Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Madam Chair thank you very much. It's a pleasure to take a call in this environment section of the debate. I want to acknowledge the contribution of the chair of the Environment Committee Dr Deborah Russell who I think has given a very fulsome overview of the review work that the committee has done.One of the interesting things about our Environment Committee is that it's a bit of a hybrid of what used to be the Local Government and Environment Committee in the previous Parliament. For those of us that were involved in that committee in the last Parliament and I see the Minister in the chair David Parker was one of those the committee has gone from being probably the busiest committee in Parliament to at the present time being the committee with the lightest legislative workload. So that's meant that we've been able to concentrate on a range of things. We're about to conduct a couple of briefings: one into marine plastic in our ocean space and one into kauri dieback—both of which will be useful.The committee chair has gone through the subject areas that we covered in the committee in terms of review: the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) the Ministry for the Environment the New Zealand Walking Access Commission and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. It was a great pleasure to have appearing at his first hearing before the committee the new Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton. Of course he is a previous member of this House. I for one was impressed with his skill his knowledge and his understanding. I think that in his term we're going to see a very good and comprehensive range of subjects addressed. He was kind enough to give us an indication of his work programme over the next year or two. As I said I think that we will as a Parliament benefit from the work that he is going to do in his new role.I want to just turn to a particular part of the report that details the Environmental Protection Authority. There was an unusual turn of events that took place at select committee last week as we were required to report back in time to meet date deadlines for this debate. We had heard from the chief executive and the chair of the Environmental Protection Authority in mid-February. Strangely enough as a result of questions in the House to the Associate Minister for the Environment Eugenie Sage and then also as a result of Official Information Act material that was released to me after I had sought it it became very obvious that the evidence that had been given by the chief executive in particular in relationship to the EPA's chief scientist and the departure of the chief scientist from the EPA was at odds with information released under the Official Information Act and at odds with questions that the Minister had replied to in the House.Now the Minister came to the House today and provided an explanation as to some of that inconsistency but we have as a committee accepted the invitation of the chief executive to return to the select committee this week. In our report at page 220 of these documents under the heading Scientific independence" a very unusual couple of sentences are there. It says "We are unable to report on the issue of scientific independence due to additional information that has been received since the hearing. The committee has accepted the offer of the EPA to reappear before the committee on which the committee will separately report."So what that means is that the chief executive—and I suspect maybe even the chair of the EPA—will appear before select committee this coming week and we will have an opportunity to quiz them on evidence that they gave us in February. That's a very unusual situation. It's an unusual situation because it's actually going to mean that there are two chief executives coming back to select committee this week to account for evidence that they gave at a hearing which now seems to be at odds with facts as revealed subsequently. That's a serious matter. Select committees need to be able to rely on the veracity of evidence given by chief executives. So I for one will be interested to see what the chief executive of the EPA has to say."