Sage EugenieHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. Turning to the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) Minister. Thank you for the explanation you gave before but when the Health Committee considered the whole issue of the performance standards we had a letter from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment who raised some quite significant concerns about the risk of having Taumata Arowai being established as a regulator when it is the Minister for the Environment under the Resource Management Act and regional councils which have those major regulation functions. So the parliamentary commissioner was particularly concerned about the wording around waste water and stormwater in Subpart 7 of the bill especially the references to environmental performance measures in clauses 136 and 140 because that created the impression of Taumata Arowai being a regulator. So in response to those concerns the select committee recommended some changes including the use of the words infrastructure performance measures" and so the focus of Taumata Arowai would be on the performance of the waste-water stormwater and drinking-water infrastructure. No one wants sewerage discharges that don't comply with resource consent conditions that lead to polluted waterways. No one wants those sorts of spills. But the parliamentary commissioner having done a very thorough report on the state of the environment reporting in New Zealand and environmental research in New Zealand was sufficiently concerned to raise these issues with the select committee. But I noticed in the Supplementary Order Paper that it goes back to referring to "environmental performance standards" and I just ask the Minister to expand on how to avoid the risk of our environmental regulation system becoming quite confused if we've got Taumata Arowai setting these standards as well as regional councils setting the standards. I think the Minister referred to some standards being included in resource consents. So my concern there is that there is the potential that if two agencies—regional councils and Taumata Arowai—had this responsibility it potentially could fall between the cracks or it results in a regulatory system that is not integrated. The Minister will be well aware that the Environment Committee's had a number of hearings on the inquiry on the Natural and Built Environments Bill and the proposal for a national planning framework where you have consistent standards set now through the national policy statements and national environmental standards under the Resource Management Act (RMA) going on to be set under a new national planning framework. But how will Taumata Arowai fit with the existing regime under the RMA and with the—I may be looking a bit too far into the future so I'll stick with: how will Taumata Arowai's responsibilities in relation to environmental performance of waste water in particular fit with regional councils responsibilities under the RMA? And there were submissions from some regional councils expressing some concern about having to provide information—because of the cost of that. So it's just that the SOP goes quite a lot further than what the select committee did and changes the language. The question also is: what engagement has there been with the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment who raised these significant issues and brought them to the attention of the select committee? Kia ora."