Sage EugenieEnvironment and Oceans and FisheriesHon EUGENIE SAGE (Chairperson of the Environment Committee): Kia orana Mr Chair. As chair of the Environment Committee I will take a brief call on the Votes that the committee considered and that was for the 2021-22 Estimates: Vote Conservation Vote Environment and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The committee was very pleased to welcome back Minister Kiritapu Allan from medical leave and we also heard from the Acting Minister Verrall.There is an $800 million allocation for Vote Conservation in 2020-2021. That is a major increase—a doubling on what that vote was in 2017-2018 under the last Government. It's also an increase for this year on what was allocated last year. The committee was particularly interested in Jobs for Nature and the $500 million that Te Papa Atawhai is responsible for as part of that $1.3 billion programme. The department is responsible for three major initiatives there: enhancing biodiversity outcomes on public and private land; pest management including Predator Free Aotearoa; and supporting employment through projects on conservation land.The Minister highlighted that there were 173 Jobs for Nature projects under way or at various stages of approval. This programme is about both increasing conservation knowledge people's connection with conservation and providing jobs and skills that will long outlast the programme. There are projects that we heard were very diverse from wilding conifer control in the Craigieburn Range to a big project in South Auckland around urban landscaping. The committee was particularly interested in the accountability measures that the department is using to track progress in spending. I would encourage anyone interested in any of the Votes to have a look at the questions which the committee asked. In Conservation the committee asked some 358 questions of Te Papa Atawhai and in Vote Environment 273 questions of the Ministry for the Environment. The answers to those questions really flesh out a lot of the agencies' work that's proposed over the coming year.Just in Vote Conservation the committee was also interested in Predator Free New Zealand—the big expansion in that programme in South Westland in the Whataroa area. The director-general highlighted the gains that have been made in predator control both there and in areas like kōkako in Pureora where this sustained investment that Government is making in predator control over several years is showing significant improvements in the status of a lot of our threatened species. Going back right to the 1990s for example where we only had 830 breeding pairs of kōkako throughout the North Island now there are some 2000 breeding pairs. The committee was also interested in a lot of predators like feral cats—the seriousness of the problem of feral cats both in terms of their direct predation and the impacts of toxoplasmosis. We also heard about the work the department was doing to reduce its climate emissions: a 40 percent reduction in air travel in the last financial year and a ban on the purchase of internal combustion engines.I'd like to acknowledge the work of the outgoing Director-General of Conservation Lou Sanson who will be standing down in September. He has been the Director-General of Te Papa Atawhai for eight years and been with the department in other roles before that. He's worked with at least five Ministers and he has led the department with huge enthusiasm and commitment to conservation and a very deep knowledge of the department's mahi. He has engaged with people and place and really got the department to be much more outward-looking and much more focused on its Treaty partnership.In terms of Vote for the Environment it's got an appropriation of $1.73 billion. The bulk of this of course is due to the allocation of New Zealand emission units and provision for impairment of debt for climate change - related activities. The Ministry for the Environment has an appropriation of $382 million within that and the committee considered quite a wide range of issues in terms of the ministry and the Minister's work programme here—$132 million is allocated over several years for reform of the resource management system with $35 million of that in the current financial year. The Minister highlighted that a lot of this will be used to improve implementation of the reform legislation through the development of a national planning framework and working in the national policy statements and national environmental standards under that. Waste comes within this area. Of course the landfill levy has been increased from $10 to $20 a tonne for municipal landfills from 1 July. That will lead to quite a significant increase in funding for allocation to reducing waste to landfill.