Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Chairperson of the Environment Committee): I rise to present the reports from the environment sector. Those are the reports on the Department of Conservation the Ministry for the Environment and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment all of which were heard in the Estimates briefings by the Environment Committee. It is largely a congenial committee and very collegial and I think that shows in our reports.I turn first to Vote Conservation where there has been an exciting advance in what has happened under this coalition Government. Under this new coalition Government we have a significant increase in Vote Conservation of about $43.1 million. That's a huge advance in funding and it speaks to a difference in the way that conservation is funded. It speaks to rebuilding the Department of Conservation to rebuilding capacity there so that it is fit and ready to meet any challenges that arise.There are some interesting things in this vote. In particular there is a $76 million contingency fund to fund biodiversity initiatives. The exact initiatives have yet to be determined; that is in part because of the resourcing needed within the Department of Conservation for those initiatives. The capacity to administer that fund has to be rebuilt and that is under way.Some of the concerns that have been raised in conservation are to do with funding and we are introducing some new measures for funding conservation—in particular a tourism levy where we are asking international visitors to pay a levy as they come into our country. Some of that money will go to tourism but some of it will also go to conservation and that is an important initiative. And in quite a good measure I think we are asking tourists who walk our Great Walks—particularly the more popular walks—to pay a higher fee than domestic visitors to those Great Walks. We are asking those tourists to fund the infrastructure to fund those Great Walks so that they will continue to be there for New Zealanders in the future. So I think it's a very promising start to our term in office when it comes to conservation.In Vote Environment funding has decreased which might ordinarily be a cause for alarm except that most of that decrease is due to a change in the emissions trading scheme. So that is where the largest decrease comes from and that of course points to some of the critical concerns in Vote Environment. I think there are two large concerns in Vote Environment: the first is around fresh water and the other one is around climate change. We know that people in New Zealand are very concerned about fresh water and we know that we need to do some extraordinary work on nutrient load in our waterways particularly arising from farming. As part of the work being done in that space we are allocating extra money to OVERSEER. That's a tool that farmers can use to assess nutrient load but it needs to be effective it needs to be good to use and we're putting our money where our mouth is and funding it properly.When it comes to climate change climate change has been spoken of as the moral issue of our time. We will be devoting considerable effort to climate change. The Minister for Climate Change has put in place a process to develop a zero-carbon bill; he is consulting on it at the moment. He also told us that he might continue to accept international credits in our emissions trading scheme. You will know that this has been a concern in the past or we know this has been a concern. There are some conditions around the use of the international credits: that they are genuine that they would maintain progression to a net zero carbon unit that they make economic sense and that they would assist in increasing the domestic carbon price. So that work is being done on the emissions trading scheme.I move very briefly to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE). As a committee we were concerned about the PCE's independence. We were given strong reassurance that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment would continue to be an independent voice for the environment reporting to our Parliament through several reports each year. That independent voice is critical beyond politics beyond partisan views simply advocating for and reporting on behalf of the environment. I commend these reports.