Woods Megan: Environmental Reporting Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Environmental Reporting Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4547. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call on Part 2 and I want to speak to clauses 7 and 10 of the billin particular which cover off the content of both the synthesis and the domain reports. Clause 7 covers the synthesis reports and clause 10 covers the domain reports. In addressing those clauses as agreed to in the select committee and reported back to the House I also want to address the amendments around the way they may be improved which Eugenie Sage has put up in Supplementary Order Paper 87.Let us turn our attention first of all to clause 7 of the bill which covers the contents of the synthesis reports. It asks that “(1) Each synthesis report must describe in relation to the topics prescribed in regulations made under section 18”—and I will come to section 18 in a further contribution—“all of the following matters: (a) the state of New Zealand’s environment including biodiversity and ecosystems; and (b) the pressures that may be causing …”. The reason why we are supporting the Supplementary Order Paper that addresses clause 7 of the bill is that what we want to see meaningful environmental reporting that is of genuine benefit to the environment and that gives us some way to analyse what the cause is of the state of the environment that we are observing. What we are seeing in terms of the legislation as it is before us in clause 7 is that it is far too descriptive and not analytical enough. What Eugenie Sage’s amendmentsays as set out is that there are ways to analyse the content of those reports and it is a far more productive and useful document when we have the synthesis reports come back to us. That is the change.We have signalled our opposition to this bill from the very beginning. We have signalled our opposition to it at the select committee and in our contributions to this stage of the debate. What we have also signalled is that we would be willing to support it if there are some changes made to the legislation as it is reported back. Actually making sure that we have meaningful synthesis reports and meaningful domain reports and the way that the Supplementary Order Paper sets out the amendments which would go some way to achieving this would mean that Labour could support the legislation. Like the Greens we would like to have seen some perhaps more far-reaching changes but we think that the amendments that have been put up particularly in Part 2 are going a long way towards making this a bill that every member in this House could agree to. I will be very interested to hear from the Minister in the chair the reason why the Government will not agree to the measures in Part 2 which are being put up and supported by a number of parties in this House and which would mean independent reporting.In mentioning this I am turning my attention now to clause 18 in Part 2 of the legislation. What I want to know from the Minister is why there is objection to putting in place protections to ensure that we do not just have a Minister of whatever political hue making decisions for political reasons about what is going to be reported on in our environmental reporting. What we want to see is that the decisions that are being made about what topics will be covered off are being made for purely environmental reasons—that they are in the best interests of the environment and not in the best interests of someone’s political agenda. That is what the amendments that Eugenie Sage has put up in her Supplementary Order Paper would achieve. She has found a very good way to work around that.There are other bodies. Many submitters came to the select committee and described other mechanisms that could be used to ensure that we do have independent environmental reporting. Although these have not found their way into the bill that we have before us they have found their way into Eugenie Sage’s Supplementary Order Paper and into the amendments that she has put up. Several other bodies were put up as alternatives. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was put up as one body that could make the decision. The Parliamentary Commissioner herself told us that because she had a commentary role in this bill this would not be appropriate. So for that reason the amendments that we are looking at today look at alternative mechanisms. They look to the Government Statistician as one person along with the Secretary for the Environment and the power of regulation making and the way in which that can be used. It is our firm belief that when it comes to the interests of the environment we have to have political distance in place.The other clause that I want to turn my attention to now is the one covering the role of the commissioner which I alluded to in my discussion of a previous clause. The role of the commissioner is a very specific function under this legislation as covered off in clause 17: “(1) In accordance with his or her functions and powers under the Environment Act 1986 the Commissioner may at his or her discretion report on an environmental report and the processes that produced it. (2) The matters that the Commissioner may report on under subsection (1) include but are not limited to—(a) analysing environmental reports: (b) identifying trends: (c) discussing the implications of environmental report findings: (d) recommending responses to environmental report findings.”These are all incredibly important functions and already we have seen the commissioner produce one report that is a prelude to what is going to be produced under clause 17 of this legislation in terms of the air quality domain report that was produced earlier this year. It gave the public a bit of a taste of the worth and the value of the reporting that we could potentially see under this legislation. What we had from the commissioner was a very sound consideration of the science particularly with regard to particulate levels and what it is that we should be measuring when we are considering air quality in New Zealand. Should we be looking at the kind of particulate that we have previously measured which traditionally has been of concern in New Zealand—PM10—or should we go down to a smaller level and measure a different kind of particulate?It is our great desire to be able to support legislation such as this which is going to produce such sound information on the state of our environment. It is with sadness that Labour is not able to support this legislation. We are one of very few countries in the OECD that do not have an environmental reporting framework. We heard the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee Scott Simpson who did a very fine job of chairing the select committee say that we are clutching at straws—echoing the words of the Minister who was in the chair last night. But it is simply not true. We worked hard and we worked constructively at the select committee to try to ensure that we could have genuine independent environmental reporting in this country. That is not some straw. The fact that you do not have political decision-making for political purposes around how it is that we are going to have a safeguard around our environment is not what I call a straw. Perhaps the attitude of the Minister in the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee gets to the very heart of the problem and to why it is that we have a deficit in the legislation that we are debating here tonight. They do not see a problem with having political interference and political oversight of how it is that we measure the state of our environment. But for us in Labour and on this side of the House that is not just a straw in the wind; that is a fundamental that has to be there in any piece of legislation that purports to be about reporting on the state of our environment. It is lacking here and I will cover off some other things that are lacking in this legislation in further contributions on this part. For this I want to hear the Minister in the chair Craig Foss on his feet giving us an explanation as to why it is that we cannot put in place the mechanisms that are being put up in a Supplementary Order Paper that would give us independence.What is it that is so frightening about having a level of independence in the decision making around what it is that we report on? This is something that has to be addressed in the course of this debate. We cannot have a Minister who just sits there and refuses to address a question as fundamental as that. We are not asking for the earth. We are asking for a basic tenet of any robust and good environmental reporting system—that is independence from political interference. That is not too much to ask and until we can see that in this legislation we cannot support it.