Smith Nick: Environmental Protection Authority Bill — In Committee 
Smith Nick: Environmental Protection Authority Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:672;Page:18448] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 I will make a brief contribution on some of the points that have been made in the debate on the Environmental Protection Authority Bill. I will go through them. The last speaker Louise Wall— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Louisa. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: —Louisa—claimed that this bill has a veto power for the Minister. I simply ask her to say which clause. There is no veto. In fact it is very interesting—the only power that existed for a Minister to veto a decision under the Resource Management Act was used by Chris Carter when he vetoed the decision on the Whangamata marina. A National Government repealed that provision because on our side of the House we wanted environmental processes with integrity. In fact there is no power in this bill for any ministerial veto over decisions. I make a further point which is that Ms Wall claimed there were provisions in the bill to cut out the right of communities for iwi and hapu to have a say on a decision. Again I challenge her to say which clause. No such clause exists in this part or this bill. I simply say this Parliament deserves better than those sorts of nonsense contributions that have no reflection of the bill before the House. 
I acknowledge the enormous contribution the Maori Party has made to the bill. In the early stages Pita Sharples and the Maori Party made very strong submissions that they wanted these powers to be considered by an autonomous agency. That is exactly what we have done. An alternative point of view was put forward by officials. National closely working with the Maori Party agreed and that is what is provided for. Rahui Katene has tabled a Supplementary Order Paper on this bill that provides for a Treaty clause. The Government will support that provision. It is a complex issue. Let me explain why to the Committee. The principal aspect of the Environmental Protection Authority is picking up administrator functions in the Resource Management Act the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act the Ozone Layer Protection Act and the Climate Change Response Act. We do not want to provide legal confusion on a whole lot of sets of decision making. Rahui Katene with her amendment—in my view very wisely—has not changed the respective Treaty provisions in each of those Acts but has made plain that the Environmental Protection Authority has those responsibilities. In my view that is quite sound. 
Charles Chauvel raised a very proper point in his contribution which was that the Environmental Protection Authority should have a role in managing regulatory functions in the exclusive economic zone. I do not think there is a member in this Committee who sat back and looked at the disaster that unfolded in the Gulf of Mexico who did not say that that needed to be addressed. We need to make sure that we have world best practice in New Zealand for dealing with those sorts of risks. Let me say exactly what the Government has done. We had done substantive work in relation to providing a regulatory environment for the exclusive economic zone when that disaster occurred. The Minister of Energy and Resources and I said we should hang on a moment; the work done on that issue was done before that disaster. We needed to kick the tyres to make damn sure we were getting the regulatory provisions right for it so we sought an independent report. That independent report was provided to the Government late last year and officials have been working on a substantive bill. Of course this bill was introduced before that work was done. It is our view that we need to do that very robustly. It is my intention as Minister for the Environment to introduce a bill into the House this year that will provide for the proper role for the Environmental Protection Authority in regulating environmental effects in the exclusive economic zone. I look forward to the support of the House for what is an incredibly important piece of work given that—we note—our ocean area is 16 times the size of our land area. This Government’s view is that we want to be able to utilise the resources in that space but equally we want to do so in a responsible way. 
The last point I wish to make is about some of the views in relation to the functions. The Green Party and a number of others have cried foul and asked why we do not have a set of high-level broad environment principles that apply to the Environmental Protection Authority. I will explain to the Committee exactly why that would be an unnecessary and bad thing to do. We have under the Resource Management Act very long-debated principles of sustainable management. Charles Chauvel will know there have been long debates in the courts about defining what those principles are for the 50000 resource consents per year that come before resource consent decisions. Equally so there is a different provision under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. There is another provision in respect of the Climate Change Response Act. There is a further provision under the Ozone Layer Protection Act. If we started putting in the sorts of provision that the Greens or others propose are decision makers making decisions about ozone protection resource management climate change or any of those issues to apply the principles in the base Act this Parliament has agreed to or are they to apply the principles in the Environmental Protection Authority legislation? That would create a legal nonsense. That would not work so I simply ask the Green Party and Labour to reflect on their rhetoric and to think in a thoughtful way about how we can provide the Environmental Protection Authority with clear instructions for how it administers those very important Acts.