Sage Eugenie: Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 22 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5215. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to take a call on the Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill. It is interesting that the previous speaker Paul Foster-Bell said this bill is a political act. Well actually I thought we were involved in politics in this place.The Green Party is very pleased to support the bill because it was the absence of a purpose of protecting the environment that was controversial at the time the principal Act was passed and this bill in Meka Whaitiri’s name seeks to rectify that. Certainly the establishment of the Environmental Protection Authority was supposed to be a milestone for environmental management in New Zealand. At the time back in June 2010 the Minister called it a strong independent regulatory agency to ensure the protection of the environment at a national level. It has got a very broad role and quite wide functions that regulate the use of hazardous substances and new organisms. It administers the New Zealand emissions trading scheme it manages the effects of extractive activities in the exclusive economic zone and it makes decisions on nationally significant proposals that are called in under the Resource Management Act.So it is quite a small agency but it has got a very wide-ranging statutory mandate. And it is a really challenging role for the Environmental Protection Authority because it cannot readily anticipate the scale of the work because that is largely driven by the applications that come to it. This agency has got about 180 employees. It gets about $21 million annually from the Crown and then gets another about $11 million from the recovery costs when it charges applicants for considering and deciding on applications.It was interesting in doing some research around this bill that there was a directive from Cabinet that the Ministry for the Environment review the Environmental Protection Authority’s performance. That review focused on an evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of the authority including its governance and a review of the fiscal sustainability of the authority and an evaluation of its cost efficiency. There was nothing in that review which was done in 2014 about how and whether the authority was actually contributing to an improvement in environmental management in New Zealand or to an improvement in the state of our environment and that highlights precisely the defect that this bill is intended to remedy by putting the protection maintenance and enhancement of New Zealand’s environment at the heart of the principal Act as part of the purpose of the authority.The 2014 review focused on the quite mechanistic objective that the Environmental Protection Authority currently has which is—in section 12 of the principal Act—to contribute “to the efficient effective and transparent management of New Zealand’s environment and natural and physical resources; and [to enable] New Zealand to meet its international obligations.” So it is quite troubling that we do not have a purpose of protecting and enhancing and maintaining the environment. That is why the Green Party is supporting this bill because it recognises that that is crucial and that protecting the environment is at the heart of a healthy society and a healthy economy.Mr Foster-Bell’s comments about the work of the Environmental Protection Authority and some of its decisions and his sense of disappointment were quite troubling because in this review document it made the comment that the Environmental Protection Authority “risks becoming a bureaucratic process-driven regulator which is precautionary in delivery of its regulation because it isn’t accessing the best expertise ensuring the excellence in its operational processes nor does it have the right structural arrangement in its legislation.” That is troubling because it suggests that the Government—in the light of the Environmental Protection Authority’s decision around the Chatham Rock Phosphate application around the decision for seabed mining off the Taranaki coast and around the board of inquiry’s decision on the nutrient limits in the Tukituki board of inquiry decision—may potentially be looking to amend the legislation to restrict the Environmental Protection Authority to prevent it being an obstacle to the Government’s “extractivism” agenda: drill it mine it frack it irrigate it.So the fact that the Environmental Protection Authority has been implementing a precautionary approach on applications like that of Trans-Tasman Resources is because the exclusive economic zone legislation includes that. That is why this bill is important—because it is embedding a commitment to environmental protection at the heart of the principal Act—and the Green Party is pleased to support it.