report on New Zealand’s environment—one that covers all domains. After the reports are produced the Minister for the Environment and the Minister of Statistics will be required to present such reports to this House. The bill strikes a good balance between ensuring the timely availability of information to the public and statistical integrity in developing these reports on our environment. As the new environmental reporting regime matures the information and database on which it relies will improve.Statistics New Zealand and the Ministry for the Environment are already working closely with organisations like regional councils Crown research institutes and the Department of Conservation to provide the environmental data to be able to support this national-level reporting. The independence of the new environmental reporting regime is guaranteed through the involvement of the Government Statistician in determining which statistics or measures for each topic meet the high-quality statistical standards that are required. I would like to add that the regime’s independence is especially supported by clause 16 which ensures that previously unpublished data statistics and findings and environmental reports will be released to everyone at the same time. This clause is a key mechanism for keeping our environmental reporting independent and at arm’s length from the Government of the day. The regime’s independence is also shored up by the role of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment who can audit each report. This provides the public with the assurance that the information is being independently reviewed and that Parliament and the New Zealand public are being kept informed on those things about our environment that really matter.I know that both members of Labour and the Greens know this is a good bill that addresses a deficiency in New Zealand’s environment systems and as I have listened to their contributions on the select committee report and at the Committee stage I think they are in that space of just opposing for the sake of it. If you go into the details of the concerns that they have they read very much like they are clutching at straws. Let me deal quite specifically with two of those issues.The first of the issues is that this bill provides for regulations to be set around the topics and there have been questions about that. The reality is that the topics that we need to report on do change with time. For instance the issue of climate change was quite new and out of left field as that science evolved. That is equally so if you look at an issue like chlorofluorocarbons and how that developed. I am sure that over the next 20 to 30 years of the likely life of this legislation there will be changes in the issues that we need to measure and that is appropriate. I would also say that the process of consultation around those regulations is extensive and ensures that there is integrity in the way they are developed.I also find rather churlish the criticism that the bill does not provide for the reporting of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. That of course is an important issue but I would draw the House’s attention to the Climate Change Response Act which requires that information to be reported through the United Nations system for its audit and I would question why we would want to double that bureaucracy.The last point that I wish to make is that I think this is a very important bill for the management of our environment. If you asked me as a parliamentarian of 25 years what the most important and best bill that has been put through this Parliament was I would say it was the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1994 which required the open and transparent reporting of this country’s finances. We went from a period pre-1994 when this country had some of the worst public books in the world and since then we have moved to having some of the very very best. My hope and ambition for the Environmental Reporting Act is that through this independent quality information about the genuine state of New Zealand’s environment it can shift the focus to those things that we do need to give priority to in order to improve how New Zealand manages its natural resources.Can I conclude by thanking the officials and my colleagues—particularly Scott Simpson and the team on the Local Government and Environment Committee—who have done a good job of putting this bill on the books of this Parliament. It will give greater integrity to New Zealand’s “clean green” brand and that matters for this country of ours.