Foster-Bell Paul: Environmental Reporting Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFoster-Bell Paul: Environmental Reporting Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 23 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4682. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL FOSTER-BELL (National):I am going to take a very brief call on this Environmental Reporting Bill in this Committee stage debate just to respond to some things that other members have brought up but also to make a couple of new points of my own. I would like to congratulate the Minister for the Environment on bringing in a very important bill. As I think has been pointed out in this debate we were left in an anomalous position within the OECD of not having such a framework in place so it is a credit to this Minister Nick Smith and also to the Government that this situation has been remedied.We have heard suggestions that there may be a lack perhaps of neutrality in the setting of the topics of inquiry for these reports. I have to rebut some of those suggestions and in fact the very suggestion that it should be officials who are committing to the expenditure of large amounts of taxpayers’ money in commissioning these reports which I think would be an unfortunate precedent to set. If we look at other comparable legislation including that governing public scrutiny of our funds in New Zealand around audit I think it is best that we have elected representatives of the people making those decisions on where we are investing the large amounts of money that it takes to undertake one of these complex synthesis reports. But I would point out that the legislation makes very clear the areas that are to be investigated. These are laid out very clearly in clause 9 in Part 2 of the bill. These are the domains of air atmosphere and climate fresh water land and marine. These reports will be conducted independently by the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician two very hard-working public officials. I would also like to pay credit to the other public officials who have given much of their time and worked very very hard on making sure that this legislation is well drafted and effective.The content of the reports within each of these domains is also governed by this piece of legislation. It will include a commentary on the state of New Zealand’s environment as a whole but also specifically the aspects of biodiversity and ecosystems the pressures that may be causing or have the potential to cause changes to the state of our environment in New Zealand and the impacts that the state of the environment and changes to the state of the environment may be having on our ecological integrity public health in our country the economy Te Ao Māori—and I hope my respected colleague Nuk Korako might comment further on that particular area of content—and also the cultural and recreational values that we derive from our environment.So to me it is very clear that within the bill there is extensive guidance as to the sorts of things that we want reported on and within those reports the key critical areas that are significant to us as a country. I think there is plenty in there that directs the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician in the right direction when it comes to conducting their investigations but it is right and proper that an elected representative—a Minister of the Crown—actually sets the specific topics that are pertinent relative and topical to the day.Secondly just responding to the comments from the previous speaker Su’a William Sio and his amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 92 I may well have an answer for his question around what the impacts might be on climate change for the Pacific region by activities conducted in New Zealand and that is very very small obviously. Given we produce less than 1 percent of greenhouse gases within our country and the Pacific region is less than 20 percent of the global region we can surmise that that is a very small impact. I think it is far more important that we concentrate on reporting within our own jurisdiction and on making sure that we preserve our natural environment here for the enjoyment of New Zealanders. That focus should be retained in the bill and for that reason I personally do not support Su’a William Sio’s Supplementary Order Paper 92.