Brooking RachelHon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you Mr Speaker. Now of course I'm reminding people that we are in urgency. They've just seen me not that long ago speaking on the first reading and now here we are with the second reading. So I'm going to go through in some more detail about that issue of the nexus and the criteria—I think it's critical that we are all understand exactly what's happening here. Also I want to respond to Dr Hamish Campbell's comments which were something about the previous Government making a mess. Now I would contend and I do contend very strongly that the previous Government was doing excellent work in waste though I would say that I acknowledge. But there was a lot of work on the responsibility for reducing the waste Act to come so that was to have a whole lot of new tools to regulate in this space particularly around product stewardship. It was to have some new tools and more waste-tracking national standards and national licensing and to help with moving and transitioning to a circular economy. Now I am very hopeful that the Minister for the Environment will progress with that legislation because it was very useful.In the lead-up to the different papers involved in the development of that responsibility for reducing waste there was a lot of consultation about the waste levy and waste issues in general.It was already raised to the attention of the Ministry for the Environment officials of course that the waste minimisation levy was too constrained what it could be spent on. So that is why we're agreeing that—yes—it should be extended out to some other issues that are related to waste like old landfills. But it should not go to be the primary fund almost or a total fund for anything that has to do with the environment that should be funded elsewhere in the Budget for example.So this is of course an amendment Act to the Waste Minimisation Act and that has these narrow criteria that Simon Court talked about earlier—that it's got to be related to waste. So there's an amendment here to raise revenue to fund … (iii) activities that reduce environmental harm or increase environmental benefits;". That is the width that we're talking about that is the expansion and that is the phrase causing concern. There are other additions including the promotion and achievement of waste minimisation—that's good. Local authorities are to manage emergency waste and to repair or replace waste management and minimisation infrastructure damaged by an emergency—that also seems fairly sensible. Of course it would be good to know what the industry thought about this if there was a select committee process. Also the ministry is "to undertake its functions and duties and exercise its powers in relation to waste management and minimisation and hazardous substances." There's some discussion in the documents about what that means but in general the extension to hazardous sites—that's not an undue extension either. Then finally "(v) projects that provide for the remediation of contaminated sites;"—again we've been talking about the Fox River.So a lot of the expansions are sensible ones and there has in part been some consultation on those in the past—not explicitly though However this general "activities that reduce environmental harm"—without any reference to waste that just gets rid of the nexus completely.I want to focus a little bit on the supplementary analysis report. It's dated 15 May 2024. There is a bullet point right on the second page that does allude to activities that reduce environmental harm and/or increase environmental benefits. So that—to remind the House—is the wide clause that we have an issue with. It could be amended to refer to waste and we'll be talking about that in the committee stage. So that wide bullet point right at the top of page two is in the executive summary. But then when you go further into the analysis you look at paragraphs 93 to 110 and you see there that there are little underlined sections that there's quite a lot of detail some analysis about these changes. So one of them is supporting remediation of contaminated sites including closed landfills and there's a useful discussion. Another one is supporting emergency waste management activities. Again there's a useful discussion there. Then underlined there's also one supporting more of the ministry's waste and hazardous substances work programme. So those three underlined sections align with the changes that I just referred to in the purpose that seem OK. There might be some little fish-hooks in there that it would be good to have a select committee process about but in general they seem OK.There is no underlined discussion of this very wide "all environmental outcomes"—that is not included in this report apart from in the executive summary and a little bit of scattering. The detailed analysis is not there. I presume there was some policy change that happened during the Cabinet process but I'm worried that it's a very cynical one. That was what my first reading speech was about and my colleagues' as well—that this is just a grab for some cash and it's a totally unwise extension of this hypothecated fund that should be addressing waste issues. Those waste issues do include the many old landfills that we have around our coastlines and near both our electorates—the Minister's and mine. There are old landfills as there are around the country and we know that with climate change we will have more storm events and we know that there will be changes to how our rivers flow and potentially sea-level rise as well. This will have impacts clearly related to waste—there is the nexus that I was talking about.Some other issues with the bill are that these criteria that I've been talking about in the purpose—the ones that I like that relate to the that contaminated land the emergency situations and increased compliance monitoring and enforcement-type work—only apply with the way that the bill is written to the money that central government is spending. That is that half of the pot of money is central government's and so this expansion of criteria only applies to that Government spending. It doesn't extend to the local government spending and that seems inconsistent. Local governments we know are the entities that have the old landfills in their districts and they're trying to deal with that contamination and remediation or capping of it or other various solutions to a problem. So I think it's important that we understand from the Minister why it is that that local government criteria is not expanded and I have Amendment Papers around that.I would go back to this point though. The idea of the bill not doing what we would like it to do which is to extend it to other matters which have a nexus with waste but to go further than that and rely on this fund for propping up various different environmental programmes is very short-sighted. The idea that we can just cut all the money in terms of the environment and cut all the money in terms of what we're doing in conservation is going to lead to long-term costs. We heard the Minister say that there's different issues and I heard climate mitigation mentioned. Well climate mitigation can be done by instruments like the Climate Emergency Response Fund which has been taken away by this Government and we need to reduce our emissions. Purely for economic reasons we need to reduce our emissions. We've signed up to a whole lot of agreements and we will end up having to pay a lot of money if we don't actually reduce emissions. So that's very short-sighted. It is totally head in this sand to not be doing work on the environment. This Budget is good for ferrets and nothing else."