O'Connor Greg; Parker DavidPart 2 Amendment to Waste Minimisation (Calculation and Payment of Waste Disposal Levy) Regulations 2009 CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Members we come now to Part 2. This is debate on clauses 13 and 14 Amendment to Waste Minimisation (Calculation and Payment of Waste Disposal Levy) Regulations 2009" and Schedule 2. The question is that Part 2 stand part.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): I want to explain to the Minister because I suspect she doesn't know the history how we've got to where we have in respect of levies on solid waste. The waste minimisation legislation was brought into being as a consequence of initiative by the Greens' Nandor Tanczos and the Helen Clark - led Labour Government. The Government took over his member's bill and the Waste Minimisation Act was passed. At the time the levy was set at $10 per tonne of waste going into municipal class 1 landfills and none of the others. There was a change of Government and the subsequent John Key - led Government did nothing to extend the scope of it to other landfills or to increase the levy beyond $10. The Jacinda Ardern -led Government came in. Eugenie Sage was the Minister—a good Minister—and Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) had passed a resolution saying they lacked the money to build the infrastructure needed to reduce waste going to landfill and New Zealand has amongst the highest per capita levels of waste going to landfill in the world. It was a shameful position that New Zealand were in. So Eugenie Sage came to me as the then Minister for the Environment—I was the Minister she was the Associate Minister—and said that we should do something about it. I took it to Winston Peters and Winston Peters said "Let's do this properly. Let's not just tamper with this; let's do it properly." Therefore as a consequence the breadth of landfills covered was increased as set out on the back page of the bill—Schedule 2 which is being updated here—so that construction waste landfills and other solid landfills pay a lower rate but actually still higher than the $10 that was applying to municipal waste at the time and on the back of the LGNZ resolution from local government we thought "We can carry this and we can maintain a social and political consensus that this needs to be done." So we then proposed increases that have effectively increased this levy already by about 600 percent. Who can ever achieve that? You'd think "How was that achieved—how was that achieved?" Well Minister this was achieved by political and social consensus. How was that achieved? Scott Macindoe knows how this was achieved.Tom Rutherford: Who? Who?Hon DAVID PARKER: Scott Simpson sorry—Scott Simpson. Sorry Scott. I went to the Hon Scott Simpson and I said "Let's not politicise this and we can do this and meet the need and at least one area of environmental policy will be reasonably well funded to clean up the mess that we as humans have inflicted on our corner of this planet." It's worse than just about any other corner of the planet in terms of volume. Our dumps have managed a lot better than a lot of other countries but there's still a lot in them. So I went to Scott. I then played all the other angles. You know one of the reasons why National doesn't play up on the waste management space is that the Prime Minister's brother is very senior in the waste management industry—and he's a good man. He's a good man. When there was more money coming into the Waste Minimisation Fund one of the things we funded was a million-dollar machine that's in Auckland in the private sector and in part funded by Government money to chop up computer screens and old TVs. It's an incredible thing. It chops the glass and the plastic up into small parts. It has all these optical sorters and uses air to flick off these little pieces that are about a couple of centimetres out. It sorts them into all of the different components—a fantastic thing. Those things used to go to landfill. They are now through the Waste Minimisation Fund sorted and those bulk remainder materials are re-exported to the rest of the world and they're reused rather than ending up in New Zealand landfill—smart policy.The Prime Minister's brother—or it might be his brother-in-law—was there and I went to him and I said "Look we're doing this. We've got Local Government New Zealand on our side. We've got a political consensus and that's always a hard thing to achieve in respect of significant fee increases even though local government is calling out for them. Can you just have a whisper in his ear and make sure he doesn't ruin this please?"CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Mr Parker just families—I'm aware you're being positive but let's just stick to the—Hon DAVID PARKER: No I'm not improperly bringing in a family. This is a positive story. This is how soft politics works in New Zealand and this is how you achieve real enduring change. I'm grateful to him and I'm grateful to all of the other parties—New Zealand First the ACT Party the Green Party—who have cooperated in this so that we've achieved this.Now who does the money come from? It comes out of the pockets of the businesses and the people who send stuff to the dump. That's who's paying for this and so you've got to be very careful to maintain this consensus rather than hiving off the money for things that it wasn't originally meant for. So my problem with this change to the schedule is—I want the Minister to stand up and justify how money coming out of Wellington City or any other city can be used for cleaning up mines on the West Coast or river pollution which is now within the route that could have been caused by—and I see the ACT member the Associate Minister for the Environment here. It could be utilised for those purposes those other funding lines having been scrapped. That puts at risk this social consensus that we've managed to achieve to actually get the revenue for the infrastructure in this infrastructure-short country where local government can't pay for their share of the infrastructure. This puts at risk that consensus that's led to this enormously successful scheme doing what it needs to do to minimise waste.So Minister I actually don't oppose these increases. What I oppose is that you're putting at risk the consensus that lies behind this. For some local governments it's been hard for them too. So how Minister do you justify these increases in fees going for management of what was not previously within the ambit of the legislation? Essentially before this it was solid waste and sure we're up for legacy landfills and we're up for the policy work for product stewardship schemes as I explained in an earlier part of this debate. But why would you put at risk that consensus which has been so carefully arranged in the manner which I have described?"