Sage Eugenie: Environmental Reporting Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Environmental Reporting Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 23 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4683. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green):I want to deal with some of the issues that the Minister for the Environment raised around clause 18. When you look at the Australian state of the environment legislation of course it has got a very different model. It protects the independence of the reporting because there is an independent panel of experts who do the reporting. [Interruption] I have just been looking at the legislation Minister Nick Smith so I am surprised you are shaking your head. Those people might be appointed by the Minister but they are independent so here in this system we are having Government agencies do the reporting. Therefore in our view there needs to be independence in the way the topics are set which is why Supplementary Order Paper 87 provides for those topics to be set by the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment.Mr Paul Foster-Bell raised the issue of expenditure. We will shortly be doing—well we are in the select committee—the review of estimates. That whole process is where we review expenditure not trying to do it in a back-door way through the state of the environment reports.There was major concern from a number of submitters about the lack of public confidence and trust in state of the environment reports if Ministers were setting topics so this Supplementary Order Paper responds to the concerns of submitters. I think Minister given your support for collaborative processes for the Land and Water Forum and given the comments made by the Hon Ruth Dyson this Parliament could support this bill if a more collaborative process was shown and if you took on board the amendments that are being suggested which are not changing the overall thrust of the bill and are not undermining the need for state of the environment reporting but are intended to make sure that it is much more robust and that the public have trust and confidence in it.Why we need that is because of previous examples of political interference both with the state of the environment report itself in 2007 and examples of the Minister intervening to ensure that things like submissions on the Ruataniwha irrigation project by the Department of Conservation did not proceed. We have at the moment huge destruction of wetlands in Northland from swamp kauri mining. The Minister for Primary Industries thinks that is fine. It may well be that the Minister for the Environment does not want wetland loss and destruction reported on so that is not a topic that is reported on. So if this Supplementary Order Paper were to go ahead it would make sure there is more independence.The Minister has referred to the Statistics Act. That Act was passed in 1975. We had a different public sector then. It was much more independent and robust and much less prone to influence by the Minister or Ministers. In that legislation Statistics New Zealand sets the topics; the Minister simply approves the surveys. He or she does not actually decide the topics that are to be reported on. In dealing with clause 18 going on to new clause 19 this is a new clause in the Supplementary Order Paper again to strengthen the bill by having the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment actually review and report on the Act’s operation not just provide a commentary on the state of the environment reports.Another amendment that the Green Party is seeking is in an amendment on the Table of the House. It follows on and complements I think the very useful amendment that Su‘a William Sio is proposing and which the Green Party will be supporting in terms of looking at the impact on the Pacific region’s climate ecosystems and people. The Green Party also wants greater work done through the state of the environment reporting on greenhouse gas emissions. This amendment requires the Environmental Protection Authority to produce and publish a report at least 6 months after the Act comes into force that lists the hundred largest emitters of greenhouse gas. The Environmental Protection Authority already collects this information on emitters but it does not release it publicly and we think it would help New Zealand do its fair share in reducing emissions and helping to stabilise the climate preventing runaway climate change if we knew the source of emissions for our major emitters and what organisations are responsible for those. It would help inform the development of Government policy and it would help inform the New Zealand public.The Minister has pointed to Australia. Well there is a similar requirement to the one in this amendment in the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act in Australia. We are going to Paris later this year yet this Government is failing to actually have a decent target for reducing emissions. If we have reporting in this bill on the major emitters we will have a better understanding of the source of those emissions.I am just moving now to some of the other changes that Supplementary Order Paper 87 provides. One of them is to ensure that where there are any gaps or limitations in the data that is the subject of reports that is identified in both the synthesis and the domain reports so that the public can understand those gaps and so that we have a continuous feedback loop that leads to improvement in future reports because where gaps are identified then agencies can take it upon themselves to fill those gaps in terms of future monitoring and reporting.Again that responds to some of the concerns of submitters about the very narrow range of matters that are to be reported on in clause 18 and the thresholds there which are quite high because if a pressure topic or impact topic is to be reported on it has got to affect significant areas or significant resources or numbers of people. There may well be new pests in the marine sphere or on land that are affecting only a small number of species at the moment and having limited impact but it may be of value in the reporting to ensure that their impacts are described so that there can be a prompt response. If you have an assurance that gaps in the reporting are to be addressed then those sorts of issues can be dealt with.At the moment we continue to oppose this bill. We would encourage the Minister to respond to the Supplementary Order Paper and to recognise that it is much better to have legislation that has the support of the whole Parliament and to recognise that that can be achieved by responding in a positive manner to the constructive amendments that both the Labour Party and the Green Party have put forward in a genuine attempt to improve the bill and to make sure that it is robust that it provides for independent state of the environment reporting and that there are improvements to reports year on year because gaps are noted and identified.