Woods Megan: Environmental Reporting Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Environmental Reporting Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 23 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4675. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram):It is my pleasure to take another call on Part 2 of this bill and I want to speak specifically on clause 16. I want to acknowledge some of the changes that were made to this clause at the Local Government and Environment Committee. This is the clause that deals with the disclosure of information and that was subject to a great deal of submissions. The legislation that we have before us reflects some of those submissions so they are very much in the bill that is in front of us. I want to talk about some of the changes that were made and about Supplementary Order Paper 87 in the name of Eugenie Sage that suggests a further amendment to this clause which Labour will be supporting.Clause 16 is the clause in this piece of legislation that gives the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician the power to withhold information or analysis that will be or has been used in an environmental report to be published. The stated intention of this clause is on the surface very good. The stated intention of the clause is to try to put into place some of the barriers to political interference that we have been advocating for in other parts of this legislation and that those are to be kept and withheld so that there cannot be that level of ministerial interference.We had a very good submission from Jan Wright the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment on clause 16. She agreed that the stated intention of the clause was indeed admirable and something that we should support but that clause 16 could actually be used to go far beyond protecting against Government interference.First the clause as it was drafted is ambiguous and that is why the legislation that we see before us today has been changed and the select committee did recommend changes in the bill from the select committee back here to the House. We as a committee recommended that clause 16 be amended to clarify that the Government Statistician could withhold access only to untested data prepared for the purposes of this Act. So it did not mean that when information was going to be brought in from other sources—held by regional councils or other bodies but was going to be used under this Act—there could be barriers to it being used in other places.I want to acknowledge the work of the select committee in making this change because although we do not support this bill in its current form unless the Government has had a change of heart and is going to support the amendments to clause 18 I do think there has been an improvement to this piece of legislation by tidying up clause 16. It is making sure that we are not putting ring-fences around information needlessly and end up inadvertently—I believe is the case—ring-fencing off information that could be profitably used for other purposes. Indeed it is incredibly important for us to be able to use it because we are trying to create some kind of barrier to ministerial interference.As we have suggested in previous contributions we think that if that is the intention of the Government then there are indeed better ways in order for this legislation to be free from ministerial interference and we have talked about those in relation to another clause in Part 2 of this legislation in clause 18. We are supporting the amendments that are proposed there.There were some changes made to clause 16 at the select committee as I have talked about but we actually do support Eugenie Sage’s Supplementary Order Paper on this where she wants to insert the word “exclusively”. This was something that we discussed at select committee. In fact it was something that I suggested because I think that using the word “exclusively” actually removes any kind of ambiguity around the fact that we need to section this off for information that is prepared only for the purposes of this Act and that we do not inadvertently catch important data that the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment have decided can be used for the purposes of reporting on the state of the New Zealand environment and brought in. We do not want to catch that.I do not believe that this is the purpose of this Act and I do not think that it was ever the purpose of the legislation to do that. I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s comments on that and to see whether he will consider a very sensible change to clause 16 that will actually ensure that we do not inadvertently tie up information that does not need to be. I think that is something we heard very strongly in submissions and it is a sensible suggestion.I want to also speak briefly in support of my colleague Su’a William Sio’s Supplementary Order Paper which he has put before the Committee for this reading. It asks that we not only consider New Zealand when we are considering the state of the New Zealand environment but that we actually consider the flow-on effect to our region and that we think about environmental actions in the context of our place in the world our place as a leader in the Pacific and the impacts that our environmental actions and our actions around climate change in particular are going to make on our Pacific neighbours.I think this is a fantastic Supplementary Order Paper and it is certainly one that Labour will be supporting. It is something that I think would strengthen this piece of legislation immensely. It would not only be about New Zealand if we were to pass clause 18 and have it free from ministerial interference—about New Zealand finally joining the rest of the OECD and having independent environmental reporting on our environment free from political interference—but it would also place New Zealand in its proper global context and that is in the Pacific.So this is an amendment that I would like this Committee to consider and I would like to hear the Minister’s views on that in the call that I am sure he is about to make when he addresses clause 16 and the very sensible suggestions in the changes to that clause. This Supplementary Order Paper is about us taking our proper role in the Pacific and having our reports reflecting the leadership role that we should be taking environmentally and in terms of climate change in the Pacific. Thank you.Hon Ruth Dyson: Mr Chairman.