DAVID CLENDON (Green) : Kia ora koutou. When the Environmental Protection Authority Bill first appeared a week or so ago, I recalled an experience prior to the 2005 election when I spoke on behalf of the Greens at an event organised by the Resource Management Law Association. Dr Nick Smith was also at that event, clearly speaking for National. In the course of his presentation, Dr Smith talked in positive terms about the establishment of some sort of environmental protection agency. He appeared slightly surprised when I evinced Green support with a similar view that we also believed that there was value in having a genuinely independent, well-resourced, stand-alone agency that was one step removed from a policy process and some several steps removed from ministerial control or political advocacy, and, indeed, an agency that could stand and speak and be the advocate for the environment, because that is what is missing in this. It has long been our policy to support the idea of an agency that is an independent environmental reporter, advocate, and an organisation that can make good decisions with the well-being of the environment in mind. If we do not maintain a good environment, our economic and social arrangements will collapse in their turn.
Clearly, it would be perverse of us not to support the establishment of this authority, but we do so, as has been commented by Labour speakers, with considerable reservation. There are elements of this bill that lead us to think that we would not see the genuinely strong, independent, and well-resourced agency that is required to do this job and do it well. Part of our concern arises from the current situation where the nascent, skeletal Environmental Protection Authority currently exists due to the haste of this Government to establish something rather than do the job properly in one hit. We are very concerned about the way that the Environmental Protection Authority, which is scarcely off the ground, is allegedly dealing with quite a number of very substantial matters that are of considerable public concern and interest, and have major long-term environmental, and, indeed, economic, consequences.
Clearly the Waterview Connection situation is one of these. I attended one of the public meetings some weeks ago where the public allegedly was to be informed and enabled to make sensible submissions on the final proposals for the Waterview Connection. The public was presented with a massive amount of information, much of it highly technical in nature, and allowed 20 working days to comment about that extremely complex series of decisions, including around 53 individual resource consents. The people of Waterview, Mount Albert, and Point Chevalier were given 20 days, as lay people, to try to come up with submissions. I said at the time that it would challenge a very good, well-resourced, and effective resource management consultancy to come up with a comprehensive submission to such an enormous project. If this is to be the way of the Environmental Protection Authority—that it will be obliged to do things quickly, shabbily, and without appropriate public involvement—then that is not an environmental protection authority that we could continue to support.
It is true that since 1991, particularly in matters of resource management, there has been a need for more central direction and for more consistency within and between the various local and regional agencies. Clearly, central government was remiss for many years under a variety of Governments in not promptly and comprehensively providing national policy standards and national environmental standards. As an inevitable outcome of that, the regions in particular were obliged to invent wheels of their own accord. We got a lack of consistency, a great deal of time and effort was lost, and the implementation of the Resource Management Act, in particular, was suboptimal for that reason. It was observed not only by players and commentators within New Zealand but also by international researchers—everyone from independent academic researchers through to the OECD—that we desperately needed a little more central direction. There did not necessarily need to be more control, but there certainly needed to be more direction, support, and resourcing for the satisfactory implementation of what was, and still is, in many regards, quite visionary and ground-breaking legislation.
One of the positive advantages of this new authority is that it will bring together a range of skills, abilities, and, particularly, technical and scientific skills, and I believe that is a good thing. We are a small country with a relatively small pool of scientists—which is getting smaller by the minute, as our failure to give a good career path to scientists has led to its inevitable reduction—but although I entirely endorse the idea of bringing together and concentrating skills, knowledge, ability, and resources, I hope that this agency is not one where we have a concentration of world views and values to such an extent that the culture of the organisation becomes monosyllabic. It is critical that this agency, albeit a regulatory agency, employs and has within its numbers people with a range of world views and values, so that it can make good determinations that will engage with the range of values and beliefs reflected in the broader society.
We are told that the agency will give some certainty of process. Again, that is a desirable thing. Members of the public, as well as specialists and, indeed, politicians, ought to be able to rely on certainty of process. But let us hope that there is not an equivalent certainty of outcome. Increasingly, when we hear the language of streamlining, taking away barriers, and taking away cost from resource management processes and other processes, we see that what is really intended is to get faster, to the point where the agency says yes to any application. There is a remarkable concentration, it seems, on getting faster, to the point where the agency says yes to the development, no matter what its quality. We think that, equally, there should be situations where we get quickly to the point of saying no where there are clear environmental, social, or economic reasons why we ought to resist, object to, and reject entirely some of the very flawed applications we have seen.
I would have to say that four words in this bill give some heart, and they are quite sweet to us in the Green Party. Those four words are: "ERMA will be disestablished." The Environmental Risk Management Authority, or ERMA, has often been called the authority that never saw an application it did not like, particularly in respect of genetic modification and genetic engineering. Unfortunately, what could have been a robust, positive, useful organisation has become a rubber stamp and very little else. It has allowed, tolerated, and passed some extraordinarily risky, scientifically unsound, ethically untenable applications, and we will not in any way regret the passing of that organisation. We hope, quite sincerely, that this new organisation, this new authority, will have a much more inquisitive and challenging culture that will lead to much better and more balanced outcomes.
The two primary principles of resource management law that the Greens stand by and will continue to defend are those of public participation and environmental protection. The language of the Resource Management Act is that we ought to use, develop, and protect our natural and physical resources. There has been a great deal of use over the years and a great deal of development—some of it good, much of it less good—and it is critical that this authority is genuinely an environmental protection authority, not a developmental facilitation authority. Given the way in which this bill is constructed, and some of the past and present activities and focus of this Government, it is our major concern that this agency will be misused in that way.
We heard the Minister for the Environment, in his introduction to the bill, use the word "balance". Clearly, we in the Green Party have come to recognise that the word "balance is, in fact, shorthand for trading off a little more environmental degradation for a little more short-term economic gain, and that is not a notion of balance that we can comprehend or support. What is actually called for is a clear understanding of a genuine engagement between our social and economic needs and the absolutely critical, irrevocable protection of the environment without which we have no future. The Minister also recommended having stronger public institutions. We would like to see that made flesh, rather than this continual chipping away at the capacity of the public service to do its work well.
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