Abel Steve; Simmonds PennySTEVE ABEL (Green): Thank you Madam Chair however I would say yes I absolutely hear you on that and I have got new questions. The essential question on the excellent amendment from my colleague Rachel Brooking and a very similar amendment from my colleague Kahurangi Carter which says activities relating to waste" adding in those words to make sure it's not just going to be used for anything has not actually been addressed by the Minister. The Minister hasn't responded to whether that very sensible amendment is going to be supported.The other question I've got is—the Minister speaks a lot about the waiving of criteria for the waste levy. Now that is a bit of an alarm bell for us because it's right that it should be waived in exceptional circumstances but the criteria on which it will be waived needs to be set out very clearly because I think there is a risk that a large industrial waste producer would be getting favours and that the levy could be waived in the wrong instance.The other point I want to raise with the Minister is about the broadness of your comment on the whole of the waste generation process. The Minister talked about how all the way down the line of some sort of activity there is generation of waste. My concern about that is the implication is that if you were demolishing an asbestos-laden building and some industry did it in a bad way and left the nuisance of remnant asbestos on that site that the cost of cleaning that up—and I'm talking about a contemporary activity not an historic one—could then be covered by the waste levy rather than the assurance imposed in the consent process on that business to make sure they didn't create the nuisance in the first place and that they had imposed on them a requirement to clean it up if they did make that error. I think the Minister's explanation implies that the waste levy could be used to clean up the mess created by industries all the way down the line including at the dumping stage.I have another amendment to propose which is tabled. It's in clause 9(1). The concern is that the levy could be used for example under the current wording for the purpose of developing operating or maintaining a waste incineration facility or a waste-to-energy incineration plant. Under the current wording Minister it is not clear that that sort of an application could not be funded through the waste levy so we propose simply to put in an exclusion clause in clause 9(1) so that no levy money may be used for the purpose of developing operating or maintaining a waste incineration plant—that could in fact be brought into a waste incineration plant including waste-to-energy. That is something that the New Zealand public and certainly the people of Waimate who are currently trying to oppose a waste-to-energy plant down there an incinerator would not like to see their waste levy going towards. Waste incineration works against waste minimisation. Because waste incinerators are hungry beasts that want to be fed by waste they actually function to disincentivise waste minimisation. It's a very good reason why waste incineration should be an activity that is not permitted to be funded through any sort of waste minimisation levy. Thank you.Hon PENNY SIMMONDS (Minister for the Environment): Can I just assure the member again that it is not the intention for the waste levy to be used to usurp any conditions or requirements that might be put in place by other legislation such as the Resource Management Act. The member seems to be implying that that might happen and can I assure him of that.Can I just say that the broadening of the scope of what the levy can be used for is very much a pragmatic solution to be able to achieve positive environmental benefits for all of us and if we try and limit that too much then we may lose the opportunity to fund some very important projects and so it concerns me that the member might want to limit it to things like waste incineration and waste-to-energy plants—over time technology may change how these things are done. In fact you may be wanting to constrain new and better technology that may be useful for environmental outcomes in the future. So I think that the constant refrain that is coming from the Opposition about wanting to narrow this down is taking a much too current focus on the innovative things that could be funded to enhance the environment and I would just say that we need to be much more forward-looking and enabling in this amendment."