Woods Megan: Environmental Reporting Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Environmental Reporting Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 30 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4881. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): I think that talking to the title of this bill is something that we do need to spend a bit of time on because I would like to have thought that the Labour Party would and could support any piece of legislation called the Environmental Reporting Bill that came before this House—Chris Bishop: So vote for it then.Dr MEGAN WOODS: —given that New Zealand is one of the only countries in the OECD not to have this regime of environmental reporting in play.We are having some calls from the opposite side: “So vote for it.” Well we would dearly like to have been able to vote for this. We would have voted for this legislation if it had been truly independent environmental reporting. In fact we put it to the Government both at the select committee and in the Committee stage in this House that we would indeed vote for this legislation if the Government would agree to the amendments to clause 18—if we would make the changes that meant that we did have independent environmental reporting in this country.This is not any slur on any particular Minister because it is strongly our belief that Ministers on whichever side of the House—Ministers will only ever come from one side of the House I guess—Ministers from whichever party in this House need to have legislative constraints within our legislation to ensure independence. We do not want to be legislating and allowing the potential for political interference.So rather than the Environmental Reporting Bill I think this bill should more rightly be called the “Opportunity Lost Bill” because this is a huge opportunity lost. It is a good thing that New Zealand did turn its attention to putting in place an environmental reporting regime but we did lose the opportunity to do this properly. We have not done this in a way that is going to ensure that we have a robust and independent reporting regime in place that is going to report on the state of the environment and that is going to allow for better environmental outcomes. And for that reason to us it is a huge opportunity lost.I have been sitting in the Chamber throughout I think all of the Committee stage of this bill and I have heard some contributions—some of them more thoughtful than others. One that I thought was a thoughtful contribution from the other side of the House this afternoon was from Todd Muller who sits on the Local Government and Environment Committee. This was in response to the opportunity that my colleague Su’a William Sio put up in terms of New Zealand taking leadership in this region in terms of considering how what we do impacts not only on our environment but on our broader regional environment as well. Su’a and my colleague Kris Faafoi have made compelling cases around what the impact is on the Pacific. Todd Muller said that perhaps this is something we could consider later on in terms of synthesis reports—that this is something we could delay.Here is another example of how this is an opportunity lost. We cannot delay considering the impacts of what New Zealand does in New Zealand on the broader environment of the region and what the impacts are for our Pacific neighbours. We do not have time actually to think: “We’ll put this off until mañana. We’ll put this off until another day.” This is something that we have to confront now. This is something that we do need to take a leadership position on. This is something about which we cannot simply say: “We’ll look at that in the future.”Then we had some quite extraordinary contributions on this. My colleague Ruth Dyson has touched on the contribution from Mr Foster-Bell where he made some extraordinary comments around what the impact is of what New Zealand does on its environment and what its impact regionally would be. So once again we see examples of opportunities that are lost and how we did have the opportunity to do something much better.We also could suggest another name for this bill and it could be the “Not Independent Environmental Reporting Bill”. That is a topic that has been canvassed at length at various stages—at the Committee stage and in the earlier stages in this debate. It is in clause 18 where we sought those amendments around that where we could have fixed this legislation. We could have made this a piece of legislation I believe that did have support across this House. We could have come to a consensus around what good independent robust environmental reporting looked like and we could have had all parties—[Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Sorry just before we continue—you have the call—the question before us is that clauses 1 and 2 stand part and those are the title and commencement clauses. I am making the point that it is not just the title; it is the title and commencement.Hon Ruth Dyson: That might be her last two calls.Dr MEGAN WOODS: That is right. The commencement is something I am planning on addressing in subsequent calls on this piece of legislation.Chris Bishop: Well that’ll be a cracker. Can’t wait for that one.Dr MEGAN WOODS: I know. Everyone will be eagerly anticipating it. I think that the title of this bill does deserve our consideration because as I was saying this is the “Not Independent Environmental Reporting Bill”. We have canvassed that and we have also indicated how this is a bill that could have had cross-party support and how we could have got there with actually I think some substantial but not huge tweaks.Unfortunately we have a Government that has not been willing to listen to this and that did not listen to the petitioners who came to the select committee and made their very good submissions and we are talking about some people who think long and hard about these issues. We are talking about the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. We are talking about the Resource Management Law Association. We are talking about the Environmental Defence Society Fish and Game and Forest and Bird—substantial bodies in New Zealand that give a great deal of thought to these matters. They came to us and said: “Please make sure that this is truly independent environmental reporting because the bill you have in front of you”—and the bill we are now about to pass through its Committee stage—“is not independent environmental reporting.”It saddened me that Government members refused to listen to that and that at every stage of this legislation they have not listened to very good advice about how we could have had a much better piece of legislation. It would have been wonderful to have all parties in this House able to support it and to have all parties in the New Zealand Parliament able to say: “I think it is a good thing that we put in place a robust environmental reporting regime like the rest of the OECD and that we join the ranks of those countries that do that.” But instead what we have here is a dim piece of legislation. It is a dimmer version of what it could have been.When National first came to power it offered us a brighter future. Well here is the dimmer future in this piece of legislation. This is a shadow of what we could have had. This is not a brighter future. This certainly is not living up to that. The Minister in charge of this legislation Nick Smith has been in charge of a lot of things that are not really living up to the brighter future. We could perhaps rename this the “Nick Smith Blunder No. 323 Bill”. That could be another name. The number keeps rising so unless we pass this quickly we will probably be looking at No. 512 in only a few days’ time.What we are seeing is a Minister shepherding this through who should have been listening to the very sage submissions. It was started by Minister Amy Adams who introduced the bill and was then finished off by her successor the Hon Dr Nick Smith who should have listened to those submissions. He should have listened to what the substantial bodies were saying and what their advice was but that was not something he was willing to listen to. Maybe that is because he is quite preoccupied in other portfolios. We do see that particular Minister having to put out fires in other portfolios that he has and that is why I suggested that title. That title is something that I suggested and that is the reason for it.It saddens me that we are in this Chamber debating the Environmental Reporting Bill a bill that is called the Environmental Reporting Bill when it is not everything that it could be when it has not lived up to that name and when really we still have the opportunity for it to become a political instrument of this Government or of any Government. Whoever is in power this legislation allows environmental reporting to become a political instrument.It saddens me that we have the Minister being both poacher and gamekeeper. That is something I think we should avoid in any legislation that we pass in this House. It should just be part of good practice that we set up robust processes so that we do separate out those functions and that we do have someone else making the decisions for solely environmental reasons.If we look at the title the Environmental Reporting Bill that should be the primary driving force around what we choose to report on not what serves the Government of the day whoever that Government may be and what it wishes to report on. The Environmental Reporting Bill is not living up to its name. It is not going to adequately report on the environment.