Twyford Phil: Environmental Protection Authority Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Twyford Phil: Environmental Protection Authority Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 07 April 2011. Volume:671;Page:17868. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 As my colleague Charles Chauvel has pointed out Labour voted for the Environmental Protection Authority Bill at the first reading. We considered it to be on the face of it an important initiative an important development in the Government’s legislation programme. But we are bitterly disappointed with the bill that has come back to this House. We genuinely hoped that the submissions process and select committee scrutiny would strengthen this bill and would give the new Environmental Protection Authority the tools and the standing it needs to do the job it is supposed to do but New Zealand has been sadly let down. 
There is a “truth in advertising” problem at the heart of this bill. It claims to establish an Environmental Protection Authority but as my colleague has pointed out it is an Environmental Protection Authority only in name. 
Labour has four key concerns about the authority. The first is that the functions of the authority are far too narrow. It is incapable under this bill of providing any strong leadership in environment matters. All it really gets to do under the bill is to manage the fast tracking of consents for major projects and a few other bits and pieces: the registry functions of the climate change response legislation and the Environmental Risk Management Authority’s old role under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. 
A whole lot of things are missing from the bill that submitters came along to the Local Government and Environment Committee and said should logically be in the bill. We agree with those submissions—for example coastal and marine management and environmental management under the exclusive economic zone the administration of our Antarctic obligations the administration of an environmental enhancement fund generated by fines issued by district and regional councils the Waste Minimisation Act and numerous other functions under the Resource Management Act. 
The second objection we have to the bill is that the objectives are plainly inadequate. They do not even expressly require the authority to protect the environment. Instead as the bill is currently worded the objective of the authority is to “undertake its functions in a way that—(a) contributes to the efficient effective and transparent management of New Zealand’s environment and natural and physical resources; and (b) enables New Zealand to meet its international obligations.” 
Something is missing from the bill. Let us play a game of  
Where’s Wally? 
. Let us look for where in the bill we can find any kind of mandate to protect the environment. If we were to play the game we would be playing it for a very long time. We have looked in the bill and it is not evident to us that protection of the environment is what the authority is all about. 
The third objection we have is that the structure mandate and authority of the authority is so weak that it is not sufficiently independent from the Minister to give it the strength and integrity it would need if it had the real job of protecting the environment. If we look at the hazardous substances and new organisms role it will inherit from the Environmental Risk Management Authority we see that the authority will have less independence from the Minister than the Environmental Risk Management Authority currently has in its administration of those tasks. That is a real concern. If the Government seriously believed in stewardship of New Zealand’s natural environment for the sake of future generations then it would have beefed up the provisions in the bill and given the authority the independence and integrity to do the role free from potential political interference. 
The fourth concern we have is that the bill is very confusing about the authority’s obligation to take into account in its decision making its responsibilities to tangata whenua and Maori perspectives. Frankly we are surprised that the Maori Party has not clearly insisted on the insertion of a Treaty clause. All other major environment and conservation legislation today has a Treaty clause that requires the administrators of the legislation to take into account Treaty obligations. Such a clause is not in the bill. That sends a very confusing message. 
When we introduced the Ministry for the Environment in 1986 the intent of that move and of all the changes we have seen in the intervening period was to integrate environmental sustainability into the heart of policy making in this country so that it sits alongside social and economic objectives and operates in a complementary way not in a competitive way. We have seen from the Government over the last 2 years and we see in this bill a perspective that sees economic and environmental objectives as competing interests to be balanced or set off against each other. It is simply irresponsible to see the objectives as being separate; they are inextricably bound up together. Unless they are taken in an integrated way policy making in this country will never adequately protect the environment and our prosperity. When the objectives are set off against each other and seen as separate and competing we instead see the kinds of policy failures that Charles Chauvel outlined in his speech—a litany of missteps and mishaps by the Government on environmental and conservation policy over the last 2 years. 
I will come back to the functions of the authority and comment in a little more detail about the other things that should have been in the bill such as the administration of the Waste Minimisation Act numerous Resource Management Act functions coastal and marine management and an environmental enhancement fund. We agree that those things would have amounted to a much more logical and substantial work programme for the authority. Instead we see piecemeal transfers of jurisdiction from existing bodies. The bill will be a legislative dog’s breakfast for future policy makers and administrators let alone the public in trying to come to terms with the effect of this now interlinked legislation. The Climate Change Response Act the Resource Management Act and the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act all have to be read in conjunction with the new Environmental Protection Authority legislation. That is not the way we should be making laws in this country. 
In addition we have raised concerns—and the Minister for the Environment has attempted to address them—about the way future functions will be transferred to the authority. We are uneasy with what is set out in the bill because it does not contain a brightline test that we can be confident will distinguish between ancillary and substantive functions. We fear that the Minister of the day will make a determination according to political judgment about which new functions should or should not be transferred to the Environmental Protection Authority. That is a real weakness in the bill. 
These flaws are so fundamental that we worry that it will be impossible for the new authority to survive as a credible institution charged with managing and protecting the environment for New Zealanders. This is a classic case of legislation that should have waited for the Minister to do his work to put the building blocks in place and to put in place a new regime that was logical credible and substantive. Instead we see a new institution that is insubstantial. There are question marks about its integrity and whether it can in fact carry out the role it has been given. The worry is that it will be stillborn. 
There has been some comment already about the fact that the authority’s objective does not adequately set out the role of environmental protection and I know that my colleagues will have further comments to make about that fact. Thank you.