Smith Nick: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
Smith Nick: Waste Minimisation Bill — In Committee 
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Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 Firstly I commend the work that Nicky Wagner has been doing in ensuring that the Waste Minimisation Bill is workable legislation. I want to reflect on Part 1 in the initial bill. If we look through the bill we can see that every single clause in the original Part 1 has been deleted and we have effectively ended up with a completely new bill. The reason for that was that the original bill was a bureaucratic monster. One of the problems with the left is that every time they come to an environmental issue in their view more and more red tape and regulation are automatically the answer. The original bill proposed that every single small business club and council—every single one of New Zealand’s 287000 businesses—would have to have a waste management plan and that waste management plan would have to be approved by the local council. If members think the Resource Management Act is bad at dealing with about a one-hundredth of the number of approvals then they would know that that would have been just awful. We have argued consistently that although there is a legitimate issue around waste the original bill by the Greens was a disaster zone and we rightly dubbed it the “Waste Increase Bill” for the amount of paperwork that it would have driven. 
The second stage post select committee—where Nicky Wagner has been doing a great job—is about recognising that a whole lot of very good recycling work is already going on out there in the community and the last thing this Parliament needs to do is to pass a statute that penalises those people who have been doing the right thing. Yesterday on the steps of Parliament we saw a protest from those who recycle metals. This is an industry with no Government regulation. It is made up of good old Kiwi entrepreneurs who have gone out and created a recycling industry around metals. This bill would have made it harder for them. I say good on Nicky Wagner for standing up for the New Zealand entrepreneurs and getting bureaucracy off their backs when they are doing the right environmental thing. 
Moana Mackey 
: So it’s all the National Party’s idea. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The chair of the committee says this is all the National Party’s idea. Well hang on a moment. Moana Mackey chaired the select committee which passed the bill as it was. If she did her job properly why were the metal recyclers protesting on the steps of Parliament? 
Moana Mackey 
: You’re on the select committee. Why didn’t you do your job properly? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Oh is it not strange! Labour members want what I think Mr Peters calls the trinkets of office. They want all the trinkets and gizmos of office but when it actually comes to their legislation they will not accept responsibility. You see it is a bit like the Electoral Finance Act—it is not the Government’s fault; it is Parliament’s fault that the Electoral Finance Act is an awful mess. And now we are getting the same sorts of dodgy excuses from the chair of the select committee. The truth is—and Moana Mackey knows it—that this clause was fixed only as a consequence of the initiative of Nicky Wagner. If it were not for Nicky Wagner—and I think Russel Norman would have the generosity to acknowledge this—we would not have this solution. It has been Nicky Wagner’s initiative that has seen a sensible solution to this issue of the definition of waste. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Mai Chen’s actually. Mai Chen drafted it not Nicky Wagner. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I have to say that it was Nicky Wagner who first took the initiative. But I have to ask where the Minister for the Environment has been. 
John Carter 
: Who? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The Minister for the Environment. He is the one who gets the ministerial house the ministerial car and the ministerial salary for getting environment legislation right. But no the responsibility falls on Nicky Wagner to come to the rescue of Kiwi private enterprises that have been doing the right thing and that risked being penalised by this bill were it not for the sensible amendment.