Bennett GlenGLEN BENNETT (Labour): This morning most New Zealanders are waking up to the first day of winter but in this House we're sitting in the cold darkness of 30 May. [Interruption]SPEAKER: Sorry we'll recalibrate the member's time. Just keep it calm for goodness' sake. It is Saturday morning and I know that people are short of sleep and for whatever reason quite excited about being here but contain your thoughts and wait for the committee stage where you can all have a say if wanted. Glen Bennett—start again.GLEN BENNETT: Mr Speaker thank you. It is nice to see the robust debate taking place here in the House today. But as I said for the majority of Aotearoa it's 1 June—it's winter—but in here—Hon Rachel Brooking: Not in Dunedin—20 degrees.GLEN BENNETT: It's 20 degrees in Dunedin the Hon Rachel Brooking says. But she'd rather be here. She doesn't want to be in her electorate today she wants to be here supporting the environment and supporting initiatives to make sure we protect our precious nature—that we only have one left of nature—all of nature. As the Hon Rachel Brooking mentioned in her first and second reading of this bill there are parts of this that we do support. And we've been looking at it very closely and obviously waste minimisation and the disposal of waste is important.Now I live in New Plymouth. In fact my community of Marfell sits right next to an old dump site that they turned into a park. But that park can't be used because of what was dumped there many many years ago. And a lot of people in this House will know when it comes to what this bill is trying to achieve and what it does is around how do we remediate some of those old landfills. And it's really obvious and really clear for me in my community as we sit and surround what seems like a beautiful park that once upon a time soccer was played on once upon a time there was BMXing once upon there was rugby as well but none of those things are able to be done any more. In fact none of those things have been for probably more than 25 years because of the issues of what is under this beautiful looking pristine park and the issues—people fell and had parts of their body infected because of what was under there.Now we know and lots of people in this House will know about the Dow agriscience plant in New Plymouth. Again they created some pretty awful chemicals and toxins and some of those were buried in Marfell Park. So back in 2009—and I was there and it came to the attention of the Taranaki Regional Council and New Plymouth District Council that there were real issues with some of the chemicals that had been buried there many many years ago and some of the issues of bleaching. So this bill had only I believe just come into Royal assent in 2008 and this was 2009. And I know the regional council and district council spent up to $27000 and then agriscience put in another $50000 to try to remove these chemicals and deal with it. I think when I go back to the electorate of New Plymouth on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday next week—whenever we get there—I will be sort of checking in around what this looks like and what this bill does.The thing that we don't support is it feels like it is an overreach. It feels like it isn't targeted as much as it has been and it's been working. So when we look at what they're trying to achieve they're wanting to broaden the criteria to many environmental issues and problems. And as we know that comes back to the point around the Budget and in fact how little there was in the Budget for the environment. So they're having to find somewhere and some way of finding some money and support to ensure that they can fund initiatives to help protect our environment.Now none of us—well I hope that none of us want waste and I hope that those in this House are conscious consumers when they go to the supermarket or when they go and buy a new fridge or vehicle or whatever it is. Because when I look at Marfell Park and the issues of an old landfill that sits there as an eyesore within our own community—200 cubic metres of soil were taken away with contaminants in but we know there's far more. So when I go back to New Plymouth I'm going to be looking at this work and what we can actually do to work again with regional council and with the local district council to ensure that the people of Marfell have what they deserve—they have a decent park they have a decent playing ground they have a decent place for the kids to play and for sports activities to happen and for people to walk their dogs.And looking at this and they widen the clauses I just think we need to be cautious and careful. I hope that in the committee stage I know that the Hon Rachel Brooking has some really thoughtful amendments that she'll be putting on the Table—some really thoughtful amendments to actually I guess support the Government in terms of what they are trying to achieve because we want to be constructive. We want to make sure that we get it right for nature—that we get it right for nature.And when we look around the country and we look at what's going on in terms of there's a lot of sites and with climate change and with the challenges I know there's a number of dump sites that were close to the ocean. And with the seabed as some of those areas are reclaimed by the ocean we see the issues that come with those dumps and that getting out into the environment. So we want to find ways to move this forward. We want to find ways to ask the Government and work with Government to say Hey look this is a waste disposal levy—that is it. That is the parameter and we're not going to stray either way from that." Now Andy Foster spoke before and he spoke about needing to think about the expansion and "Come on let's get on with it and why not widen it? Come on let's just do that." But I just think and I come back to my point this needs to be targeted this needs to be tight. I believe you said "Think about the expansion of how the levy can be spent." Mr Foster and I think that's what we are thinking about and we're working on and we'll make sure that we do.Now when you look at the Ministry for the Environment and the offer of voluntary redundancies when you look at the Public Service and the hundreds of jobs that are going in terms of jobs related to the environment we are going to need to fight really hard and we're going to need to work really hard to make sure that something like this doesn't just become this big open piece of work where the levy that is taken doesn't just end up going here there and everywhere and missing the challenge of cleaning up Marfell Park. It misses the challenge of making sure where there have been dumping sites and there have been other chemicals buried in places that they don't get forgotten and left out because we're spending money over here for the environment which we of course support. We want to spend more money on the environment. We would love the Government to reconsider their Budget. We would love the Government to reconsider their cuts. We would love the Government to make choices about how better they protect our environment and how they protect nature and how they protect our climate. But we're here—we're here. We're looking at this legislation and we're trying to figure out how we can make it better. I want to just take a moment to have a look at the supplementary analysis report. And it does talk in here about the Government's decision and priorities that are relevant to this proposal. And it goes on to talk about "the Government's priorities include a number of areas that require proactive action to prevent significant environmental harm and/or manage cost pressures." And it all talks about the cost pressures and the need to claw back money in the levy. It talks about addressing environmental harm associated with closed landfills. In addition to this it talks about supporting the identification and remediation of all types of contaminated sites.It also goes on to talk about supporting waste management costs associated with emergency events such as storms and earthquakes. And as you would know Mr Speaker—you went through the experience and the disaster of the Christchurch earthquakes and the need to for legislation to be right to ensure that the amount of waste that had to be put somewhere that there needed to be good processes in place to make sure that waste was disposed of in a safe way. We look at last year and we look at the Auckland floods we look at the East Coast and the storms over there and we look around New Zealand and what's been going on in recent years. And we know that when there is such destruction there is such waste we need to find ways to make sure (1) we have the costs in place to ensure that we can dispose of it correctly but we make sure that legislation is set so it isn't so wide that sadly when there is another Kaikōura earthquake sadly when there is another Cyclone Gabrielle when sadly there is another Auckland floods that we have a tight piece of legislation we have tight rules around how levies will be spent to ensure that we get it right.So we're really looking forward to the committee stage and looking forward to offering ideas to support the Minister to ensure that she can make this bill a lot better."