Nash Stuart: Environmental Reporting Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Environmental Reporting Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 June 2015. Volume:707;Page:4875. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):This sort of stuff is pretty important. Mr Bishop always has a go at me whenever I say this but this whole thing plays into our global brand of “clean green” and “100% Pure New Zealand” and we need to get this right. The reason this is so important is that it is our unique selling point. It is what we take to the world. It is what allows us to get a premium for a lot of our products. That is why we have to be seen by the world into which we go forth to be getting this right. If it is seen as dictating or prescribing in a way that is not utilising the expertise we have outside of Government agencies then it will just not be taken seriously. That is the real concern I have around this. It should not be hard to get this right.There are a couple of points I would like to pick up on that some of the other speakers mentioned. One of the Government speakers said he felt that the spirit of the Act means that the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment can go out there and utilise outside expertise. But the bottom line is that if the Act does not state that then there is absolutely no mandate to go and do that. So instead of saying “Yes well this is all very well; they can do that because this is what we think the Act allows them to do.”—unless it is stated then it will not be done.I pick up a point that Mr O’Rourke made and that is about consultation. There are a number of cases and there is one I am dealing with in my electorate at the moment where the need to consult is seen as a box-ticking exercise. What happens is there are a whole lot of requirements that have to be achieved before anything can happen and they say “OK we must consult.” and so on and so forth. They go out they set up a meeting you get a few stakeholders come in and they tick that box and say “That is our consultation. Let’s move on to the next thing.” I do not mean to cast aspersions towards the Government Statistician or the Secretary for the Environment and I am not in any way suggesting that they will be devious or they will be negligent in the way they do this. All I am saying is that the guidelines in my view do not provide a strong enough incentive or a robust enough mandate to use the sort of expertise we have out in our community.Let us face facts: there are a whole lot of very very well-educated and highly engaged people who are doing some superb work on our environment and have a whole lot to offer. They may be included in this process. They may be but there is no requirement to include them and I suppose that is where I get a little bit concerned. If I look at clause 13 it says “In producing and publishing an environmental report the Secretary and the Government Statistician must utilise the expertise of the Ministry and Statistics New Zealand.” It would have been quite easy to say “and key stakeholders” even if key stakeholders were listed in an appendix to the Act. Then it could have been done in a way that brought into the Act itself a whole lot of people who are as passionate about this as we are.The other thing as well is clause 13(3). I just do not think that this is fantastic drafting. It says: “In deciding under subsection (2) what statistics will be used to measure topics the Government Statistician must …”—so there is a legislative requirement—“follow what he or she believes”—that is a subjective term—“to be best practice principles … and … be satisfied”—which is again subjective—“that the statistics accurately represent the topic they purport to measure.” So you have got some subjective measures with objective requirements there. Again I think that that just leaves things open to interpretation and it is very hard to argue from a legislative perspective that someone has got this right or wrong. If it had been more prescriptive then in fact it would be a lot harder to argue that either the secretary or the Government Statistician had done a role that was outside their mandate.Again clause 15 “Reports to be fair and accurate”: “The Secretary and the Government Statistician must in so far as it is reasonably practicable ensure that all environmental reports published give a fair and accurate representation …”. What happens when we have the term “as it is reasonably practicable” is that again it is just very open to interpretation. So what we may get is the Government Statistician and the Secretary for the Environment saying “This is as much as we can do within the time frame we have got.” and you are going to get others who are as engaged in this if not more so saying “No you haven’t undertaken what we believe is a reasonably practicable process in arriving at your end result.” Again: “reports published give a fair and accurate representation”. I mean again who is going to be the chief arbiter of what is fair and what is accurate especially in an area again like I say where there are a whole lot of people doing academic research and real-life research? I just think there could have been—[Bell rung]—an ability to provide a lot more information on this. Mr Chair I was waiting for someone else to—