Woods Megan: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is subject to correctionWoods Megan: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 29 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2977. Text is subject to correction.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram):Thank you for the opportunity to take a call in the Natural resources section of the debate. We have been hearing a great deal about the Department of Conservation so far in this debate. One would never think that the central piece of environmental legislation which could be discussed in this section is of course in tatters on the Government’s books. This is a Government that treats the environment with contempt. It has failed to keep our rivers clean and to protect our oceans from oil spills. It is lagging behind on setting climate change targets and it wants to pull apart the central and fundamental piece of environmental protection legislation that we have in this country the Resource Management Act.Let us turn our thoughts briefly to the Department of Conservation which we have heard so much about from the Government members. The Associate Minister of Conservation the Hon Nicky Wagner told us that she does not recognise the Department of Conservation that is being described by the Opposition members in this Committee. Well I suggest the Minister leave the centralised Wellington offices—where the centralisation of resource into the Department of Conservation is—a little more often and get out to the regions where the cuts really have taken their toll. If we turn our attention to the Department of Conservation report that we are considering here today we can see that the very report we are considering says that some areas of the department’s work have been affected by staff shortages including work with threatened species the processing of permits and concessions and the management of huts. The report that we are discussing here today even tells us that staff shortages within the Department of Conservation are biting and that the department has had to increase its spending on travel. That is not surprising given the concentration and centralisation of resource into Wellington.We have heard a lot about the Battle for our Birds. I think that even from the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee we were getting dangerously close to some kind of treatise about “Birds of the World Unite”. That was coming from the chairman there. We have heard a lot about wetlands and the work that the Department of Conservation is doing in wetlands. Well I implore this Government to use the mechanism of a national policy statement which is open to it under the Resource Management Act and actually issue a national policy statement that protects our wetlands—that is if we really are going to get serious about the protection of these areas if we are not just going to have easy and empty words offered in the Committee and if we would actually like to see some action.Listening to the Government’s words it would be very hard sometimes to picture the kind of degradation that we are seeing in New Zealand. Two-thirds of our monitored rivers are not swimmable according to World Health Organization standards. For me that is not good enough. That is not the New Zealand I grew up in and it is not the New Zealand that I want to grow old in. I think we all like to imagine that our rivers are there for our enjoyment and that we can swim in them. Having wadable rivers is simply not good enough. It is not something that we should be content to accept in a country that prides itself on its clean green image. We really do have to get serious.I want to turn your attention to the Resource Management Act which is a central part of the Ministry for the Environment report. Of course the Ministry for the Environment report was produced before the results of the Northland by-election were counted and in a fit of frenzy the Prime Minister ripped up all the reforms that the Minister for the Environment had been working on. But we are told that the Minister is getting them in good shape. I have got images of Nick Smith out with his Sellotape frantically trying to put together what has been ripped up. What everyone is fundamentally scared of is that this Minister will do what the last Minister for the Environment in this Government tried to do and that is to weaken the core protections for the environment that we have in the Act.The Resource Management Act needs to cornerstone legislation. The Resource Management Act should not be something that you try to scrape through on one vote. The loss in the Northland by-election showed the tatters that this Government is in—that the loss of one seat means that a central piece of legislation which they went to the ballot box on last September is not going to be able to be passed in this House. It requires a fundamental rethink. I believe that when we are talking about cornerstone legislation when we are talking about the very legislation that is there to offer the fundamental protections for our environment that we should be looking to get some cross-party dialogue happening. We should be looking to ensure that we are not scraping by with the barest of majorities that we are having conversations and that we can actually see where there may be some consensus. I think there would be very few people in this Committee or indeed in this country—and I know certainly in my city of Christchurch—who would not think that actually having some consideration within the Resource Management Act for natural hazards might be a good idea. So I implore the Minister to actually show us what it is that he now wants to do with the Resource Management Act. What does he have in mind for section 85 in terms of private property rights? What is it that the Minister now wants to do with the resource management reform that we are told is coming?I also want to turn my attention to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment which is of course another part of the suite of natural resources that are examined by the Local Government and Environment Committee. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has called on the Department of Conservation to speed up its classification of stewardship land but this Government continues to sit on its hands. The new Minister of Conservation Maggie Barry has yet to do anything about this issue. So I would hope that when reading these reports that is something that Maggie Barry will go and have a look at and see that actually she does need to get some urgency behind that piece of work.We also heard from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment about the very important role that she will undertake under the Environmental Reporting Bill which is due to come back to this House after being considered by the Local Government and Environment Committee. It was with great sadness that the Labour Party was not able to support that piece of legislation at its first reading and that was for a very simple reason: it was because we saw that there was too much Government control and not enough independence in deciding the topics that would be under consideration in the bill. We hoped to get some change at the select committee and that was not there. What was also very disturbing for me when the Parliamentary Commissioner came before us—and it is contained in the report which is contained in these volumes—is that we know that she has an increased function with this legislation and she has some interim increased funding but under questioning she was able to tell the select committee that she is not going to be able to continue to carry out all that function with the current levels of funding that are there for her. The function that the Parliamentary Commissioner has under this legislation is so critical and I would hope that this would be listened to and that we would see some increased awareness around the need to properly resource the Parliamentary Commissioner to carry out that role.The other topic that underwrites all of the natural resources considerations is of course the very pressing issue of climate change. We have heard a number of things on this. We know that New Zealand has to go to Paris at the end of this year. We also know that New Zealand unlike many other countries has yet to release its new target. We are not sure; the Minister is still playing very coy with when it is that we will see our new target which we will be taking to the Paris talks in December of this year. We were also told by Treasury in the briefing to the incoming Minister of the immense cost that New Zealand is facing by not meeting its emissions targets—that by New Zealand missing its targets we are staring down the barrel of a deficit of anywhere between $3 billion and $52 billion and that our emissions are rising not decreasing. We are not going to meet the targets that have been set and we do not see that there is enough action being taken. We still have a Government that has yet to do anything to fundamentally address the issue around the price of carbon. We know that we are going to be looking at the emissions trading scheme legislation later this year—or so we have been told. Who knows? But something needs to be done and we need to make sure that we have got the proper mechanisms in place. We need to do something to ensure that we are actually incentivising our foresters to plant forests that can act as carbon sinks and in terms of carbon sequestration can play the vital role that needs to occur. But we are not seeing action from the Government that would lead this to happen.Climate change is real. Just last week 272 workers in my electorate lost their jobs at the Sanford mussel processing plant. The reason that was given was the limited supply of mussel spat and the company put this down to rising sea temperatures and the inability to get that through. Climate change is not something that is happening in the future and that we can choose to ignore. This is getting real. This is about people’s pay packets. This is about the ability of people to get on and of their families to make ends meet. This is a Government that has been woeful and is neglecting the environment. It needs to do more.