Burns Brendon: Environmental Protection Authority Bill — In Committee 
Burns Brendon: Environmental Protection Authority Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:672;Page:18451] 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 As I embark on debate on Part 1 of the Environmental Protection Authority Bill I will comment that I think the bill is a failure not just of the Minister for the Environment but of Cabinet. I am sure the Minister wanted to achieve more but when I look through the bill in the form in which it goes through the Committee stage I see five failures: timing the scope of the bill the budget it carries with it the delivery it brings and the promises that were held for it. 
I take the Minister back to a speech he gave 2 years ago this month to the Planning Institute where he said he wanted to have the Environmental Protection Authority operational by 1 July 2010. So the bill is a year late. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I did. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: It is on record that the Minister wanted it up and running in July last year. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: It is. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: It is 2011 now. The Minister said that by 1 July 2010 he wanted the authority to be fully operational and expanded not a ministry of five or six staff seconded across from the Ministry for the Environment. A ministry employing seven staff is not the fully operational Environmental Protection Authority that the Minister wanted by 1 July 2010. 
The second failure is the scope of the bill. As my colleague Charles Chauvel has noted in his amendments it was certainly envisaged that the agency would have a range of functions that are certainly not provided for. The Minister has given us an indication that later in the year he wants to bring in some additional scope for the bill in respect of the exclusive economic zone. In the Minister’s speech 2 years ago he was looking at the issue of ocean management which is not mentioned in the bill the implementation of the Waste Minimisation Act and other environmental priorities. This is the Environmental Protection Authority and those are environmental priorities but they are not mentioned in the bill and therefore are not being given the duty of care we envisaged from the Environmental Protection Authority. 
I note from commentary in the  
Select Committee News 
 of 18 June 2010 that the Minister was saying that 40 staff associated with administration of the emissions trading scheme would be coming across to the authority. I know there are about 90 staff coming across from the Environmental Risk Management Authority. That is 130 staff. Where is the rest of the staff to do the big tasks for the environment? I understand that the staffing level is estimated at 140. There is also the fast-track mechanism. So I cannot see that there is any additional resource. It is simply a carry-over; existing staff are being put into a new agency. Where is the brave new world for the environment that was going to be created from the Environmental Protection Authority as the Minister heralded in the Bluegreens document of 2006? The authority was going to create a brave new world for the environment and it was going to be allied with a ministry for sustainable development which never emerged. It absolutely disappeared in the process. What we have come back to is an Environmental Protection Authority the purpose of which is defined by the bill as “to establish an Environmental Protection Authority and to provide for its functions and operation.” 
Compare and contrast that with the objectives goals and functions of the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States which was a brave model. I have to say it became a tainted model because President George W Bush put people in charge who had come out of organisations like Monsanto and the mining industry who are not exactly going to be environmental warriors. I know we are not going down that track with the appointments that will be made to head this Environmental Protection Authority—well one hopes not. But the objectives of the Environmental Protection Agency in the States were to address clean air and global climate change to have clean and safe water to have land preservation and restoration to have a commitment to healthy communities and ecosystems and to have compliance and environmental stewardship. 
Where are those objectives in the bill? There is no reference to those kinds of objectives. They should be at the heart of the bill because the Environmental Protection Authority is the agency that should be delivering on those objectives. If those objectives are not specified in the bill how on earth can the handful of officials few as they are who are not going to be transferred over who are not going to be tied up continuing the duties of the Environmental Risk Management Authority under another name who are not going to be managing the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act—and who actually might have some capacity to deliver on all those brave environmental objectives set out in the Bluegreens agenda? How are the officials going to deliver on those objectives if they are not spelt out in the legislation the officials are required to operate under? It is a greatly disappointing document to say the least. 
We wanted to see a strong Environmental Protection Authority. It is absolutely essential to have a strong Environmental Protection Authority but it has to be resourced it has to be given the leadership and it has to be given the principles goals and objectives that it will work to. Otherwise the chances are that it will not deliver. It will not deliver for the environment. The track record of the Minister for the Environment on these matters is concerning to us all. I note the recent delivery of the Land and Water Forum report a process I utterly applaud. It absolutely picked up the model that had been developed in Canterbury in respect of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy—led by Environment Canterbury before its demise as a democratic organisation. I absolutely support the Land and Water Forum and the bringing together of all of those parties. But what was the Minister’s prognosis for what will happen from here on in respect of the recommendations made? He said it will take “several years” to implement the recommendations of the Land and Water Forum—several years. What will happen in the interim to the waterways of my province of Canterbury when we have a doubling of the production at the Synlait milk powder plant a plant very close to the township of Dunsandel which has had E. coli in its water supply for the last 18 months? What will happen to the water around the plant Fonterra is going to build out at Darfield—a 2 million litres a day processing plant? What will happen to protect the waterways of my province in the several years of interim? 
The Minister has often used the phrase “the long 9 years of the Labour Government” in terms of its supposed inaction on water. The policy statement on fresh water landed on his desk as he became the Minister; 2½ years on nothing has happened with it other than his referring it kicking it for touch to the Land and Water Forum. Now the Minister is saying it will take several years. So there will be 9 long years perhaps of inaction before the Minister actually gets something into place. I would like to know what the Environmental Protection Authority will do. What tools has it got what staffing resources has it got and what objectives has it got to deliver on environmental outcomes that will improve the water quality of my province and the rest of New Zealand over the next several years while we wait for the Minister to start implementing the national freshwater policy statement and the recommendations of the Land and Water Forum? 
It is enormously disappointing to those of us with a real and genuine commitment to environmental policy to see this bill come through because high hopes were built for it. All that we are actually seeing is a continuation. I think Colin James in an article in various newspapers in January hit the nail on the head when he said that the Minister is committed to environmental policy but the problem is he does not have the upper hand in Cabinet. The economic growth cabal is in charge. It wants fast-track growth it wants to see the roading projects pushed through under urgency it wants to see the new growth in the dairy industry without environmental checks and balances and in the interim the environment will have to pay the price. That is an appalling outcome and consequence. It puts at risk our very basis as a nation because we trade every day in the international market place on the premise that we are clean and green and that we are a nation with an absolute commitment to environmental outcomes. We trade on that reputation daily we trample on that reputation daily and this bill very disappointingly will not provide any halt or any sense of balance to that growth record. 
It is absolutely a disappointment to us that we are not seeing any real commitment of funding any real commitment of policy or any real commitment of objectives that would see some reversal of some of the environmental declines that we have suffered as a nation. We all want to see the outcomes of sustainable growth. We all want to see our farmers able to access water as long as they do so as responsible environmental stewards. We want to see that. This bill could have been the mechanism which began the process of turning back the clock on old-time practices—using the environment simply as a tool for production and not regarding it as our greatest treasure and taonga—and really began a process that said to New Zealand that we will uphold our environmental values. They are truly important to all our futures. 
The people who will suffer the most from this bill not starting to deliver on that are those in the farming community because they are the ones who on the first analysis will be penalised by international markets as they begin to see that our environmental track record has not improved and will not improve for several years. This is the bill we had hoped would see the turn-round of that. It is enormously disappointing to see it come through in a way that simply allows the continuation of pro-growth strategies without the environmental consequences being taken into account. I think Bill English has won the debate within Cabinet. There should have been real resource for this bill and this agency.