Sage Eugenie: Environmental Reporting Bill — In CommitteeText is subject to correctionSage Eugenie: Environmental Reporting Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 17 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4541. Text is subject to correction.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green):I will comment just on Part 1 of the Environmental Reporting Bill. The whole Government objective for this bill as outlined in the departmental disclosure statement was “to have a legislative basis for independent environmental reporting in order to give the public certainty about the scope timing and quality of the information” that the public will receive. It is recognised that there is quite a range of reporting that is done at the moment by regional councils by territorial local authorities and by Crown research institutes such as the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and it is certainly a good idea to have consistent consolidated and comprehensive state of the environment reporting. So we support the original objective of the legislation but it is fatally flawed because as other speakers have noted it does not provide for independent state of the environment reporting. The topics will be set by the Minister.Comments have been made about clause 3 which previously had quite a list of matters one of which actually was to “ensure that producers of environmental reports act independently and produce fair and accurate reports.” Of course that has been amended through the select committee process by the wishes of the majority of the committee. So the purpose statement in clause 3 is now much shorter. In my Supplementary Order Paper on this bill Supplementary Order Paper 87 I propose a small change to that clause to actually include that the report should be on “the state of” New Zealand’s environment because simply reducing the purpose of the bill to be requiring regular reports on New Zealand’s environment means that those reports do not actually have to be about the state of the environment.The Minister for the Environment has been mischievous in the extreme and is seeking to mislead as usual by suggesting that the Opposition members of the Local Government and Environment Committee were not supportive of the overall intent of the bill. We were also very supportive of the changes to Part 1 in relation to clause 4A which recognises the Crown’s responsibility to take appropriate account of Te Tiriti o Waitangi yet the Minister suggested when he made comments from the chair that there was opposition to that. That was completely incorrect. We do support that clause in the bill but we have quite major concerns about the lack of independence for the whole system.I think the Minister in his comments from the chair also suggested that Opposition members should look at the Statistics Act and the fact that that Act provides for Ministers to establish the matters that will be reported on. The major difference is that that Act was passed at a time when there was a robust and independent Public Service. We have seen under this Government a major hollowing-out of the Public Service. We have seen a lot of interference by Ministers and we have only to look at the example of the Minister responsible for this bill when he interfered with the Department of Conservation’s responsibility for statutory advocacy on the Ruataniwha Dam and effectively quashed a 32-page submission by that department on the Ruataniwha Dam application. So the concern that Ministers will interfere is a very real one given that as the Minister himself alluded to there has already been an example of that happening with the suppression of a chapter of the state of the environment report that made some recommendations for change.So the two major flaws with the bill are the lack of independence and the real failure to ensure that the reports are comprehensive and take account of matters where there is inadequate information—that that is actually recognised. I have got some changes in Supplementary Order Paper 87 that address that matter. The original purpose of the bill—to provide this independent system—was good but that is not what the bill is actually going to deliver.When the Government members have been talking about the bill they have been saying that it recognises that protection of the environment is intrinsic to every Kiwi. That was what Mr Doocey said. So what is the Government so afraid of in having the Secretary for the Environment and the head of Statistics New Zealand actually making the decisions around what topics should be reported on? What is it so afraid of that it wants Ministers to set out those topics? The provisions in this bill for regulations are there only to enable Ministers to set the topics to be reported on and that is a major deficiency in the bill.I have got a number of changes that are set out in my Supplementary Order Paper and I hope other members can support these. We have sought to be constructive with these changes. They are not the sweeping changes that we would have liked to have made to the bill. I think it is very disappointing that the Government has not taken up this opportunity to improve the bill because once again it is an example of legislation that the Government is ramming through that does not have the support of all of the House. It is such a fundamental part of our environmental policy to ensure that we have robust state of the environment reporting to inform changes to the law and to inform changes to policy yet the National Government wants to slant that reporting by having it politicised and it wants to risk the legislation being changed when there is a change of Government. It would be much better with this sort of legislation to have a consensus across the House and for the Government to take on board some of the changes that are being proposed through my Supplementary Order Paper in order to improve the bill rather than just reject them as we expect that it will do. Thank you.