Sio William: Environmental Reporting Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSio William: Environmental Reporting Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 23 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:7047. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Su’a WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Māngere): I grew up in Ōtara and went to school with many Māori peers who could trace their heritage back to either Ngāpuhi or Tainui. I learnt from them when they introduced themselves at the Māori third and fourth form class that I took about their references to the maunga and their references to the awa—to the mountain and to the river—which emphasises for the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand how important the environment is.In later years as I gained a better appreciation of my own cultures—Samoan in particular—I learnt how we as Samoans viewed the sky the lands the trees and the fishes as all having spirits and as all having human characteristics of their own.The older generations valued the environment so much that they treated each one of those characteristics of the environment as if it were a member of their family.I raise those two points because that is the point of view that I come to this debate from.I am sure that I am not alone in that with other members of this House who will share a similar value when it comes to our environment.I also raise that at the outset because when this bill was introduced I think our initial stance was that we would support it given the fact that our rivers today have this weed growing through them—in fact we can no longer swim in some of our lakes. Once upon a time as a young man in Ōtara I used to fish in some of our lakes. We cannot do that any more and that is because by and large we as a collective group of people have contributed to the degradation of our environment. We have polluted it through our economic activities or have done something else that has harmed the environment.So when the Government said that it would introduce this bill and that the bill would allow a group of people to report to this House about the state of our environment Labour’s view in the first instance was that we would take up this opportunity because at least then we would have the facts and the data that would show us what we had done wrong with regard to the environment and how we could better improve our situation going forward. After all we as a country pride ourselves on having this “clean green” image. We have used that image to sell our wares throughout the entire world. In fact we have branded ourselves with that brand and there is a high expectation that we maintain that brand. We saw the opportunity in this bill that if this reporting continued over time and we improved the way that we conducted ourselves and the activities that impacted on the environment then by and large we would end up keeping the environment safe by ensuring that the state of our environment would be left in a better situation for the next generation.You see from an indigenous point of view the land and the environment and the skies the air and the trees do not belong to us; they are part of who we are. They contribute to our survival and therefore we have got to look after the environment. We saw the opportunity that if the bill was worded right and the information was independent we would be on the same pathway collectively as a nation irrespective of who was in Government.We would get the correct information and whoever was in power would do the right thing by acting on it and ensuring that one we continued to protect the environment for the next generation and two we would maintain and even enhance our brand of “clean green” Aotearoa New Zealand.But alas when the bill went to the Local Government and Environment Committee and we began to hear the submissions from the public—and I would say from some very significant experts in the field of the environment—they said that to get it right the information must be independent and it must be peer reviewed by an independent organisation or individuals. That is not what is going to happen here. What is going to happen here is that this Government wants to be able to control the information it releases it wants to control the information that the public looks at and it wants to control whatever environmental reporting is made available. In fact it does not want the public to get the full and complete truth when it comes to the state of our environment and that is the sad thing about it. As a matter of principle we must vote against this bill because it does nothing of what this bill was written up for and was set out to do.In fact if we look at the general policy statement it says: “The purpose of this Bill is to create a national-level environmental reporting system to ensure that reporting on our environment occurs on a regular basis and can be trusted by the public as independent fair and accurate.” Those are the key words—that this information can be trusted by the public as being independent fair and accurate. The submissions we heard from doctors and professors—experts I call them—in the field of the environment said that as far as they are concerned if the Government continues to try to control information as it has set out in this bill to do that information will not achieve accuracy or independence or be fair.Therefore it is just a bloody waste of time because the Government has no such intention.What that signals to me and signals to other people who care about the environment and care about the next generation and the kind of environment that we leave for them is that that group there does not care. Government members do not care one iota because it is their belief that it will be somebody else’s responsibility.They do not care what happens to this environment and I will give you another example that shows that they do not care about the environment. I introduced as part of the process Supplementary Order Paper 92 asking to include in this reporting the impacts of our social and economic activities on the state of the environment in the Pacific because there is a link.There is a link between our economic activities and what is occurring in terms of climate change in the ecosystem of the people of the Pacific. Those members did not support it. This week we had a person from Kiribati who was deported and this Government refused to acknowledge the fact that he is being deported to a land that is literally sinking as a result of climate change and the impact of economic activities not just from us but also from other big nations.Further proof that those members do not care is that in the Pacific Islands Forum it was reported to me by leaders of the Pacific that both Australia and the representatives of this Government treated climate change as if it was joke. That tells me that those members’ rhetoric is one thing but their actions are simply totally different.Despite what their flowery words are about this piece of legislation it will do nothing—it will do nothing—to improve or protect the environment because the information is going to be controlled. Therefore it will not achieve what the bill was set out to do which was to provide independent fair and accurate information on the state of our environment.