Woods Megan: Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Environmental Protection Authority (Protection of Environment) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9853. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is a pleasure to take a call. I too would like to acknowledge the work of Meka Whaitiri in bringing this bill to the House. I would also like to address some of the comments that the last speaker Nuk Korako has made those being lastly about members who sit there and ignore the advice of officials. I would like to have a little bit of a conversation about members who sit there and ignore time and time again submitters who come with a great deal of expertise. Their words simply fall on deaf ears. We had a large number of submissions and they were ignored they were ridiculed and they were not taken seriously. I think that that is far more shameful in terms of the conduct of members at the select committee.Never before have seven words produced such hysteria within the Government in its reaction to this bill. Simply trying to insert into the Environmental Protection Authority’s legislation the fact that it should protect the environment—you would think that Meka had introduced a bill saying we should do something really bad something really out there rather than put a purpose clause in legislation saying that the entire Environmental Protection Authority should have as its purpose the protection of the environment.The members of the Government have been all over the place in terms of why it is they are going to oppose this bill. The last speaker’s logic seemed to be that we do not need to put it in there because other Acts say that the Environmental Protection Authority should protect the environment and therefore we should not put the purpose clause into the Environmental Protection Authority Act. Actually that just makes absolutely no sense.Mr Doocey in his contribution said that what we should do is lift the hood on the Environmental Protection Authority and have a look at what is happening under the hood. Well I would like to lift the hood and I would like to expose the burnt-out engine that this Government has neglected. When the Environmental Protection Authority came to the Local Government and Environment Committee in February of this year its chair Kerry Prendergast very clearly said that it was underfunded not getting the resources it needed and that it could not fulfil its functions. That is the state of the engine that Mr Doocey is talking about. So when the Government members cry crocodile tears and talk about the Bluegreens and their care for the environment the National Government is consistently underfunding the agency that is charged with being an environmental watchdog in this country. Their words have no basis in belief.One of the key arms of the authority came and said that it simply does not have enough money to do its job. What we had was Ms Prendergast telling the Local Government and Environment Committee that the Environmental Protection Authority had never received permanent funding for its exclusive economic zone functions which range from approving and monitoring offshore exploration wells through to approving burials at sea. So in terms of the very function that those members opposite are arguing is about balancing the environment and the economy they are underfunding the agency charged with doing that job not giving the resources to that agency that it needs. The authority’s chair fronted up to the select committee and made it clear that it is strapped for cash and unable to do the job. She went on to say that 3 years of discussion have not changed the situation and the resulting uncertainty over funding raises questions about the long-term sustainability of the exclusive economic zone function and the exclusive economic zone more generally.These are very worrying words and for the Government to claim that it does have the interests of the environment at heart is absolutely alarming. When the Government talks about the range of agencies that the Environmental Protection Authority has some authority over and why it does not need to put the fact that it needs to have the environment as one of its considerations—let us consider some of those other responsibilities it has under other pieces of principal legislation. Ms Prendergast went on to say that because of the funding shortfall some activities such as public education about environmental risk had to be cut back. The Environmental Protection Authority simply was not able to fulfil them.Other people who came from the Environmental Protection Authority and came before the select committee said that the huge cost of considering the safety of potentially hazardous chemicals had seen the agency prune the list of chemicals it needed to investigate to 30. The agency that is put in charge of investigating the hazards that various chemicals pose to us in this country is being underfunded and that agency is telling the parliamentary select committee that it is unable to fulfil that function.This is serious; this is not something that we take lightly. This Government has allocated enough money to the Environmental Protection Authority that it can budget $300000 a year for investigating hazardous chemicals. I would like to think when I am living my life that actually a bit more resource was being put into the fact that we were not all being poisoned. I would have thought that was a reasonably core function of Government. Let us compare that with the recent organic phosphate reassessment which cost $1.2 million. That is for one chemical to be investigated—$1.2 million was needed to do that. Yet this Government sees fit within its Budget allocations to give the Environmental Protection Authority only enough to allocate $300000.For that Government to then say that it has the interests of the environment at heart and that you do not need to putthe fact that we need to protect the environment in the purpose clause simply rings hollow. If you compare New Zealand with a country such as Canada which spends several hundred million dollars on the assessment of 14000 chemicals our Government is putting us at risk by the fact that it is not allowing our agency which wants to do this job and which comes before the select committee and says that it needs to do this job for the safety of the environment and for the health of New Zealanders more generally—but this Government will not do it.It is putting not only our people and our environment at risk but also our economy. For agriculture knowing about hazardous chemicals and various biochemicals is incredibly important. The Government members may scoff but this is what the Environmental Protection Authority came to the select committee and said. It said this in the same breath as it said that for 3 years it had been asking this Government for additional funding but it has yet to get it and it is not able to fulfil its function. What was entirely clear throughout the whole examination of the Environmental Protection Authority at the select committee was that it was underfunded at the very time when the need for New Zealand to step up its environmental work was taking hold.When this Government says that we do not need to put the environment into the purpose clause of the Environmental Protection Authority legislation because “Trust us we’ve got the best interests of the environment at heart.” there is very clear evidence that no it does not. When it comes to funding the agencies that need to do that it simply is not there. Its commitment to the environment is nothing more than hollow words. If it really is committed then it can stump up and show that with evidence rather than making pretty little speeches in the House. Thank you.