Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) : Under Standing Order 298(1)(c), I would like to postpone consideration of Part 1 until after Part 7. The purpose of this is simply to give us a little bit more time to consider the interesting amendments proposed by the honourable member Nicky Wagner, so I am exercising my right under Standing Order 298(1)(c) to put Part 1 at the end.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs): I understand there is no debate on that question. Therefore, we are to consider Part 2.

NATHAN GUY (Senior Whip—National) : I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I wonder whether Dr Norman could just go through that again, because I missed the start of what he was saying. There has been no dialogue on this side of the Committee about what he is proposing.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) : Under Standing Order 298(1)(c) I am seeking to postpone consideration of Part 1 until after Part 7. Part 1 will still be considered, but it will be considered last, for the reason that we are in dialogue about an amendment moved by the member’s colleague and our views on whether we support that amendment. I meant to talk to Mr Guy earlier, but he was on the phone.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs): For the information of the rest of the Committee, it is the right of the mover of the legislation to order that. Therefore, we have accepted that Part 1 will be considered after Part 7.

NICKY WAGNER (National) : As members know, National members are supporting this bill. We are supporting this new iteration of the bill. We found that the original bill was excessively prescriptive, but this new iteration has been absolutely gutted. We did a lot of work on it in the Local Government and Environment Committee and we believe that it is pretty rational and pretty reasonable.

Part 2 deals with product stewardship, and this is perhaps the most important part of the bill. We know that there are some very successful voluntary product stewardship schemes in existence already, but the inclusion in the bill of the focus on product stewardship will highlight the need for these schemes and encourage more development. The big advantage of a product stewardship scheme is that manufacturers and distributors of a product are incentivised to think about the product’s whole life cycle. The manufacturers are in a position to redesign their product in light of its future use and final disposal. Too often we have seen products that have been created with no thought given to their final disposal, and we need manufacturers to make smart decisions at the beginning of the design process. It is easy and cost-effective to make good choices about a product at the start—for example, whether we use recyclable material or non-recyclable material. The very worst products that we come across are those that are a mixture of different materials that make recycling impossible.

During the select committee process we visited Fisher and Paykel and its recycling and recovery operation. We were really impressed to hear how the company collected old whiteware, whatever the brand, and reused or recycled most of the componentry. The company was also proactive with recycling its packaging. We might be aware that when we buy a new Fisher and Paykel washing machine it is delivered to our house, the old one is taken away, and the packaging is taken away as well. The packaging is then reused, if it is in good enough condition, for another washing machine, or if it is not, believe it or not, it is used to pack flowers for the export market. Fisher and Paykel is an example of an excellent product stewardship scheme and the sort of thing we would like to encourage with this bill.

The bill also introduces the concept of priority products. The select committee was concerned that we actually deal with our most harmful products first and that they should be identified as a priority for a stewardship scheme. The Minister can declare a priority product but he has guidelines when he declares that product. The waste from the product must cause significant environmental harm, there must be benefits from reusing, reducing, recycling, or recovery of the product, and it must be able to be managed effectively under a product stewardship scheme. The Minister cannot do this alone. He or she must take advice from the Waste Advisory Board, consult the public, and consider the effectiveness of any relevant voluntary product stewardship schemes.

The bill requires that all priority products must be included in a product stewardship scheme. The scheme can use existing voluntary schemes, as long as they are accredited, or a new scheme must be developed. We were very conscious that there were some industries and some companies that have been proactive in managing their waste, companies such as Resene Paints Ltd that has developed a paint recycling scheme, Agpac, which collects bulk plastics, and companies everywhere that collect and recycle oil, collect unwanted chemicals or chemical containers, and collect packaging. We wanted to be sure that the bill rewarded those companies exhibiting good waste behaviour rather than punishing them, so it was important that existing voluntary schemes could be accredited, whether or not they involved priority products.

We heard in the select committee that many companies and industry sectors were successfully managing their waste but that they were struggling to get all their members involved. It is the same old story that one hears everywhere. The majority of people and organisations were prepared to do the right thing, but there were a minority of free-riders who were not prepared to contribute. In these cases a mandated scheme would ensure that everyone was included and would be beneficial to those who were already carrying the costs of managing their waste responsibly, and there were a large number of organisations that supported this.

The rest of Part 2 covers the details of the accreditation scheme, its requirements, and its regulation. It also gives details of the monitoring of accredited schemes. To be an accredited product stewardship scheme one must have a scheme manager, and must provide a description of the scope of the scheme and measurable waste minimisation disposal objectives. It must list the people who are participating in the scheme, and provide for assessing the scheme’s performance and reporting to the Minister. It must also outline how the scheme will be publicised so users are able to access it, and how it will be funded. The teeth behind this part of the bill—

Nathan Guy: What are they?

NICKY WAGNER: The teeth are the significance of the product being declared a priority product. The teeth are that the Governor-General can prohibit the sale of priority products unless they are included in an accredited scheme. In other words, all manufacturers or distributors of a product are forced to carry the same level of responsibility. There can be no free-riders.

The final clause in Part 2 concerns the monitoring of imported products. The New Zealand Customs Service must provide information about priority products if requested by the Secretary for the Environment. The select committee was conscious that we wanted to keep the whole process of setting up and running product stewardship schemes as simple and as cost-effective as possible. To keep a sensible balance the Minister must take advice of the Waste Advisory Board and consult the people and the organisations that would be most affected by the scheme.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) : I rise to speak on the Waste Minimisation Bill. There is a lot of concern in our community about the management of waste and this bill has changed considerably from the bill as introduced to Parliament. I acknowledge that there has been a lot of work on this bill, and although I sit on the Local Government and Environment Committee I made way for Nicky Wagner, and I am quite glad I did because she has done an excellent job on this bill, at the same time keeping the other members of the committee—from National, at least—informed on how the bill was going.

It is interesting, is it not, that in this instance the community organisations that have long been concerned about management of waste have, in effect, led to this bill. Although this is a member’s bill I believe that it is the small voluntary community organisations, in the main, who have really led the way in bringing the public of New Zealand along with them in their desire to be responsible stewards for our community on behalf of our environment. It is interesting to note that those community groups are incredibly successful and growing. For this legislation to come in to support and validate their work is, I hope, cause for celebration amongst them.

The public now expect a level of waste stewardship and I believe that this bill begins to address that issue. I will turn to Part 2, “Product stewardship”, in particular. What this bill does with product stewardship really is akin to when we used to return our milk bottles and get 4c for them.

Chris Auchinvole: Yes, that’s about right.

JACQUI DEAN: And beer bottles, who would know—

Chris Auchinvole: Bottle drives; there used to be a lot of bottle drives.

JACQUI DEAN: Yes, I did a number of bottle drives at intermediate school, as did a number of others, which was fantastic. It was unheralded, I might say. Nobody knew it was good for the environment, we just thought we were making a buck for our local schools and kindergartens, but I guess that is the genesis of product stewardship. I understand that that issue was looked at as part of the examination process of this bill and discarded, but in its place we have this clause in the bill under Part 2, which provides for product stewardship.

This provision provides for an accreditation process and a regulatory process to encourage and foster product stewardship schemes. My colleague Nicky Wagner mentioned Fisher and Paykel as particularly good pioneers in product stewardship. I understand that the New Zealand Packaging Accord 2004 has also made good progress with product stewardship. These product stewardship schemes take responsibility for the environmental impacts and environmental harm of disposing of a product after its useful life. It is encouraging to see on the television news cellphones being voluntarily recycled—I understand that is part of a voluntary product stewardship scheme—and whiteware, of course. Whenever we visit our local recycling depot there are always piles of whiteware. I do not mind paying a fee to drop off old whiteware, knowing that it will be dismantled and the harmful gases captured. I think that is a fair trade.

The spirit of product stewardship, which is already done on a voluntary basis, will be encouraged through this bill. Some other examples of disposing of products after their useful life would be the collection and disposal of used oil and other items. Thank you.

ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) : I was not intending to take a call on this bill, because when it came to the House in its original form it seemed to be layered with significant prescriptive matters that I thought were more about bureaucracy and involvement of officials than actually about finding solutions. So I am pleased, after having a brief and cursory look at what is almost a total rewrite of the bill, to find that there are some commendable aspects to it, and National would certainly like to support it.

We live in a world where the tendency has been to dress up and overuse packaging, in a raft of ways, as a marketing proposal. I am talking about Part 2—I think we are on Part 2, “Product Stewardship”—and I guess this bill is one step in what needs to be a bit of a montage of things needed in order to change consumer attitudes to the whole notion of wastage around packaging, and the use of recyclable packaging. I think this bill is a step along that way. It is not a complete answer, but it leads us down the road to some interesting proposals, particularly in relation to product stewardship. I remember the birthday parties we used to have when I was quite a bit younger than I am now, where someone would wrap up a very small item several times in boxes and with layers and layers of paper. When today I buy a shirt, I am reminded very much of those pranks because of the wastage around its packaging, so what is proposed in this part is a step forward. As my colleague Jacqui Dean said, there is also the whole issue of whiteware and the need to change what we do; we live in a world where we can no longer rely on finite resources to be ever readily available. There is also the significantly negative impact on the environment of the creation of polystyrene and a whole lot of plastic packaging.

I will also mention an issue that I note in my peripatetic activities around the electorate and the country at the moment. Because it is winter time, significant baleage is being unwrapped and fed out through a variety of mechanisms. If there is one blight to be seen in winter agrarian scenes it is plastic polythene in a variety of colours—normally in green, white, and black, but it can be in other colours—flapping around and attached to fences. I have to say we are making progress, and there is a greater awareness that this needs to be managed. There also used to be a tendency for farmers to say they could destroy that plastic by burning it, as long as the fire was a hot fire. I have no idea whether that is true, and I do not know whether any farmer had a mechanism for actually measuring the heat of the fire to see whether it was destroying the particular chemicals that were given off when plastic was combusted in an open fire. It is very hard to keep such a fire hot enough to do whatever it is supposed to do. But there is an awareness of plastic wrap, and I am pretty interested to see whether product stewardship can do some specific things in this area.

I have seen a range of mechanisms for compressing bale wrap. There are others for washing it and cleaning it. There is a market for this stuff in Indonesia and in various parts of Asia, including China. It does not have to be a hugely complex task to compress this stuff and make it into a marketable product. I have a redundant conventional hay baler, valued probably somewhere between $150 and $200. It is perfectly good and it still works, but we have moved on from making conventional bales. The hay baler gobbles up this plastic as if it is going out of fashion. We can screw the tension down and end up with bales of plastic, and in Dunedin there is a recycling depot where this stuff can be taken. There the bales are cut and put into a super-high-density press for export, so what we need is some stimulus to actually make this happen. At the moment, a lot of this gathering up of baleage wrap gives only a small return—for example, to schools and boards of trustees. I look forward to this “Product Stewardship Bill”.

MARK BLUMSKY (National) : It is wonderful to have this opportunity to speak to the Waste Minimisation Bill, and I do so because I sat through the deliberations on it in the Local Government and Environment Committee, where I had the opportunity to hear all the submissions. I have been with the bill from the start and rise to speak to it for the first time actually feeling quite excited that it is here in its present form. I will be talking on Part 2, “Product stewardship”, but I just want to acknowledge the bill as it is before us in its present shape. And it is right that it is, because when the bill first came before the select committee in its original form, I thought there was not a shiver show in heck we would be supporting it, yet here we are now supporting it because of the select committee process. I applaud the process of the select committee, but, more important, I applaud the officers and officials involved, because they have done good work—a fantastic job. I say to the officials whom I see here that they did a marvellous job to get the bill into the shape it is in.

The bill had to be put into shape. It was obvious through the 316 submissions we heard that something had to be done, and product stewardship was a big part of that—just to keep the reference to Part 2, Madam Chair. The 316 submitters were passionate about waste and the need for the Government to be a leader in doing something about it, and product stewardship was a big part of that. It is amazing, actually, how much the issue of container deposit came before us. I have to say that I, like others who have spoken in relation to the submissions on product stewardship, think that container deposit was a big part of it. Without a doubt this bill will, when it passes, make a considerable impact on waste and on where and how people behave in relation to it in generations to come. I applaud Mr Norman for taking over the mantle from Nandor. Again, I am sure he will be making sure the bill goes through in its proper form. We are excited about where this will go.

I return to Part 2, “Product stewardship”, the cradle-to-grave aspect, and say that the most important thing coming through the bill for me is that it is designed as a framework. That was one of the things I took on board quite early. It means that things can be worked on, manoeuvred, and placed in the best possible ways. It is not the Government saying: “This is the way to do it.” The bill in its present form and the design of the product stewardship provision in Part 2 also give the ability for the private sector, for manufacturers—for those, if you like, from whom the waste is coming—to take on board the cradle-to-grave aspect themselves. As manufacturers, producers, or whatever, they will voluntarily be able to design their own scheme in a way to suit them best, rather than the Government saying: “This is the way it has to be done. We think this is the best way.”, because we do not know—the Government does not know, goodness me! The manufacturers in the sector should be able to handle their situation themselves. This legislation is a framework—a framework that needs to deal with many diverse situations—and it will provide regulatory support.

There will be free-riders. We saw through the select committee process that there are free-riders out there. Not all of the voluntary schemes have got everyone on board. This legislation may force them to come on board, which I think is very important. There are schemes out there that will, after we pass this bill, become a lot more relevant for those who have had the free ride, and if there are industries out there, or products out there, that are not going to pick up the chalice of product stewardship, then the Minister can force the issue. I think that is important. We have said out loud to the industries, “You sort it out yourselves. Take the cradle-to-grave aspect seriously. We have, and we are. We think it is important you find ways to reuse, recover, and minimise the waste. You sort out what’s best for your industry, because you guys know. But, hey, if you don’t, if you’re lazy, if you’re free-riding, guess what? We’ll change the playing field and we will make damn sure you do something about it.” I think that is more than appropriate. It is the role of Government, and it is the role of the bill. I think we got there in the end.

The bill is different from what we started with, but I say again to the officials involved that I think they did a good job in helping us to wrap up something with the submitters that I think will make a difference and leave a nice legacy for Nandor. Thank you.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : I want to jump up and take just a quick call on this part. I feel that we are all on the same page here, and I do not want this evening to be one of all of us getting up and saying the same things over and over again—

Jacqui Dean: Oh no, no!

MOANA MACKEY: —no matter how wonderful the speeches are, I say to Jacqui. I endorse what has been said.

This is an important part, dealing with product stewardship, and it is probably one of the most important parts of this bill. When we think about it logically, it just seems sensible that when someone is purchasing a product, it is probably the best time to make that person aware of the costs that come with disposing of that product and the packaging at the end of it. If we can all think about that up front, then it will allow people to make choices about the products they purchase, while realistically having a sense of the costs of that product both on them and on the environment at the end of that product’s life.

We have seen this in the emissions trading scheme, where we have been looking at the issue of products that contain refrigeration gases and the importance of product stewardship schemes. These gases are so greenhouse-gas intensive that if they leak into the atmosphere, the effects will be far worse than many of the other gases we are talking about, when it comes to climate change. But if these gases are contained, then they have absolutely no impact on the environment at all, so why should the people who produce them be penalised for that? It just goes to show the importance of product stewardship schemes not just when it comes to waste minimisation but also when it comes to climate change.

I know that there has been some concern—and that Zero Waste, in particular, has indicated that it would like to see some kind of modelling or some kind of leadership taken—about directing the way in which these product stewardship schemes are run. Zero Waste is worried that if it is left to industry alone to deal with this, it might be too onerous and it might not happen. Also, participants like Zero Waste may not have the opportunity to get involved in it. We have talked about that a bit tonight. We have discussed the importance of leaving this to the industry to work it out. There are many good product stewardship schemes out there already, and there are a number of voluntary schemes out there, too. We have given them the ability to become accredited if they so wish, and I think that that probably is the best way to go.

I would mention to anyone who may be concerned about this issue that the Local Government and Environment Committee did consider this issue. We took it very, very seriously. I think it can be seen from the agreement amongst members of the Committee of the whole House today about the importance of these schemes that probably all parties will be willing to monitor the situation and to come back to it if it becomes an issue. But I think we felt that the desire to do it was already out there, and that perhaps we did not need to come down on schemes too heavy-handedly in terms of us directing what is best for them, when they are already doing a pretty good job of doing some of those things.

The priority list of products is very important. When we were going through it, it became very tempting to end up with everything being a priority product, so it will be a difficult task to make sure that we get up front those products that need to be dealt with first.

Generally, I think that the changes the select committee made were good. I acknowledge the work of Steve Chadwick, the former chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee, who took the bill through the first part of its consideration. I came in once all the hard work had been done and took it through its last part. I acknowledge, of course, the former member Nandor Tanczos for his work on the bill and also the current member Russel Norman. I hope that we get to see this bill complete its Committee stage tonight.

NATHAN GUY (National) : This is an important bill and I want to make a contribution to the debate, particularly in light of those people who are in their vehicles after finishing work, and who are heading up the Kapiti Coast to Horowhenua where there has been no power today. There has been a major storm through that area, and of course that will result, and has resulted, in a lot of waste all around the place. I have had a lot of calls to my office today about it. Trees are down and the phone lines are down, and some roads up there are blocked. It will take some time to clear that debris or waste, and I urge the community of Horowhenua to be patient. I have been in contact with the mayor and the chief executive up there, and all the support services are on stand-by. A lot of destruction has been caused by this weather bomb that has headed our way.

This bill is in a different form now, and is back before the House. We had a very robust discussion in caucus as it made its way through the select committee process. I need to acknowledge the good work that Nicky Wagner has done. Some of her Supplementary Order Papers are on the Table this afternoon, and I hope they will be endorsed by the Committee. This bill has come back in a different form because of the parliamentary process, and the select committee has worked hard on it. I know that Mark Blumsky and the team have been going up and down the country, hearing a lot of submissions on this bill.

Part 2, “Product stewardship”, will result in a scheme that hopefully will be flexible. Mr Roy made a very, very good contribution when covering his rural background in Invercargill. He mentioned baleage wrap—the green wrap around bales that many members will have seen around the countryside. Of course the manufacturers and the people selling that product do not want it back because of the terrible smell. But we need to think about a programme for that product, rather than having it just clogging up our landfills. So that is an important part of this bill. Its other aspect, of course, is the provision that when we purchase any whiteware component, we will possibly be able to get a refund or discount for the longevity of that item at the end of its life. I think that is a very, very important aspect.

I look forward to Mr Norman making a contribution tonight on this bill. After Nandor Tanczos, who was the proponent of this bill, made his valedictory speech, he produced a hammer out of his pocket and caused some waste to Parliament. He attacked his bench top. I am not sure whether this wood is New Zealand kauri, or exactly what—

Chris Auchinvole: Rimu.

NATHAN GUY: It is rimu. I knew I was close; it is a New Zealand native. So I want to know from Mr Norman, in relation to Part 2 covering product stewardship, whether the New Zealand rimu that was damaged by Mr Tanczos in this Chamber was able to be recycled. My understanding is that the damage caused by the former Green member to that piece of timber resulted in an invoice for payment going to the Green Party, and so it should have done. I look forward to—

Jacqui Dean: What about the watch?

NATHAN GUY: I am not sure about the watch. That is a very valid point, I tell Mrs Dean—whether the watch was able to be recycled under the product stewardship covered by Part 2. So I look forward to Mr Norman making a contribution. Members on this side of the Chamber have made several speeches now, and we would like Mr Norman to respond to a couple of aspects of this very important Part 2.

• Part 2 agreed to.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) : This is an interesting part, as it relates to the waste disposal levy. I think this is probably the most interesting part of the bill, because the waste disposal levy will have advantages but I believe that there also are some perils inherent in it. I do have some misgivings about this levy, notwithstanding National’s support of this much-changed bill from the original bill as introduced by the former Green member of Parliament who did not recycle his watch. That is shame. It is not what I would have done. There are plenty of people who would like a second-hand watch.

This waste disposal levy, as introduced, was to be set at $25 per tonne. A tonne of concrete would be clean fill, I suppose, so would it come under this waste disposal levy? [Interruption] OK, so concrete, and I presume wood products, would be regarded as clean fill and therefore not part of this waste disposal levy regime. I want to thank my colleague Nicky Wagner for the depth of her knowledge on this bill. Nicky has done a great job in helping to shape this bill, which, as introduced was a far different piece of legislation from the one we have now.

So it was the Local Government and Environment Committee’s recommendation that the sum of this waste disposal levy be reduced to $10 per tonne. This figure will be used as an initial figure, and I think it is in recognition of the fact that it will take time before worthwhile schemes in waste reduction attract funding through the levy fund. If I understand the bill, that levy fund will be administered by the Waste Advisory Board, which will advise the Minister and will then award grants on behalf of the waste disposal levy.

It sounds great; it does sound good. But I have misgivings on two points. To make my first point, I refer members for a moment to an area up in the Waitaki Valley, towards Kurow, where there is a spot along the Waitaki River that is used for “fly dumping”, as we call it in the South Island. I do not what know what it is called up here in the north, but we call it fly dumping, and it is disgusting. People dispose of mainly household rubbish over a bank near a river—thanks very much for that, folks; thanks for all that stuff going into our water! Introducing a waste levy of $10 a tonne does not sound like much, but the question I have is whether it will encourage a greater level of fly dumping.

Let us face it—those people are prepared to dump waste over the river banks, thinking “out of sight, out of mind”. We grew out of that thinking 50 years ago, did we not? But there are still some people who think like that. My misgiving on that point is that it would encourage fly dumping. I would like some assurance from the member in the chair, Russel Norman, that he will address this item specifically. If the member was listening, I am sure he will take it on board. Maybe I will repeat it, because I would like some assurance from the member that enough thinking has gone into the development of this waste disposal levy so that fly dumping is not encouraged. I would like an answer specifically to that question from the member in the chair.

My second misgiving about this waste disposal levy, although I am in general support of it, is that maybe it will encourage anti-competitive behaviour, particularly within small local authorities, although I would not discount it happening in some larger local authorities. The revenue, of course, from this waste disposal levy is split fifty-fifty, with 50 percent allocated to territorial authorities on a per capita basis, to be spent on waste minimisation, as identified in their waste management and waste minimisation plans—and there is another wee plan for local government.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) : I wanted to speak just briefly to clause 24 and to an amendment that is in part a response to an amendment put forward by Nicky Wagner. In clause 24 there is an exemption from the levy if one does not store the waste material for more than 3 months. It is quite a sensible exemption, but both of us, and a number of other people, are of the view that 3 months is too short. The member, Nicky, has moved an amendment to make that time period 6 months, and the Green Party is proposing to make it 12 months.

Jacqui Dean: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. The member’s name is Nicky Wagner, not Nicky.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs): Thank you.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: My apologies. We are suggesting that in clause 24(3) we change 3 months to 12 months. We think there is no reason why that time frame cannot be extended.

Dail Jones: Has the amendment been tabled?

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: It has. We agree with the general intention of that member’s amendment to change it from 3 months to 12 months, because it leaves more flexibility for those people who are dealing with recycling.

I spent some of the day on the phone speaking with the original author of this bill, Nandor Tanczos, and looking at all the amendments that have been put forward. We are getting a little bit more up to speed from the former Green MP about the different amendments.

Hon Member: He’s nice and relaxed.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: Yes, he is very nice and relaxed; he is back at home now, up in the Waikato. Nandor was very much of the view that the amendment was sensible and that it would be good to extend that period to 12 months. So we will be suggesting 12 months, instead of the proposed 6 months.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) : I will take a short call this time. I had several concerns about Part 3 and the waste disposal levy. My second misgiving is that, perhaps, there may be some nature of competition between local groups within a community, be it large or small. In particular, there may well be competition between the local authority, the territorial authority, and the community groups that are competing for this finite level of waste disposal levy moneys. I am not sure about this, and, again, I would be interested in an explanation. I am still waiting for an explanation from the member in the chair, Russel Norman, as to whether he considers that the occurrence of fly dumping will increase because of the imposition of a waste disposal levy. I would very much like his view on that.

I go back to my second concern, which is about competition. Let us take the scenario of a territorial authority that has the community behind it, is very committed to waste recycling, and can see an opportunity in this legislation—and so it should—and then makes an application to the Waste Advisory Board for some of the funding for a waste minimisation programme. That is wonderful; it is laudable on behalf of the local authority. But there may also be a community group within that local authority—it does not have to be in the same town but it is in the same local authority—that would very much like to do the same thing. The concern I have—and I would like the member’s advice on this—is that we would now have communities working against each other. Surely that was not the intention in this bill.

If this is an unintended consequence of Part 3, which creates the waste disposal levy, I would like some discussion on it, and I would like an explanation. I do need to say I was not part of the select committee discussion on this, so I would genuinely like an explanation of those two matters. I would like to know whether fly dumping would be increased because of the waste levy at landfill—or disposal facilities, as we call them now—and whether there would be some competition within the same or similar communities for that waste disposal levy funding.

ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) : I did not have the delight of sitting on the Local Government and Environment Committee. When I picked up this version of the bill I thought it was a huge improvement, but I did hope that my colleagues on the select committee had some things to say about Part 3. This bill is a curate’s egg. It is good in parts and bad in parts. In my humble opinion this bill shows a nanny State gone wrong in terms of the striking of a levy, in the select committee, that is to apply nationally as a waste disposal levy.

In this little bill here, we have nearly 10 pages of prescriptive requirements about the setting of the levy, the way the load is to be calculated, what happens if the load is calculated wrongly, whether one can have time to pay the levy, and a whole lot of stuff. If we want a levy, then we should say to the local authority: “You shall collect a levy.” That is all we need—a clause that says something like that. This bill is an absolute disaster.

I have a very modest investment in a property in the Te Ānau basin. I stress that it is quite, quite modest. I am in the habit of using a refuse facility at Te Ānau. I now have to pay a levy when I take stuff to the collection point. The cost depends on whether it is green waste, whiteware, or whatever. Workers at the collection point now decide how much I should pay for what I bring. Are they doing it ultra vires? I would like to have an argument with them if that is the case.

When we start doing this, we gets into all kinds of mix-ups. For example, if we load up our trailer and go to the refuse point at Te Ānau, out past the golf course, and we get there and have not brought the coupons, then we cannot unload our stuff because the people at the refuse site cannot be trusted. So we have to go back to the BP garage in town, or another outlet, and buy our coupons and go back. Then the guy at the refuse point makes an assessment. He might say: “That is an overloaded double-axle trailer. You will need six coupons.” But his normal rule is that a double-axle trailer is five coupons. We have to go back to the BP station to get another coupon, and then we go back and find that the refuse point is closed. All of those rules are now operating in a fulsome manner in the Te Ānau basin without this legislation. It is bureaucracy gone mad.

Then, horror of horrors, I see there are some delegated responsibilities that would allow the Minister to make other regulations in relation to the collecting—

Mark Blumsky: You’ll be a good Minister.

ERIC ROY: I have to say to Mr Blumsky that I do not want to be anywhere near this legislation. It is a serious case of nanny State gone wrong, where the Local Government and Environment Committee has said that the collection of a waste disposal levy should not be $25 a tonne, but $10 a tonne. I would love to know how it worked that out, but in case we get it wrong we have 10 pages for a Minister with delegated responsibilities to sort it all out, so that we can collect the waste disposal levy.

This bill is good in parts, but, for goodness’ sake, this bit here is overkill beyond any expression that one would like to have. Yes, there needs to be a waste disposal—I am not arguing about that—but here the principle of enshrining something in law is a case of serious overkill. I hope my colleagues had some serious things to say about this part on the select committee. I ask whether we are supporting this clause.

Chris Auchinvole: Yes, we are.

ERIC ROY: Oh my gosh! We should wait until the next caucus meeting. There will be a sorting out over this thing. This is serious overkill.

Mark Blumsky: Whose side are you on?

ERIC ROY: Well, I have expressed that I want to see the provisions of this bill enacted, but I have to say that this is bureaucracy gone berserk. Oh dear, oh dear!

SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour) : I will take just a short call on Part 3. I am one of the new members on the Local Government and Environment Committee, so I did not have the opportunity to hear a lot of the public submissions on the Waste Minimisation Bill. But in the short time I have been on the committee I have found that it has, by and large, been very supportive of the aim of the bill. I am happy to say that Labour is also supporting this bill.

It is important, on this occasion, to say that we have had a distinguished visitor from the Pacific region, the Hon Toke Talagi, who is the Premier of Niue. That is significant, because we are talking about an issue that is to do with the overall environmental challenges that we now face here and in the Pacific region. Environmental issues are do-or-die issues for the people of the Pacific.

The Waste Minimisation Bill is a significant issue. The bill shows great leadership from this House in terms of moving the issue forward. It is a starting point; it is not the end. This issue will not just go away. Some members may remember a cartoon that was on TV some years back, about a man who kept collecting rubbish. The cartoon showed the rubbish pile getting bigger and bigger and covering the whole Earth. Well, that is the reality we are now facing; that is the challenge.

I come to Part 3, “Waste disposal levy”. Concerns are being raised about that levy by National members of the select committee, and no doubt the member in the chair, Dr Russel Norman, will have a few things to say about that. But this is new territory, and I suppose we have to explore places we have not been to before. In respect of the aim of this levy—firstly, the levy can be increased so that people will be discouraged from disposing of rubbish, or, secondly, it can be reduced, which is what the select committee decided to do. It reduced the levy from $25 a tonne to $10 a tonne, in an effort to try to cater for the concerns raised by some members of that committee. There will be a review by the Minister after 2 years. We have to have the kahunas—if I am able to say that—to take some leadership, to go with this, and to review it at the end of the 2 years. There is also the opportunity to review it every 3 years thereafter.

I think that the beauty of this levy for me personally is that an amount of money will be made available for community organisations and local government, to encourage the community and our local governments to look at ways in which we can minimise the rubbish we are creating. An assessment was made by Local Government New Zealand that on a 50-50 share, the money could amount to about $50 million. That is not something to sneer about; it is a significant amount of money when we consider that some community organisations working in this area are already doing that work on the smell of an oily rag, and by putting in their own resources.

I fail to see why concerns have been raised; nevertheless, they are concerns that need to be addressed. At the end of the day the select committee has agreed that this Waste Minimisation Bill needs to go forward, and I for one join with my Labour colleagues in supporting it. As I said, it is a starting point. We need to pursue this area for the sake of the future of our nation, and for the region, as well. Thank you.

DAIL JONES (NZ First) : New Zealand First will support the Waste Minimisation Bill. The legislation is a tribute to Nandor Tanczos. It is a shame that Nandor is not here to take part in the debate, but I expect he might be listening. He was always great to work with.

This is very useful legislation. Way, way back, in about 1979, Venn Young talked about putting a levy on Coca-Cola bottles and suchlike, and getting a refund on them, as is done in many countries. Some way of dealing with waste is long overdue in New Zealand. This bill is to be commended, and New Zealand First supports it.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National) : I would like to take a very brief call on the Waste Minimisation Bill, in part to support my friend and colleague Eric Roy, because he is a rural dweller. I am sure we have had similar experiences.

I have been fortunate enough to live in places like Devonport, which was the first borough to start intensive classification of rubbish collection, and to sort rubbish into biodegradable rubbish and that which could be reused. It was a good population there, and it was very rare that at the end of a Saturday there was anything left at all except household rubbish fit only for throwing away. Everything else was recycled. It was a grand social event. It was beautifully tidy, there was no smell, and everything was categorised. A guy was imported from the United States to do it, and rubbish was not a problem. One had to have a little sticker on one’s car to gain entry or exit.

• Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

CHRIS AUCHINVOLE: To cut to the chase and not use all the 4 minutes I have remaining, I would like to express the sincere hope that the Committee really has given full regard to the implications of this part.

I mentioned that my baptism in waste management was in Devonport, which I think was the first borough to specialise in sorting rubbish—and it was very, very effective. I then went to Moana—at Lake Brunner on the West Coast—which had a traditional, old-fashioned dump. There was no problem with leachate because it ran straight into the Arnold River, which ran into the Grey River, which ran out to sea. It was appalling, but it did not last too long. When I was chair of the community association we started to make some effective changes, and we now have a very effective recycling centre. Indeed, Greymouth has a very sophisticated tip—if we call them tips nowadays—that copes with all forms of rubbish.

But I note that the Minister for the Environment, Trevor Mallard, has insisted that there be no rubbish tips with a view on the West Coast. Therefore, rubbish from Haast and Jackson Bay has to be dragged all the way up north to Greymouth. Let us remember that tourists going to that area produce 1.8 kilograms—those are the statistically correct figures—of rubbish per day. The Department of Conservation’s solution to having to empty rubbish bins was to take away the bins, in the hope that tourists would take out what they brought in. Any rubbish collector who works for the Westland District Council will tell us that tourists certainly do not take out their rubbish. I hope this bill is designed for more than aspiration, and I hope it will take into account the practical implications of rubbish collection and removal as well as the levies.

As we are talking about levies, let us remember that entrepreneurial people abound. Before we used the centralised dump at Greymouth, near Rūnanga, it was decided that each community could retain its own dump for the limited period of its approval from the regional council. An entrepreneurial young gentleman worked for a joinery company, which was asked by Dobson ratepayers why it was dumping its rubbish for free in the Dobson dump when in fact it should have been paying to put it into the Greymouth dump. It turned out that the joinery company was paying the young guy $7 every time he took out the rubbish, but because he lived at Dobson he knew he could dump it for free there. We have to take account of the entrepreneurial spirit of young guys who drive trucks.

But seriously, I would appreciate hearing from the bill’s promoter, Russel Norman, so we can hear that he appreciates the fact that the Buller District Council, I think, is considering a contract to dispose of its rubbish in Nelson. There are huge costs involved in moving rubbish. I would like to hear—and I am sure I will be able to take back—the Committee’s considerations on some of the distances imposed on areas that have a very low rating base.

JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) : Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to speak on Part 3. I want to make three or four comments. Although I was not in the Chamber, I listened with interest to the debate this afternoon, and I want to make two points that I think are important. First of all, I thank all the members on the Local Government and Environment Committee. When this bill first came before the select committee, I thought: “Oh, bless my soul, here we go again! It’s another Green, tree-hugging, leftie, what-a-whole-lot-of-nonsense bill.”

Hon Ruth Dyson: You did not!

JOHN CARTER: It is funny; the member might think not, but that is exactly what I thought. I thought: “Fancy having to put up with this!”

Well, as time went by and I got more and more into it, I became a convert, as I think every member of the select committee did. It has been a steep learning curve for someone like me, with my black bush singlet from the back of the Hokianga. It has been great to have the opportunity to consider this bill—to the extent that Nicky Wagner and I took the opportunity, at the invitation of Warren Snow, to look at the system in South Australia, and I will talk about that. But I have to say that all the members of the select committee—including the chair, members of the Opposition as well as the Government, and the Greens—have worked constructively together to make this a better bill for the betterment of New Zealand. The fact that the bill is before the Committee in this form is a testament to the fact that select committees work.

One of the great debates the select committee had—as you will know, Madam Chair, because you were one of the erstwhile members of the committee—was about the title of the bill. The title is the first thing that New Zealanders need to start getting their heads around. When we have used bits of paper, like the one I have here, we screw them up and chuck them away—I hope I do not need this bit of paper now—and we call them waste. Well, I might be finished with this bit of paper, but it is not waste, at all. It should be considered a resource. When I have finished using this pen and I chuck it in the bin, it might not be of any use to me any more, but it will be of use to somebody somewhere. It is a resource.

The tyre on a car that someone has finished with can be a resource for someone else, too. Indeed, in that regard I make the point that car manufacturers come before the select committee. They said they wanted something called container deposit legislation. I know that a lot of people will tell me to wash my mouth out because those are terrible words to use in the New Zealand Parliament. But the manufacturers said that if a brand new car worth $30,000 could be sold for $30,500, they would put the $500 aside in a bank—not in one of those institutions that might collapse—where it would stay. The car would pass through people’s hands and finally reach its end-user, whoever that may be—and it is likely to be someone impoverished like me from the back of the Hokianga. What I normally do with an old car is drive it into the bush and set fire to it, where it becomes a pollutant and causes problems to the environment. But I could take that car back and claim the $500. It would be worth $500; it would have some value. [Interruption] I could take the member’s car back, as well.

Hon Member: What about my bottles?

JOHN CARTER: That is the point. I heard someone say earlier that Venn Young talked about putting a price on bottles. Well, when I was a lad, which was just a couple of years ago, we used to collect 2c on each bottle.

Chris Auchinvole: Bottle drives.

JOHN CARTER: Yes. The Scouts and the Girl Guides did bottle drives. A whole lot of us did.

The point is that those bottles were not waste. They were resource because they had a value that was worth redeeming. That is why I bring our attention to this provision in the bill. Here we are talking about a levy. We have a levy because we want to put a punitive tax on people who are disposing of what they consider to be waste. We want to encourage them, because of the cost, to consider it not as waste but as something that is of use to somebody. The reason we do that is so that we can encourage them to see that the things they consider waste are actually someone else’s resource.

In that regard, I make the following point. What we are doing, again—and I must say I am a little concerned that some local bodies have actually bought into this—is saying that the end-user is responsible for the disposal of that bit of waste. So whom do we turn to? We do not turn to the manufacturer, we do not turn to the retailer, and we do not turn to the user—although we ask the user to pay. Instead, we tell local government that it is the last man standing, that it is its fault, and that it must get rid of the waste. We say: “Here is John Carter’s bag of rubbish—you get rid of it, Mr Mayor.” The point is that we are continually loading stuff onto local authorities. They have accepted the responsibility. In fact, because of the cost to a lot of local authorities, they have asked for this levy so that they have a way to mitigate their expenses and actually find other alternatives.

The issue is whether that is the best thing we can do with regard to what people call waste but is actually a resource. I say it is not. I say—and I am pleased I am in Parliament saying this tonight—that in time we too will adopt the system that Nicky Wagner and I saw in South Australia. It is too early yet, and it will not happen tomorrow, but there is some discussion of it in the bill. What will finally happen is that we will get to the stage where we have a thing called container deposit legislation, or the like, right across the country on every item that is brought into this nation. We will have it because it is a sensible way of making people responsible up-front for the end-use of the item. It means that people will automatically think: “This isn’t a bit of waste that I can just chuck away. It actually has a value in our society.”

The reason why lots of people are opposed to it is that they think they will be disadvantaged because of the cost. Well, if this country applies it correctly, then there is no competitive disadvantage. If it is applied equally right across the board, on every product at a proper level, then it is paid for upfront, but consumers pay for it as they purchase. Then they get it redeemed at the end, and the person who actually turns it into another product gets the value for it.

The final point we need to consider is that everybody pays for waste in this nation—everybody. It does not matter whether, finally, it is the local authority, the ratepayer, the consumer, the retailer, or the manufacturer. The way in which we deal with waste these days is a cost on society. But if we turned the issue round, looked at it the other way, and said: “This is not rubbish; this is actually a resource and we can get value from it.”, then it becomes something we can value. Part 3 leads us part-way down that path. But I look forward to the day when this bill continues to strengthen, and I look forward to the day when finally this nation accepts that we have a tremendous resource in the stuff we call waste. .

Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Minister of Conservation) : I am really thrilled that we have got to the Waste Minimisation Bill in the House tonight. I acknowledge Nandor Tanczos. This bill was indelibly branded with Nandor’s name, and even though Dr Norman is in the chair tonight I would like to acknowledge Nandor Tanczos and the work that he did, because this was a member’s bill, and it is not often that a member’s bill becomes a Government bill. Even more spectacular, it is not often that we reach unanimous agreement, as we have on this bill—I am dying to see how we will all vote on this bill. The Local Government and Environment Committee, which I chaired, was a lovely experience in relation to this bill.

When we first received the bill, it was quite cumbersome, it was overly bureaucratic and complicated, and it was overly complex. But we have worked through it. I then handed it over and I have watched what is happening under the new chair, Moana Mackey; it is great to know that it has progressed through and that the committee worked so well. We also went over to Australia—as I heard the previous speaker, John Carter, talk about—and that was very experiential for us all, because we saw that waste is not waste, at all. I had hoped that this bill would be called the “Waste Minimisation and Resource Recovery Bill”, because that is what we are trying to teach the next generation. Some of us are too old, and we need to be grandparented out about seeing waste as a resource, and as gold, actually—where there is muck, there is brass. We learnt that when we went around many sites in New Zealand, too. We saw that if we look at waste quite differently, as something that we do not just chuck in a hole in the ground and fill in, we can manage it quite differently, and significantly alter the way we deal with waste in New Zealand, and also then look at the sustainable use of resources.

Congratulations to the committee. I want to say too that because this Government picked up the bill as a Government bill—now in Dr Russel Norman’s name—the bill also fits in with a lot of the other work that we have led as a Labour Government on issues of sustainability, and I am proud of that. The emissions trading scheme, the New Zealand Transport Strategy, and improving the framework for managing freshwater resources are all sustainable initiatives of this Government. I just want to talk about the levy here. I notice it has gone down from $25 a tonne to $10 a tonne—how disappointing! We need to find the right price-sensitive level so it is a disincentive, rather than a punishment. It will not be a punishment at all, because we will use that levy really well with a—I see it is not an authority now—waste advisory board. But it is about striking the right economic disincentive so that people decide that perhaps they had better have another look at their waste, do source-point sorting, and get recycling and all sorts of initiatives going that excite the community, rather than seeing it as punitive. I think we will take a while inching up, if it is an annual increase to the levy, until we reach that right price-sensitive level to change behaviour. Congratulations to the select committee. I hope we all vote in favour of this bill. It would truly show that we are a sustainable nation and that we all want to make a difference. Thank you, Madam Chair.

NICKY WAGNER (National) : As members will have gathered from some of the comments of my colleagues, the imposition of a waste disposal levy was a hot topic in our caucus. It was also top of mind during submission time at the Local Government and Environment Committee. But we eventually decided that if we considered a user-pays fee and an economic instrument designed to encourage waste minimisation it would be useful—the benefits would outweigh the costs. We wanted to reward people and companies for minimising their waste, and penalise those who did not make the effort. As everyone is always looking for the cheaper way, individuals, businesses, and organisations that make an effort to minimise their waste can save money.

We are very aware that many of the present collection systems and payment methods for waste collection do not identify or reward people who manage their waste effectively. In the domestic situation, people often pay the same amount, whether they are conscientious waste minimisers or profligate with their waste. We hope that systems can be developed in the long term that recognise and reward people who put effort into waste minimisation.

We were also keen to find a way to finance capital expenditure for waste minimisation projects. At present, most of those projects are paid for by the ratepayer via local government and, again, everyone pays the same, regardless of his or her waste behaviour. Proceeds from this waste levy will be split fifty-fifty between territorial authorities—on a population basis—and a centralised contestable fund for waste minimisation projects. The cost of administrating that fund and the Waste Advisory Board will come from the portion that goes to the contestable fund.

Territorial authorities can spend levy money only to promote or achieve waste minimisation, in accordance with their waste management and minimisation plans. That was a really important ring-fencing of the money. Many people who made submissions to the Local Government and Environment Committee were nervous about the waste levy, but were much happier if they thought it would be applied only to waste minimisation projects.

My Supplementary Order Paper 221 includes a third criteria for territorial authorities, which requires the territorial authority, when funding waste services through the waste levy, to treat private enterprise, council-controlled organisations, and their own in-house operations on an equal basis. This deals with an issue raised by waste service operators, which were concerned that councils could use the levy to subsidise council services that might unfairly undercut private enterprise and those who have been early adopters and have proactively embraced waste minimisation. I do not think those operators deserve that. It would be wasteful and certainly not desirable to use the levy to create unnecessary new organisations. It would be far more logical for a territorial authority to have a contract with existing waste service operators, whoever they are, as long as their operations are cost-effective.

Once we got through the philosophy of the waste levy, the debate then turned to the dollar amount. It has been set at $10 a tonne for every tonne of waste that is disposed at a disposal facility. Originally, as Steve Chadwick mentioned, we were considering $25 a tonne on the basis that that amount would make people change their behaviour quickly and more significantly, but finally we decided, considering ever-increasing living costs, that that amount would be excessive and that we would begin at $10.

We were also concerned—and this is the issue Jacqui Dean raised earlier—that too big a jump in the waste levy could lead to more illegal dumping, or fly dumping, which would be bad for the environment. A levy at $10 a tonne will collect $30 million a year, and that will be enough, hopefully, to see some new, innovative, and successful waste minimisation projects. The amount of the levy will be reviewed by the Minister within 2 years of the legislation’s commencement and every 3 years after that.

I also have another Supplementary Order Paper on this part of the bill. Supplementary Order Paper 220 concerns the timing of a deposit in clause 24(3). This was really designed to ensure that waste was not deposited just to avoid paying a levy. When we discussed this in the select committee, we felt that 3 months would cover this issue, but since then we have had submissions from recyclers who say that often it takes them longer than 3 months to aggregate amounts of waste material before it can be transported. Those recyclers were concerned that they may be caught under this clause.

Supplementary Order Paper 220 alters the time from 3 months to 6 months in order to give that flexibility. There had been some discussion about altering it to 12 months, but we were concerned that might mean people might fly dump temporarily, and we felt that 6 months should give them flexibility. The original clause was put in when we were alerted during the select committee process to the issue where some organisations actually stockpile recyclable materials that can be processed at a future time. We felt it was reasonable for them to do that, but not unreasonable for them to apply to the Minister when they needed an extended length of time.

I seek the support of the Committee on both my amendments, which are set out on Supplementary Order Paper 221 and Supplementary Order Paper 220. Thank you.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : I rise to take a call on Part 3 of the Waste Minimisation Bill. This is a very important part of the bill, and the Local Government and Environment Committee spent a long period of time discussing the pros and cons of many of these parts. A lot of these matters have been outlined, but I want to mention again the reasons the select committee decided to change the waste disposal levy from $25 a tonne to $10. We heard a number of submissions, and the concern was that if we started off lower, we would probably be able to bring more people in without—as many members have said—running the risk of illegal dumping, which would go against the entire intention of this bill, as Nicky Wagner has already said. This amount will still bring in a significant amount of money to begin the levy fund.

As my colleague Steve Chadwick said, we felt that it was a question of balance. We do not know that we have got it exactly right. A lot of this tends to be a case of just picking figures out of the air based on one’s best estimate, but in consultation with the sponsor of this bill, Nandor Tanczos, we decided that $10 per tonne was the best way to go to start with. It was a point of much contention on the Local Government and Environment Committee. Numerous committee members—and people may be surprised to know who they were—contended that it should be a lot more than that to start off.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Who was that?

MOANA MACKEY: I could not possibly say. As the chairperson of the committee I take my responsibilities very seriously. But it was the topic of much, much discussion.

All members of the Committee and all members of this House will be watching with much interest to see how this part of the bill develops and to see whether the revenue raised from the levy is enough to meet the demands of territorial authorities and private groups that are interested in waste minimisation initiatives. Certainly at the select committee it was amazing to hear from the wide variety of groups and from the territorial authorities about what they were doing in this area and what they wanted to do, and about the fact that they felt constrained by not having a fund such as this to assist them to do that.

The other issue we spent a lot of time discussing, and it was another one where we were never going to please everybody, was how the levy should be split between territorial authorities and private organisations and whether there should be a split. We settled on fifty-fifty as a split between the two. Again, it was our best effort to find a compromise. One of our main concerns was that we did not want to penalise those territorial authorities that had already made great strides in this area at their own cost, by saying: “We’re now going to pay for those territorial authorities that have not done anything to do what you are already doing, but you yourselves cannot apply to this fund to pay for advances in what you want to do.”

I take on board the comments made by Nicky Wagner about making it clear that the money is fairly distributed when it goes to the territorial authorities. My concern is around some of the wording. We need to clarify this, because I do not think we have a definition of “waste services” in the bill. My concern is that when we do not put definitions in legislation we potentially open it up to an enormous amount of litigation. I think that is just a wording thing, and I hope it is something we can sort through here in the Committee stage. But certainly when I looked at the beginning of the bill I saw that we do not have a definition of “waste services”. In an area like this, where we are likely to get some contention between the numerous groups out there that do not want any money going to territorial authorities and that want it all to go into a contestable fund, I think we need to be very careful to close off every loophole possible towards the matter going to judicial review or some kind of litigious argument about what a waste service is and whether a group is actually doing a waste service, because our committee has not come up with that definition. I just flag that concern off the top of my head about that particular Supplementary Order Paper.

The other Supplementary Order Paper the member mentioned relates to extending from 3 months to 6 months the amount of time waste can be deposited before it is considered disposed waste and subject to the waste levy. I think that is a good compromise. Although I could see the advantages of taking it out to 12 months, our concern was that that could potentially mean there would be no funds in this levy fund until 2010, and that is certainly not what the select committee intended. I do not know that that is what would happen, but given that it is a possibility I think that 6 months is a good compromise. It gives flexibility for the different groups to meet that concern, and it also allows us to address the other concern. Thank you.

MARK BLUMSKY (National) : Yes, as the previous speaker and current chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee alluded to, we made a lot of compromises through the course of this process—which has taken quite a few years, I think, to be honest. But they were compromises that added value, I am sure. Much to the displeasure of some of my colleagues maybe, I have to say that I am a fan of the levy. I think the levy is a wonderful tool. It is a tool to make the waste minimisation process better, because I think funding is needed to make sure that there are initiatives that are proactive and effective in dealing with the issues ahead. We do not have enough money in the big pot of things—there is not the money around. I am well aware, and submitters made it quite clear to us when they came through the process, that initiatives are out there that could be funded, and it would actually make a difference if they could be funded. I think the levy would address that.

While Nicky Wagner and Moana Mackey are discussing the word changes, I want to raise an issue about the Supplementary Order Papers. In particular I will refer to Supplementary Order Paper 221, put forward by Nicky Wagner, which talks about funding waste services through a waste levy, and contains the phrase “must treat private enterprise”. I will explain where that came from. Quite simply, the other day I was made aware of the magazine I am holding, which is called LeafTurner. The industry has come a long way. The whole area of composting, biodegrading, and everything else has come a long way recently. We are now at the stage where there are magazines that focus just on composting. I thought, gosh, I would never have thought I would even have had a glance through this magazine but I was nosy because of the Waste Minimisation Bill, so I started glancing at it. I noted that some pretty clever companies have been set up that are doing good work in the whole green waste recycling industry.

One company in particular, called Green Fingers, caught my eye. It is a company that is doing some very significant business and making quite a difference in the area of waste. I wanted to know a bit more about what Green Fingers were doing, so I rang and had a discussion with one of its directors, just, as I said, to learn a bit more. I congratulated the company on its initiative, and on the fact that it was doing some pretty good work in this whole area. I asked the director how he saw the future. He said: “Look, our future’s pretty good, apart from that bill that’s coming through the House, because we have a concern.” I asked him what he was talking about. He said “Well, what you’re doing with the levy, by giving it to territorial authorities as well, is you’re actually giving them the opportunity to set up in competition to us.” I asked what he meant by “set up in competition” with his company. He said that he was running a business where operators went to the back of the house to collect the green waste, but that if a city council set it up, it would have the green wheelie bins at the front of the gate, and the bins would be free. He said that his company charged for its service because it comes to the back of the house, it is quite proactive, and makes sure the waste is looked after appropriately.

The company was concerned that a council, using its percentage of the levy, would set up a new waste business in recycling that was in direct competition with it. I bought into that argument; I thought that it was not fair that our use of the levy would fund someone to knock out some other company in private business that is doing a bloody good job. So this amendment that Nicky Wagner has put before the Committee says quite bluntly that if a council does get a levy, then the council should not use the levy to knock out some other company that is already doing the business in that area, and doing it well. I am quite happy if a council sets up, but because it is being subsidised using levies or ratepayers’ money, it must give the same environment, the same set of rules, and the same advantages to that private enterprise, as well. That would be fair, and that is in fact what this amendment does. It sends a signal to local government that it should not bust out some company that has been doing a good job in this area just because a local government organisation thinks it can do it, use it as a little earner, and use the levy. That is not fair, so it should not take that path, and this amendment is quietly ensuring that it will not do that. I never thought about it, through the process, but after I read this little magazine and spoke to Green Fingers, that company made me aware of the fact that it was nervous that a council might knock it out of business, and I did not think that that was what we actually intended the whole amendment to do.

I like the levy; I like the fact that there will be funds for innovation. I am very comfortable that local authorities will add half of the levy, but the issue I have is that they cannot use it to displace others. They cannot use it as an extra, and if they are using it for existing services they have to take some of that money off the rates bill. I am pleased, however, that there is a 2-year review. I think that $10 is too cheap. I think that $31 million divided by 2 does not leave enough in the fund. I believe there are some very significant projects in waste minimisation that can be put on stream, but they will need some capital. That capital, I think, should be from the levy, but the $15 million for the other half is not enough. I am a fan of seeing it going right up to $25, and that is why I am hoping that the 2-year review will look at that, address the fact, see a bloody big list of initiatives that will make a difference, and make the call to increase the levy. There is not huge unanimity in caucus for that, but I hope that that is where it goes because this will probably be my last chance to speak before they drag me off the stage. Thank you.

JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) : You see, that is the problem—we just saw some waste. The member said he would take a minute extra and he took 2½. How much waste was that? The member, in a way, just argued against himself. He said he is in favour of the levy. I heard my colleague Eric Roy earlier arguing and worrying—as I think Chris Auchinvole is also worrying—about this part of the bill because of the compliance and bureaucracy it establishes. That is the issue that worries me. I just heard our member very correctly state that the amendment coming though will ask local government bodies to desist competing—unfairly, because they will use ratepayer subsidies—against businesses that have already established themselves on a proper business basis. What worries me with this levy is that it is setting up more compliance, more bureaucracy, more control, and more regulation. Somewhere along—

Bob Clarkson: Are we in favour of it?

JOHN CARTER: Yes, we are, as an interim measure. As an interim measure we support it because it is a start.

It is a punitive measure, however. Basically it says to people that if they do not do it right, they will be punished, whereas we want to incentivise people to understand that what they call waste is not waste—it is a resource. And one day, as I said earlier, we will get to the stage where this nation understands that. In the meantime, we will be spending a whole lot of ratepayers’ money, particularly, and probably some taxpayers’ money as well, on a system that establishes more bureaucracy, and a whole lot of people will then start making decisions, rules, and regulations about things they do not know about.

Let me give members an example—it is a little bit off the point—in relation to the Building Act. I was talking to a roofer the other day. He told me that the Department of Building and Housing has just brought out a whole raft of new regulations. He said that if he has to build a roof exactly as the department has told him to, and if he has to comply with its rules and regulations, the roof is going to leak. Well, I am afraid that we are going to end up with the same sort of thing here. We will have rules and regulations that actually prevent people from getting on and doing the recycling they are already doing, and I think that is a great shame. We want to encourage recycling to happen. We want small businesses to get going.

I think of the team of people we have in Kaitāia, whom I am very proud of. They have been doing recycling there, successfully, for years now—and all credit to them. They have taken on the challenge, against all odds, and made it work. Those are the sorts of people we should be encouraging, because they educate society. If we go and talk to people in Kaitāia now, we will find that they have quite a different attitude to those in a whole lot of other areas who think that waste is just something they chuck in a hole in the ground. So we support this levy because it is one step towards the end goal.

Bob Clarkson: Where’s the levy going to be stored?

JOHN CARTER: Well, the levy is going to be spent—that is the problem. It will not be stored anywhere. This levy will be—

Bob Clarkson: Put it in the Spencer Trust—

JOHN CARTER: It will not be put in the Spencer account; the member can be sure of that. We will make sure it is put in a proper account where it is properly and adequately looked after, and people can know what is happening.

The point is that ultimately we want to get away from the situation where people are encouraged to do things for punitive reasons. We want to encourage people to do things for absolutely the right reason.

LESLEY SOPER (Labour) : It will not surprise members at all that I rather disagree with what the previous speaker, John Carter, had to say about bureaucracy and extra costs. In fact, it is very interesting to see that he and the National speaker who spoke before him had quite a divergence of opinion.

I will start my short contribution by greeting the South Coast Environment Centre in Riverton, which is in my electoral area, and the Invercargill Environment Centre, Te Whenua Awhi. They have been waiting eagerly for this bill to be passed for some time. During one of the few times I served on the Local Government and Environment Committee, some of the Southland people made a submission. It was good to hear their attitude, because they said that this was a very eagerly awaited bill, as some of my colleagues who spoke earlier have also said. In the time I was on that select committee there was certainly a great deal of discussion.

There were two rounds of extensive public consultation on this bill. So to reassure the previous speaker, I say that there has indeed been a great deal of public input and discussion about the question of having a levy and its uses. A wide variety of groups submitted to the committee—over 300, I believe—with many of them talking about the sorts of initiatives needing funding that my people in the south talked about, for which this levy will be very useful.

As my colleagues have said, there was a lot of discussion in the select committee about the level of the funding. At the time I was on the committee the $25 levy was being discussed, but it certainly seems to me that settling on a balance of a $10 levy is a very sensible decision for the select committee to have made in building up that fund. Having the fifty-fifty split will mean that the levy can be used productively by territorial authorities and others.

After the short time I spent on the committee I can say only that I am very pleased to see us at this point with this bill. It has my support and the support of the many people in my community who have talked to me about it, and I have been very pleased to take a short call on it. Thank you.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) : It has been great for me to listen to all of the members here talking about this bill. Obviously as a new MP I was not on the Local Government and Environment Committee, and it is just fantastic to hear about the level of cooperation and agreement.

The idea of a levy is twofold. It is to create a price signal, which is absolutely essential. We need a price signal in order to direct behaviour, if you like, and having a price signal is a key part of doing that. I think that a key aspect for those people who are enamoured of market tools is of course putting in the right kind of market signals, so I think that is why the levy is really important.

The other side of the levy is that it creates a fund that people can then apply to and use to get involved in waste minimisation activities. As was discussed earlier, one of the things that councils with low rating bases will be able to do is apply to the contestable fund to access some of that money, in order to provide them with some support in dealing with the waste they are facing.

In the spirit of cooperation around this issue, I am also withdrawing the 12 months amendment that the Greens had put forward, and I tell the Committee that we will just go with the 6 months amendment. We are very happy to go with that as a compromise between the 3 months that is in the bill and the 12 months that we put forward. I think that is a really useful compromise. I hope that we can also find some compromise words on clause 30, as well. That would be great, as part of the cooperation that has emerged over this bill.

Hon Steve Chadwick: A new spirit.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: Yeah!

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : I want to step up to respond to that. This has certainly been a very interesting debate. I said in one of my first calls that the spirit of cooperation in this Committee tonight is quite phenomenal and that we all seem to be on the same page—except, it now appears, for the National Party caucus. We jumped from “Red” Mark Blumsky to John “Have I got another Building Act story for you” Carter in the space of about 10 minutes. Eric Roy did not seem to realise, until about the last 20 seconds of his speech, that his party was voting for the bill. After giving a devastating, withering speech on the Waste Minimisation Bill, he humbly sat down and said that National thinks it is a really good idea. It is good to see that there is still some inconsistency in this Parliament. The people who are out there listening can rest assured that we have not all had a big “Kumbaya” love-in here tonight—there is still debate going on here in this House; it is just a pity that it is all within the National Party.

I know that it is not my place to do it, so I hope Nicky Wagner will perhaps take a call on the rewording of her Supplementary Order Paper—it is her Supplementary Order Paper and it is not my place to take a call on its rewording. I think we might have been able to come up with some words, because the Committee’s concern tonight is the same concern the Local Government and Environment Committee had—obviously we did not address it nearly as thoroughly as perhaps we could have. The concern is that we certainly do not want territorial authorities knocking out innovative, independent private enterprise when it comes to waste minimisation. That is not to say that we think territorial authorities will do that, but we know that that is a concern. To do that would be contrary, once again, to everything that this bill stands for. We do not want to create a monopoly.

At the same time we need to recognise—and I think we have, with the 50 percent split—that this is a core area for our territorial authorities and we do expect them to be leaders in this area. Some of them already have been, and it would seem patently unfair to penalise them, even though they can apply to the contestable fund, as well. It was a matter of getting a balance—I agree, in hindsight, that when we went through the bill in the select committee we maybe did not address this enough. I am not sure whether Nicky Wagner has the wording now and is able to discuss it, but I would like to pass over to her. I congratulate her on putting forward this amendment.

JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) : I want to make just one point before Nicky Wagner speaks about her amendment. I want to respond to the comment made by the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee, Moana Mackey, about debate between National members. At least there is some innovation, ideas, and differences amongst us! At least we can work together within that, unlike members on the other side of the House, who all have to sing from the same song sheet and who are not allowed to have any ideas, to have any imagination, or to think for themselves. They get a script from “herself upstairs” saying that this is what they are to say today. Well, at least we can come in here and show our individuality at the same time as showing Parliament and this country that we are prepared and in a condition to be able to govern because we can think for ourselves and will get on with the job.

NICKY WAGNER (National) : I am pleased to replace this Supplementary Order Paper with some new wording. I am pleased that we were able to come to some arrangement that could recognise the issues that some of the very early waste minimisation services were concerned about.

This bill is definitely intended to encourage waste minimisation. It would be foolhardy and detrimental to slap around the people who have been doing this job. The wording is designed to make sure that the territorial authorities take into consideration the organisations that have already been doing this work and make sure that they are not disadvantaged. I thank members very much. It was good that we could get support from across the Committee.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of State Services) : I rise to talk in respect of Part 3. This is, as other speakers have already signalled, an important part of the bill, in that it provides the mechanism by which the bill essentially works. It is through this part that money will be levied on those who are disposing of waste at landfills, and money will be divided between councils and the Crown. The part that goes to the Crown—and, indeed, some of the money that goes to councils—will be used in order to recycle some of these waste streams that are currently going to waste, but that with better coordination and a little bit of money spent, could be recycled and reused.

If there was ever a time in our history when it was obvious that we needed to take better care of the recycling of products and product streams in our environment, then it is right now. Around the world oil prices are going very high, iron ore prices are far higher than they have ever been in history, copper prices are very high, and zinc prices and the prices of all semi-precious metals have gone up substantially in price. That indicates that we have shortages of resources. We are putting increasing pressure on the resources of our planet. There is a burgeoning population around the world and people in developing countries are aspiring to the sorts of lifestyles that we in developed countries are used to, and, as a consequence, we are putting more pressure on our natural resources.

Not only are those natural resources increasing in price but the more of those natural resources that we drag out of the ground and mines, the more environmental effect we are causing as a consequence of the mining. Mining can be conducted responsibly and its environmental effect minimised, but some environmental effect cannot be avoided. There is always an environmental effect caused by mining. Similarly, an environmental effect is caused by the use of the energy that smelts metals and turns them from ores into the solid metals we use in the products that we are trying through this legislation to recycle better, or to reuse by separating them from the waste stream. Part 3 gives effect to this ambition.

The levy provided for in the bill will be split, and there has been quite a bit of debate as to whether all of that levy ought to go to central government, with central government deciding where that money is to be spent. I know that the Local Government and Environment Committee heard views for and against that—that the levy should all go to central government, that it should all go to local government, or that perhaps it should be split between the two. I for one am quite comfortable with the position that the select committee took, and that Russell Normal supports, which is that there is a division of this money between local authorities and central government, so that between them they can put this money to good use, to start recovering more of the waste stream.

Nicky Wagner has raised a particular concern, and so have some others, about not cutting across existing businesses that are recovering resource from what would otherwise be dumped. The first point I will make there is that of course if businesses get this material before it gets to the dump, it will actually not attract the waste levy. The material will not be a waste stream, so that part of the process is not a concern to me. As I understand it, scrap-metal dealers and those sorts of recipients of product actually get material outside the dump process—or the landfill process as we are inclined to call it now—so they will not be detrimentally affected by this legislation. Indeed, their own businesses are likely to be enhanced because there will be additional recovery, perhaps, at the landfill that would not otherwise have occurred. That will presumably improve the economics of their business, because they will be able to bid for that material from the landfill, or a landfill operator such as the council, and perhaps it is more likely that they will have additional material to recycle and put through their business, thereby improving its profitability, which would be a good thing. That would, of course, also increase the amount of recycling.

In terms of the rate of the levy, again I say there has been some talk, and I know that some in the National Party have frequently said that $10 per tonne is too much. They think that $10 per tonne is an unnecessary impost and that the sum ought to be far lower. In fact, some within the National Party think the charge ought to be nothing. I think that $10 per tonne is a fair figure to start at, and I congratulate the promoter of this bill on coming to that moderate view, because I think it is a very moderate view. Members can argue that Mr Blumsky is right—that it should be a higher figure. I am one who thinks that when this levy comes around for review in a couple of years’ time, councils, people generally, and central government will be comfortable that this is money well spent, and they may well look at raising it.

But the $10 per tonne is, of course, absolutely necessary. A tonne of rubbish is a lot. I take my own stuff to the landfill periodically from home, and my load of rubbish going to the local landfill is mainly garden clippings that are well recyclable. With my modest contributions to the landfill it would take me many years to actually reach a tonne of rubbish, so to have my family paying $10 for many years does not feel too much of an impost to me. I understand that if this is applied to a municipal rubbish collection, at a levy of $10 a tonne, and I have in earlier times seen that the impost on an individual plastic rubbish bag is, I think, 5c or 10c a bag—it was something like that—it is really not going to break the bank. Given the good that will come of it, and given the consequence that we will start recovering some things like the toxic waste streams we have in computers, and the like, then from my point of view this is money very well spent.

The next point I will make is in respect of the efficacy of this part of the legislation. It relies upon having a proper and broad definition of waste. I know that the definition of “waste” is not part of Part 3 we are now debating, but the term “waste” is used throughout Part 3, so in order to make sense of this part we have to go back to the definition section and read what is within the definition of waste. Again, I have heard it suggested by some that the definition of waste ought to be severely limited so as to effectively take out of the definition much of what we want to be recycled. I think that if there are people who have given that point of view to the select committee, or if there are politicians of that view in this Chamber, then they are severely misguided. If politicians from the other side of this Committee, who were pretending to support the bill, would none the less like to see the definition of waste amended—so as to restrict its ambit and render it far less effective—they would be wrong. It is important that we have economies of scale, that we have the opportunity to recycle all that is valuable, and that we have the opportunity to recycle and concentrate waste streams of things that are damaging to the environment unless we take better care of them.

I would include in that definition something that is currently a little bit controversial, which is the compact fluorescent light bulbs, about which there has been a lot in the newspapers recently. There are people who are concerned that these light bulbs contain mercury, and they do. They contain very small amounts of mercury—about one-twentieth of the mercury that was in the old strip light fittings that we had in schools for 50 years. None the less they do have some mercury, and it would be better if that mercury could be recovered through a concentrated waste stream. Well, this legislation provides the mechanism for the cure of that particular problem. We could in the future say that we need to have a system for recovery of those compact fluorescents, so that that very small risk is further moderated through the appropriate collection and concentration of that waste stream, and the sending of it somewhere so that we can recover the glass, recover the mercury, and reuse them. I think this is a very good part of the bill.

• The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 220 in the name of Nicky Wagner to clause 24(3) be agreed to.

• Amendment agreed to.
• The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Nicky Wagner to clause 30 be agreed to:

to add the following subclause:

(2)When making a decision in relation to funding any matter to which subsection (1) applies, the territorial authority must consider the effects that the decision may have on any existing waste minimisation services, facilities, and activities (whether provided by the territorial authority or otherwise).

• Amendment agreed to.

• Part 3 as amended agreed to.

NICKY WAGNER (National) : Territorial authorities are already responsible for waste management and for promoting waste minimisation, as part of their responsibilities for public health. This bill provides incentives for territorial authorities to encourage effective and efficient waste management and minimisation, because in order to receive funding from the waste levy a territorial authority must either adopt a new waste management and minimisation plan or review its existing one. We made sure that we included in the bill the possibility for two or more territorial authorities to jointly prepare and adopt their waste management and minimisation plan. We believe that that is particularly important, as during the select committee process we heard in the Local Government and Environment Committee from many councils that were working very well together and were getting valuable economies of scale for recycling their products, and they were doing great waste minimisation work that perhaps would not have happened had they been working individually.

Under the bill, a territorial authority can undertake or contract for any waste management and minimisation services, facilities, or activities, and they may sell any marketable product resulting from that activity or service. That probably takes into account things like green waste, composting, and the sale of that compost. But any proceeds from those sales must be used to implement the territorial authority’s waste management and minimisation plans. The territorial authority also has a large number of powers to make by-laws to deal with waste, and it can contract or licence operators to collect, reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, or dispose of waste. The final part of this bill also prescribes the relationship of this legislation with the Local Government Act 2002.

I do have to say, after reading all these rules and regulations, I sympathise with my colleague Eric Roy, because they do look excessively complex. However, I do trust that common sense will prevail, and that successful outcomes will be championed rather than slavish adherence to the rules.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : I am happy to stand and take a call on Part 4 of the Waste Minimisation Bill. Firstly, this is another part where we were very aware it was forming the blueprint from which territorial authorities would develop their waste minimisation plans. Secondly, we were very aware that a number of them had already made quite significant tracks down this path. As someone mentioned earlier, we certainly did not want to stop people in their tracks so that they would have to change the way they were doing things. We were very cognisant of the submissions of the territorial authorities when they came to the select committee to make sure that we aligned this part as much possible with the Local Government Act, and to use it both as a guidance and an enabler for territorial authorities in order to give them the powers to do what a number of them want to do in the waste minimisation area but had not perhaps been entirely sure of their powers and ability to carry out certain functions or to take certain initiatives within their own area.

One of the important parts of this legislation is that we have clarified that joint plans are a good idea, where that is appropriate, and that as long as territorial authorities meet the requirements under the bill there is nothing within the part that stops them from working together to carry out joint plans and to share overhead costs and initiatives, as well, especially across districts. We can think perhaps of the Bay of Plenty - Waikato area where there is already a lot of collaboration, and we want to encourage that. We certainly do not want any questions being raised in this bill that that is not an appropriate thing to happen or that there is uncertainty about whether it is able to happen.

I want to mention briefly Supplementary Order Paper 210 in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard where he has clarified clause 54, which talks about the by-laws a territorial authority may make. Clause 54(1)(b) states that a territorial authority may make a by-law for regulating the collection and transportation of waste. Further on, subclause (2) states: “Bylaws made under subsection (1)(b) may provide for the licensing of persons who commercially carry out the collection and transportation of waste.” Certainly, the Minister has pointed out that he does not think it should be limited only to commercial transporters of waste. He thinks that non-commercial collectors—for example, community groups and not-for-profit organisations—should also be included in this clause, but we do want to rule out individuals, for example, from taking their waste to the landfill. So the Minister’s amendment to clause 54(2) just clarifies that if a territorial authority makes a by-law under the part, then it applies to all organisations that collect waste, commercial and non-commercial. That brings it into line, as the Minister states in his Supplementary Order Paper, with current practice in parts of New Zealand. Again, in the select committee we certainly did not want to cut across what was already happening and already working, and I am sure that is not what was intended here. It also makes it clear that the regime is not intended to include individuals who collect or transport waste for personal reasons. So we have drawn that line, and I think it is a fair one to draw. The other part of the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper—the substantial part—inserts new clause 97, which deals with nominations.

Certainly, as the member before me said, this is an important part. If we do not get this part right, then a whole lot of it can fall over, because we do rely on our territorial authorities in this area—for public health reasons and now, under this bill, for waste minimisation reasons—to be leaders. We want this part to be enabling and to give as much guidance as possible to make sure that what territorial authorities are doing fits into that whole-of-government approach to waste minimisation. I think we found a good path through in this part. It tries as best as possible to emulate what is already happening as a result of those who are already doing it, but at the same time it provides enough guidance and enough of a blueprint for those territorial authorities that have yet to go down this path and that perhaps need a little bit more guidance—an authority that perhaps is not situated near another territorial authority to leverage off ideas. This is an important part and the Minister’s amendments are sensible. I look forward to hearing the debate on this part.

MARK BLUMSKY (National) : I want to make two comments in particular on Part 4. The first focus in my mind is that Part 4 places more emphasis on the 1974 legislation in respect of territorial authorities “encouraging and promoting waste minimisation”. Clauses 50 and 54 allow territorial authorities to contract or license operators “to collect, reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, or dispose”. Both of the comments I have made have the local authority “encouraging, promoting, or contracting, or allowing others”. I suppose I want to reiterate that this bill is not a mandate or a licence for local government to do it all themselves; it is to make sure that the outcome is the focus. It is not their job to think that they now have to go and do it all. That, I suppose, is my biggest concern. Just reiterating the words and the meanings behind Part 4 puts that into perspective in my mind, and I hope in the minds of local authorities.

I actually want to give a challenge to local authorities, too. Through the submissions process and having gone out and about and looked at a lot of what was happening, I came across some outstanding local authorities in this area. One area that comes to mind is Timaru, where the local authority is doing an outstanding job. Then there are the community groups. There are some wonderful, wonderful things happening. In particular, I challenge local government to really address best practice, to have a look at what is happening out there, and, if you like, to benchmark themselves against the Timarus of this world, and to say to themselves: “Maybe there is work being done in local government that is actually pretty smart. Why don’t we put it up there and aspire to achieve in that delivery mechanism or in the way they do it?”, because there are some useless local authorities in this area, and they need to be shot!

Hon Ruth Dyson: Name them.

MARK BLUMSKY: No, I will not, because that is not fair. They know who they are.

Hon Member: Wellington!

MARK BLUMSKY: No, it is not Wellington. Who said it was Wellington? Those local authorities really need to say to themselves that they are not doing a good enough job. The tide has turned. There is a real public momentum around the whole area of recycling and compost. A real wave is quite rightly running through, and local authorities have to pick up the challenge. Some of them are outstanding; some of them need to buck up their ideas.

Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Minister of Conservation) : I am pleased to take a call on this, because it was a real stumbling block with the bill when it was introduced. We were creating here at the territorial authority levels these wonderful waste control authorities, and we really did not need to do it, because the territorial local authorities were doing it. That caused a real friction when we first went out, and I am so pleased that this has been amended to be a much more enabling framework for local authorities.

It was good to see how dearly they looked at waste management and waste minimisation. I do want to say that they did like the New Zealand waste strategy. They said they wanted to go faster on it, but the variants around the country were simply amazing, when we went out. Many of us had followed up with lots of other local authorities. It is great to see that the strategy is a bit more enabling now, and there is much more flexibility.

I am not sure about the amendment I heard the Opposition member Nicky Wagner propose, because I have met many local authorities that are joining together anyway. They did not need the legislation. They were starting to work together. That is a classic example in Kawerau in my electorate, where they are starting discussions with the Gisborne District Council, Whakatāne District Council, Ōpōtiki District Council, and Rotorua District Council. We have had a couple of big meetings about this to see how we can have a central plant for minimisation of waste. What a great initiative! I do not think we need to enact legislation to make that happen.

So I say “Well done!” on Part 4. It is so much better than it used to be, and I like the guidance too. Every local authority said it needed some leadership from the centre, and they wanted those standards that were aspirational for them to aspire to. They are great amendments.

KATRINA SHANKS (National) : It is my pleasure to stand and speak tonight on the Waste Minimisation Bill. I have just joined this debate and I would firstly acknowledge the officials who are sitting here tonight. I realise that it is quarter to nine on a Wednesday night, and I thank them very much for coming along and listening to what we have to say. I also thank them for the hard work they put into the Local Government and Environment Committee, because their work has given us the legislation before us for debate tonight. I thank them very much; we appreciate the time and effort they have put in.

When I was reading the commentary on this bill I was interested to see that there were only 125 submitters on it, which I found interesting. Waste is something that people are very emotional about, and it is very topical globally, not just in New Zealand. I would have thought that hundreds of submitters would be coming to the select committee or putting forward a written submission about their views on waste. I was surprised to see there were only 125 submitters on this bill—

Hon Member: On the second bill; not the first one.

KATRINA SHANKS: I have just been corrected. This is the second round. There were 300 submitters on the first bill. I would expect 400 submitters in total to come to the select committee and talk to this type of bill. It is a very emotive issue for many New Zealanders, who are very passionate about preserving this clean, green, beautiful country that we live in, as we are its custodians for future generations.

Of the second lot of submitters who spoke to this bill, I was interested to see that 8 percent opposed the bill, 22 percent supported it outright, and 61 percent supported it with some amendments. This bill has been well supported by submitters to the select committee. The local government sector and community groups were unanimous in their support, and even 85 percent of businesses gave their cautious support. I think that is a great step forward for New Zealand and for where our mindset is with regard to our waste.

I understand that Part 4 talks about local authorities and the role they have to play in waste in New Zealand. I am not a member of the select committee so I have not had the inside run on what has been happening or what submitters have said, but when I was asked to speak on the bill tonight all I could think about, for some reason, was New Zealand’s tips, dumps, and landfills. When many people, like me, think of waste, that is what we actually think about—the tips, the dumps, and the landfills. In fact, we have reduced the number that we have in New Zealand. About 30 years ago we had about 300 or 400 tips and today we have about 60 landfills throughout New Zealand. Naturally New Zealand is becoming more and more aware of its waste, and over a long period of time we have reduced the number of places where we can take it. That has been driven to a large extent by the local authorities themselves. It is a great step forward, without central government even interfering in this process. We are putting up bills, and local authorities have gone naturally in this direction.

It was interesting to read in Part 4 about strategies and waste strategies in terms of reducing, reusing, recycling, and the recovery of energy. When we talk about waste we talk about a pyramid of waste—about what we should do first as our priority to reduce the amount of waste we have. This bill goes a long way towards reducing the amount of waste, and also towards encouraging recycling, as opposed to everything going straight into waste. The waste we renew is obviously the second tier down, which is talked about in Part 4. It talks about reusing our waste—what is waste to one person is not waste to another. Recycling is very important, and the recovery of energy, which is the fourth tier, is also extremely important. I think this is a great bill, and it is my pleasure to stand here tonight in support of Part 4.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of State Services) : I rise to take a short call on Part 4. Part 3, as we heard, deals with waste disposal levies associated with products that are disposed of at a disposal facility. Part 4 goes a lot wider than that. It does not deal just with things that have been disposed of at the disposal facility; it also deals with the plans that territorial authorities are required to have to promote the effective and efficient waste management of waste streams within their district. It states that they have to contribute to measures that reduce, reuse, recycle, recover, treat, or dispose of waste.

I thought I would give just one example of some fantastic existing work that is being done by a council, the Christchurch City Council, which is beginning to do some very innovative things in respect of its sewage waste stream. The sewage waste stream is dealt with in sewage oxidation ponds, and those ponds are a source of algae. The algae that is grown in the ponds can be converted into bio-diesel, and the council is becoming quite sophisticated in its approach to that. Indeed, part of Christchurch’s landfill produces gas as a methane by-product of the landfill. The council has a gas-fired electricity generation facility close to its sewage treatment oxidation ponds, and it is feeding the carbon dioxide from the generation facility into the sewage oxidation ponds so as to supplement the production of algae in the treatment of the sewage. That cleans up the water, reduces the carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, and increases the by-product of the algae that can be used to produce fuel. This legislation will enable the council to put in a bit of the money that it collects from its waste levy in order to bring that sort of wonderful new event forward.

JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) : It is interesting to speak on Part 4 of the Waste Minimisation Bill. There are several drivers for waste minimisation on the part of the community. It can be as simple as a desire to compost kitchen waste. It could be a desire to recycle bottles and glassware. It could be something as simple as a desire to, on behalf of the community, take responsibility for waste generated within that community. Those drivers are on the community’s side. As a result of that, over the years a number of community groups have taken responsibility for waste on behalf of their communities. We should not underestimate the power of the communities that have taken those initiatives on board. Many of the constituency members of Parliament will be able to cite small communities within their electorates that have taken waste minimisation activities on board for a number of years. Those are their drivers. They are drivers to be responsible for our environment and to take charge of it.

Local authorities, on the other hand, have maybe a slightly different driver. It is as simple as the fact that the landfill is filling up very quickly and the local authorities will have the responsibility of negotiating a new consent for a landfill, which we understand is not an easy thing to do, particularly under this Labour-led Government. So we have seen a number of changes in behaviour and a number of drivers for that change. For local authorities, the spectre of a landfill filling up very quickly with a combination of clean fill, dry fill, green waste, garden rubbish, and domestic rubbish is a frightening prospect. Therefore, it would be very true to say that the desire to become more efficient with waste management has the support of the wider community. It does not matter whether it is the small community of Ōpōtiki, which has been a leader in waste minimisation in New Zealand, or another community that does not, perhaps, have that level of concern over waste minimisation.

A number of colleagues have noted that some territorial authorities are lagging behind in this regard. One has to ask why that is. Is it because they do not care? I do not believe that communities and local authorities do not care. Maybe it is more a matter of not having the resources to undertake waste management provisions. Having said that, I note that in Part 31 of the Local Government Act 1974 there are waste management provisions. I am assuming from memory—because it is a wee while since I was in local government—that every territorial local authority should have a waste management plan in action. So I am a little confused, and I would be happy to hear comment from the member in the chair, Russel Norman, or even from the Local Government and Environment Committee chair, Moana Mackey, as to why a number of local authorities are lagging behind, when Part 31 of the Local Government Act prescribes that each territorial local authority should have a waste management plan. I know that in the development of those plans there are always a number of submissions, because there is always a high degree of community support for waste minimisation.

I turn to Part 4 of the Waste Minimisation Bill, which National supports with some misgivings. It is interesting to note that during the debate this evening one did not get the same line, time after time, from the National benches, which is what one tends to get from the Labour benches. On the Labour benches one tends to get the same story again and again. One of the great things about the National benches is that we can have a rich diversity of views whilst still supporting a bill. We can be our own people yet stay within a position, and in this case we are supporting the Waste Minimisation Bill.

• The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 210 in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to Part 4 be agreed to.

• Amendments agreed to.

• Part 4 as amended agreed to.

NICKY WAGNER (National) : This part of the bill details the offences and the proposed fines. It also provides for the establishment of enforcement officers and details their warrant and their officer powers. The original bill would have allowed some waste offences to carry a sentence of imprisonment, but the select committee thought that that was perhaps a little bit excessive. However, in this iteration fines do range from $5,000 to $100,000, so we are still serious about expecting good behaviour on waste. Part 5 also itemises the defences available to anyone prosecuted under the bill, and they are in line with both the Local Government Act 2002 and the Resource Management Act 1991. National supports Part 5.

• Part 5 agreed to.

NICKY WAGNER (National) : Part 6 is about reporting and audit. The Local Government and Environment Committee was aware that if we are to make any real progress in minimising waste, we need more knowledge about our waste streams and what we can do with them. Part 6 details the reporting and information requirements. However, because we are concerned about excessive rules and regulations in this area we required that before any regulations were put in place by the Minister, the Minister had to consult both the Waste Advisory Board and any parties that would be affected. We hope that through that process they will be able to create a simple and effective system.

Part 6 also details auditing requirements, and we hope that this part will achieve a good balance, and that we can improve the collection of national data without being excessively bureaucratic. I have an amendment to clause 84(1)(b). The amendment has been reworded to make it simpler and to remove any confusion. I hope that the Committee will support this amendment.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : As far as I am aware we have two Supplementary Order Papers on this part—one in the name of Dr Russel Norman and one in the name of Nicky Wagner. I think they are largely very similar. Has this one superseded the member’s one?

Jacqui Dean: Yes.

MOANA MACKEY: OK. It is all go on the Supplementary Order Paper front tonight, but I am sure it will all work out just fine in the end.

One of the things that struck the Local Government and Environment Committee members when they were hearing submissions was that we often asked submitters who work in this area, or who work for territorial authorities, whether they knew the exact volumes that we were dealing with when we talked about waste and different waste streams, and whether we knew what percentage of those were being recycled, collected, or reused. Consistently, the answer we got back was that they had some idea and they could give us a ballpark figure, but that there were severe limitations on their own ability to collect that information. Because a lot of it came down to an individual level and to a household level, they were not able to correctly ascertain how much they were collecting. Because of the lack of product stewardship schemes in some areas, they did not know how much was going out there and how much was expected to be collected at the end. As I said, although they could make educated guesses as to exactly how much they were dealing with, they were not really sure, and, of course, it makes it very difficult when people are forming a waste minimisation plan if they do not know how much they are dealing with, how much they are potentially dealing with, and how much is likely metaphorically to come out of the woodwork once they start putting these things into place.

The select committee decided that it would not be appropriate to wait and get all this information before getting things into action. We thought the two had to go alongside each other. But, certainly, this is a very important part of the bill, because this really is a large unknown in some areas, and, of course, we know much more about some waste streams than others. There are some waste streams that, perhaps, in the past may not have been prioritised so much in terms of collection. We may not have considered it a problem that we sent a lot of those waste streams straight to landfill without recording it. But, certainly, without this information it is very difficult to really have an impact on waste minimisation initiatives in New Zealand.

As the previous speaker, Nicky Wagner, said, we were concerned that we wanted to make this measure the least onerous possible on the people who were doing it. We wanted to make it as simple as possible to collect this information, but I think it would be fair to say that around the select committee there was general agreement that this was something that did need to happen, and that if we were really going to be able to make strides in this area, then we needed to be able to collect this kind of information.

So putting on more expectations to collect information is not something that a select committee takes lightly, but, as we can see from other areas where we have needed to do this, it pays off in the end. We have managed to come up with a system that is as light-handed as possible, whilst ensuring that we start to capture some of the information that for a very, very long time has been missing, and for a very, very long time has required both private industry and territorial authorities largely to work on hearsay and gut feeling in some areas, or to take this cost upon themselves and try to figure it out for themselves. I think we have done a good job on this part of the bill.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) : I want to take a brief call to thank Nicky Wagner for her amendment to clause 84(1)(b). That shows another example of cross-party cooperation and finding another way through. It is great that the Parliamentary Counsel Office was able to come up with a new version. The key thing about this part is that we do not know a lot of the information. That is one of the key things: we do not know a lot of the information about what resources we are throwing down the tip. That is one of the things we are trying to turn round. This does not seem like a big thing, but if we do not know what we are throwing away, we are not as likely to do anything to stop throwing it away. Currently, we are pouring lots and lots of resources down a big hole in the ground, which is then leeching, and polluting our waterways, whereas it would be much more sensible to find out and record what we are doing, and to then divert it and use it again. This part is a really important part of the bill, and I commend it to the House.

• The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Nicky Wagner to clause 84 be agreed to:

to omit from paragraph (b) of subclause (1) the words “(for example, operators of disposal facilities or other facilities at which waste is received for reuse, recycling, recovery, treatment, or disposal)”.

• Amendment agreed to.

• Part 6 as amended agreed to.

NICKY WAGNER (National) : Part 7 deals with the Waste Advisory Board. It provides for the establishment of this board, which could have four to eight members, including the chair. It lists the board’s functions and terms of reference, and it also covers details of the terms of office, fees, and expenses. The board’s role is to provide advice on waste minimisation to the Minister for the Environment, and the Minister is required to seek the board’s advice on a number of matters. These include the declaring of products as priority products, the making of guidelines for the product stewardship schemes, and the setting of criteria for the allocation of the contestable portion of the levy fund. These are all complex and difficult questions, and ones that require advice from board members who perhaps have their feet in the commercial world as well as in legislation. The board is appointed by the Minister, but anyone is able to nominate members for the Minister’s consideration. We are hopeful that the board will consist of four to eight well-skilled, intelligent people who have experience in waste minimisation and the business of managing waste. Thank you.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : I rise to take a call on Part 7, which deals, as Nicky Wagner has said, with the Waste Advisory Board. The Local Government and Environment Committee made quite a substantial change to the bill in this area. Part 2 of the bill as introduced to the House and brought to the Local Government and Environment Committee provided for the establishment of a waste minimisation authority. The proposed authority was to have been slightly bigger than the Waste Advisory Board, but it had a significantly expanded range of responsibilities compared with the responsibilities in the bill that came out of the select committee.

I know, for example, that the Zero Waste New Zealand Trust was very keen on the idea of a waste minimisation authority. It felt that it had the kind of gravitas that perhaps an advisory board would not have. Certainly, the select committee considered all those opinions carefully. If I could summarise how the debate at the select committee went, I would say it acknowledged that we have a Ministry for the Environment in New Zealand. We did not see the need to set up a parallel body with exactly the same powers and functions, when we have a ministry that is already there, that is mandated to look at areas of environmental concern, and that is best placed to coordinate waste-related measures. We did not want to reinvent the wheel, with all the costs that would come with that, and with the potential problems that could come from having two authorities working in the same area but not working together. The other reason for the change was that we also looked at the potential costs and at how the money that comes into the waste minimisation area could best be used. All of us agreed that, wherever possible, we wanted that money to go towards waste minimisation initiatives, not towards funding a body to do the work that one of our ministries is already doing.

The other major area of debate regarding the Waste Advisory Board was about how much work we should give it. We often found ourselves going down the path of making the board do everything, which was just creating a waste minimisation authority once again. We had to prioritise the areas in which we felt that the board could have the best impact. We gave the Minister the power to go to the board on any matters where he felt it important to engage with it, and on areas where he felt he should get its advice, but we did not go the other way round and say the board should be consulted on everything. Again, we felt that to do that would be to go back to what the original authority had been mandated to do, and away from the whole point of having a board as opposed to an authority.

We decided that the Minister should be required to seek the board’s advice in a certain range of areas, as has already been said. Those areas include declaring a product to be a priority product—which, of course, forms the basis of our product stewardship schemes and is important enough to make sure that the board is involved—making the guidelines about those product stewardship schemes, and setting the criteria for the contestable portion of the levy fund. That is very important, and it is one of the areas where it is very important to have a body that is independent of the Minister and staffed by people who are well regarded within the sector to make those decisions. Sometimes when we have a contestable fund and a Minister ultimately makes the decisions, there can be claims of political intervention and of preferring certain providers or areas over others.

We felt that having the board set the criteria for the Minister to use would be a very good compromise—and we are very big on compromises in this committee. We felt that would be a good balance that would help to ensure people felt that the contestable part of the fund would be allocated fairly. As we know, that fund will not be as much as it would have been had the levy been set at $25 instead of $10. I imagine there will be a lot of competition for this fund and a lot of interest in it, particularly in the first few years before the review. So we wanted to make sure that people would feel the fund was being allocated fairly, and that there could be no questions about the criterias that were set.

Hon Trevor Mallard: Criteria.

MOANA MACKEY: What did I say?

Hon Trevor Mallard: Criterias.

MOANA MACKEY: Sorry, I am a science graduate, not an English graduate.

This is an important part of the bill, because it is very significantly changed from that in the bill as it originally came into the House. These were not decisions that we took lightly. Again, I think we found a good way through the issues and a good balance between ensuring that we have an independent advisory board there to provide advice and set criteria, and which is seen to be separate from the Government, and, at the same time, ensuring that we do not reinvent the wheel and create another bureaucracy that just duplicates what one of our ministries is already doing. We are also making it clear to the Ministry for the Environment that waste minimisation is one of its core areas and something that it should be engaging in. Waste minimisation should be core to the work that the ministry does, and perhaps it would send the wrong message to the ministry if we were to take this area away from it entirely and put it under another authority. Thank you, Mr Chairperson.

MARK BLUMSKY (National) : My two parliamentary colleagues who spoke earlier on Part 7 have covered most of it. I want to cover something that was in the bill but now is not, and I think it is just as important as what made it to the finishing line. The organisational waste minimisation plans were a big part of Part 7 and were an aspect that most people were very, very nervous about. The provision would have required all New Zealand businesses to implement waste minimisation plans by 2016. It was in the original bill but is not in the bill now.

It was probably the most contentious aspect of the bill to be considered by the Local Government and Environment Committee, because people were very nervous about just what a bureaucratic nightmare it would be for them. I want to draw to the attention of submitters the fact that the aspect they were so concerned about is no longer in the bill—and the bill is better for it.

JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) : It is a pleasure to take a call on Part 7 of the Waste Minimisation Bill, which is in the name of my co-leader, Russel Norman. It is particularly important that the Minister for the Environment, Trevor Mallard, has the advice of a group of people such as the Waste Advisory Board, which the bill provides for. It is particularly important when we are dealing with an industry that the Minister has independent advice from people who can be seen to bridge the gap between government, industry, and the community sector.

The role of the Waste Advisory Board can be compared to that of the board of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, which advises the Minister on energy efficiency. I think of how carefully the Minister and I work on getting a real balance of experience on that board, and of what a high-level board it is, with expertise from every part of the energy efficiency industry and from its consumers. It adds much value to the work done under the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act.

This is the Waste Minimisation Bill, and I hope that an equally broad range of experienced people will be appointed to the Waste Advisory Board. I hope there will be people on it from businesses that recycle waste into new products. I hope there will be people on it from businesses that collect waste for recycling and reuse. I hope there will be representation from manufacturers who design products and who understand how to design products so that they do not become waste in the first place, which is a key part of the bill. I also hope there will be representatives from the community sector, which has provided most of the grunt on recycling and reuse in this country ever since 1976 when I set up the first profitable local authority recycling system in Devonport. So that is the range of representation that this board needs, and if those people are chosen carefully, the board will be extremely effective.

A key job for the board will be to decide on the priority wastes that we have to work on first. Clearly, we must give priority to wastes that are toxic, wastes that are severely damaging if they leach into groundwater or are burnt, or wastes that contain materials that are very expensive or rare, like metals. I think of batteries, for example, and of compact fluorescent lamps, which contain valuable materials that can be recovered. I think of computers and e-waste generally, of the problems that creates, and of the lack of opportunities in many parts of the country to do anything sensible with e-waste when people have finished with it. So, as well as the fine people in the Ministry for the Environment who advise the Minister as public servants, a knowledgable group of people with direct experience in the community and in industry will be advising the Minister, and that is a huge step forward. I think the Minister will need both sources of advice, so this board will be very valuable.

The other provisions in Part 7 are fairly standard. They are about methods of appointment, remuneration, and terms of office. I see that the term of office is only 3 years or less, but I hope there will be provision in the bill for people who are doing a fine job to get a second term. It often takes people a little bit of time to find their feet in a position like this, and it would be shame if they were to be cast out after 3 years just as they were proving very useful. So I hope the Minister will have the ability to reappoint for a second term in cases when people are doing a good job. I commend this part to the Committee and I look forward to it passing shortly.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) : I will speak very briefly about a couple of things in Part 7. Firstly, picking up on what my co-leader, Jeanette Fitzsimons, was saying, it is really important that we get the right people on the Waste Advisory Board. That is one of the key things. We need people on the board with expertise in the area, from the community sector as well as the commercial sector. We need a lot of them on the board so that they can provide great advice.

My other point is around the terms of reference, which provide the board with some ability to initiate its own work or ideas. I am sure—I certainly hope—that the Minister for the Environment, in consultation with the board in developing the terms of reference, will look at what kind of capacity the board has to initiate work. For example, container deposit legislation was talked about earlier. We certainly hope that the board will at some point look at that legislation.

I spent a number of years living in Adelaide, which is the only Australian state to have container deposit legislation. It is a fantastic system and has worked incredibly well over there, but, as a result of lobbying by some very big beverage and container producers, it has not spread. Container deposit legislation has been a very effective system.

There has been a very lively debate around the role of container deposit legislation, but I hope that the board will be given the power to initiate its own inquiry to look at container deposit legislation and its role. That is really important.

• The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 210 in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard to Part 7 be agreed to.

• Amendment agreed to.

• Part 7 as amended agreed to.

NICKY WAGNER (National) : I rise again to support the Waste Minimisation Bill. As members know, National voted against the bill at the first reading because it was excessively detailed and overly prescriptive, but now that it has been gutted and reworked, we support the bill because its provisions are mostly reasonable and rational and, most important, will be good for the environment. New Zealanders are conscious that disposal of waste, however carefully managed, harms the environment. Although modern landfills utilise new technologies to protect the receiving environment, we still need to minimise the volume of waste we dispose of. Even transporting waste is destructive and increases our carbon footprint. We are also aware that there are benefits to utilising our waste stream better. There are economic benefits from recovering valuable resources, social benefits from providing jobs, and the cultural benefits of a cleaner and greener environment.

The Local Government and Environment Committee worked hard on the definitions required for this bill, and we got it right in most instances. There was a large amount of debate about the definition of waste. It seemed very difficult to find a definition that was neither too wide nor too narrow. We finally decided on a definition that included not only anything that had been disposed of or discarded—what most people probably think of when they are describing waste—but also anything that was no longer required for its original purpose and, but for commercial or other waste minimisation activities, would have been disposed of or discarded. But on reflection, our definition included resources in the waste stream that could be reused, recycled, or recovered even if they had never entered the waste stream, and this proved to be a problem. Since the bill has been reported back, we have had representation from several organisations highlighting unintended consequences of the original wider definition. They believed that the wider definition would actually create disincentives for recycling and could jeopardise New Zealand’s significant export of waste resources.

When we designed the Waste Minimisation Bill we designed it to encourage the extraction of valuable commodities from the waste stream. But this wider definition could have a perverse effect as it includes materials that were never intended for the waste stream. There has already been a court case over the ramifications of the wider definition of waste: a recycler of paper, who should have been rewarded for minimising the waste stream, was actually disadvantaged by the wider definition. The company, Carter Holt Harvey, successfully challenged the wider definition in the Court of Appeal on 26 September 2007. The Court of Appeal decision says: “We prefer the definition proposed by Carter Holt. The test of whether a former owner has abandoned material does we think accord with common usage and common sense. It also provides a clear and practical way of distinguishing between what is waste and what is not.” The decision goes on to say: “the word waste … does not include material that is no longer wanted by its owner and which, but for commercial or other initiatives to recycle it, would be discarded;”. National and many of the other parties in this House agree with the Court of Appeal. My Supplementary Order Paper 219 reiterates that waste “means anything that has been disposed of or discarded.”, and removes the clause that would include recyclables and other recovered materials.

The recyclers are also concerned that the wider definition could unnecessarily increase administrative and compliance costs for recycling businesses, and could hinder the bill’s objectives of encouraging waste minimisation activities. Furthermore, any suggestion that recyclables such as scrap metal are considered waste by the New Zealand Government has the potential to influence importers from other countries, and New Zealand exports may become subject to more rigorous import controls. I believe that unless we rework the definition of waste in this bill we will cause problems for the very people who have been proactive in the minimisation of waste, and have spearheaded the recovery of valuable resources from the waste stream. We want to attract businesses and operators to work in this area, not kick them in the shins when they have been proactive. I seek the support of the House for this Supplementary Order Paper, which I believe will solve the problem. Thank you.

Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Minister of Conservation) : With regard to Part 1, I just want to make a small comment on the commencement. I think the decision of the committee—that the bill will be enacted on the day after it receives the Royal assent—is great. It seemed a pity, when the original bill was referred to the select committee, that it would take a year, other than for Part 3. I accept that that is only practicable, because it will take at least a year for the Ministry for the Environment to get the work going to set up the levy system.

It is great news, because around the country people want this bill, they want leadership on this legislation, and they are pretty keen to get going. I understand the need for definition, but an issue that I think is quite interesting is that when we talk to young people, when we go to Enviroschools, we hear that they love the old definition of waste. They have it themselves and they know it. We all have a picture in our heads of what we are talking about here. Young people are telling us that we are not going fast enough, either at local government level or us in central government. They will not get bound down by definition. Industry will require definition—I absolutely agree—but young people are saying to us that they absolutely agree with reduction, reuse, recycling, and recovery. They know what it means. They are actually putting a lot of pressure on local authorities, asking why they do not have kerbside recycling or recycling facilities in particular communities. They are putting on that pressure, which is exactly what ought to come through.

I think we will pretty quickly see a change in attitude from local authorities once this bill is enacted. They will jump in, they will see the leadership from the Ministry for the Environment, and I do not think they will get too caught on semantics here. They know it is coming. As Mr Blumsky said, it has been a long journey, and they have been waiting. They have watched for this bill to be a bit more refined, but on the day of the bill receiving the Royal assent they will be ready to go.

I think they will be delighted, too, at the way that we have made this a much more flexible bill. As managers of the best health interests and environmental interests for their communities, they understand the economic, social, cultural, and environmental benefits, so they will be ready. They have been waiting for this bill, and it will be gratefully received. The definitions will not bother them, but I do think they need to be in there. Thank you.

MOANA MACKEY (Labour) : We have now come back to Part 1, which deals with the purpose of the bill. This is another area where the Local Government and Environment Committee made significant changes to the bill as it was introduced. The purpose clause of the bill is extremely important, because it sets out the intentions of the entire bill. If there were ever any contest or disagreement about what the bill was trying to do, we would often come back to the purpose clause.

We did not want to limit waste minimisation activities within that purpose clause, and I think the general feeling at the select committee was that the way it was drafted—it mentioned so many things—almost excluded things by not mentioning them. We decided that rather than discussing the measures by which we may do waste minimisation and the types of areas we might do it in, the best thing would be to focus in the purpose clause on the outcomes and benefits we wanted to achieve. So we went from mentioning “landfills, cleanfills, and incinerators” and all those kinds of things, to simply saying: “The purpose of this Act is to encourage waste minimisation and a decrease in waste disposal in order to—(a) protect the environment from harm; and (b) provide environmental, social, economic, and cultural benefits.”

I think that really covers everything that is currently being done and everything that will be done. Mentioning “environmental, social, economic, and cultural benefits” aligns the bill nicely with the Local Government Act as well, which we have tried to do all through the bill. The last thing we want is to put in front of councils a bill that has differing expectations, targets, and priorities from their own Act. Given that they are the main bodies that currently work in this area, it seems silly to set up a whole new level of expectations and priorities, when the ones they already have fitted very nicely with the Waste Minimisation Bill.

The definition of “waste” took quite some time. There were times when we thought we may have to get another extension of time on this bill simply so that we could get the definition of “waste” right, because if we did not get that right, then everything else could fall apart. It seemed like this was one clause where every single word mattered and had a potential meaning and a potential down-flow effect, and could cut people out or bring in people that we did not want it to. So I really want to thank the officials for the work they did on the definition of “waste”. They came back to us many times, and we would throw at them examples of things that we felt might fall inside or outside of that definition. They would go away and come back to us, and in the end I think we were able to come up with a working definition of “waste”. I am sure we will hear more debate about that, because that is a very important part of this bill.

The member who spoke before me, Nicky Wagner, talked about the Carter Holt Harvey case, which is a very good example of what can happen if we do not get these definitions right and do not make clear in the legislation what we are and are not talking about. In terms of the commencement date, originally the legislation was going to come into effect 12 months after the day on which it received the Royal assent. The select committee has changed that and put in a fixed date. As my colleague Steve Chadwick said, we certainly want to see the Waste Minimisation Bill progress.

We have a Supplementary Order Paper on this bill, and I want to thank all the officials who are sitting out in the lobby, doing all the work for us, and redrafting a lot of these things. This bill is still a work in progress as we go along getting all the wording right, and we certainly appreciate the work of officials and officers of the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who are taking all our great, erudite, and brilliant ideas and putting them into words that will actually work and not form part of a terrible judicial review that sees things fall over. I also thank the Minister for the Environment, Trevor Mallard, for making all this available to the Committee of the whole House so that we are able to get this right, because it is important. We have a Supplementary Order Paper here in the name of Dr Russel Norman, which I am sure he will speak to soon. I will not pre-empt him, as it is his Supplementary Order Paper.

Again, the commencement date might not seem like a big deal, but it certainly was an important part of the bill for us. Because the bill took a lot longer than was originally expected and required a significant rewrite, the select committee felt that it was appropriate to go back to submitters to ask them to resubmit on the bill. We heard all the submitters who wanted to be heard again at the select committee, and although the member in charge of the bill at that time, Nandor Tanczos, was happy for that to happen, the fear was that pushing out the select committee process meant that the date of 12 months from the Royal assent was getting further and further away. We felt that at some point we needed to draw a line in the sand as a select committee. We had a good sense that we were going to report back, we knew roughly how long it would take in the Committee, and we figured that by 1 July 2009 we would be able to have everything ready to go.

Part 1 is an important part. As I have said, the purpose clause is very important. I think we have managed to get a purpose clause that fits with the local government legislation, which gives a clear direction as to the environmental benefits we want to get, rather than simply talking about the ways in which we would get there.

NICKY WAGNER (National) : I would like to make some comments on the commencement of the Waste Minimisation Bill. I did not discuss that in my last call. There was some debate, as we have said, on when this bill should come into force. The bill has been in Parliament for a very long time, and we were very keen to get moving quickly to introduce it. However, we were also aware that the work to be done by the Ministry for the Environment in establishing the systems to collect and allocate the waste levy would take some time.

The compromise was to recommend that the legislation come into force on the day after the Royal assent, with the exception of Part 3, which related to the waste disposal levy, and clause 60, which will commence on 1 July 2009 in order to fit in with local government legislative timing. However, as we are running late again and have missed the beginning of the financial year for 2008-09, my Supplementary Order Paper 218 proposes that the commencement date for the bill, in total, be 1 July 2009.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Green) : It is great to get back to Part 1, so that we can talk about the purpose of the Waste Minimisation Bill. Of course, it is quite unusual for a member to be in this chair, defending a bill, within a few weeks of entering Parliament. Certainly, I have to hit the ground running in order to do that—but this bill also has to hit the ground running. We have to hit the ground running because, when it comes to waste minimisation, actually we are still a long way behind. We need to create a framework to respond to the growing waste problem. This bill aims to speed up the Government’s response—and our response as a country—so that we can deal with waste and the growing waste problem. We know, and we have heard here tonight, about individuals, councils, communities, and businesses that have already begun that process as best they can. There are lots of different groups across the country that are doing the right thing in terms of waste minimisation. The Ministry for the Environment has also contributed. It has made a positive contribution, despite the absence of this bill and this kind of legislation. But with this bill we hope that Parliament and the Government can play catch-up. In a sense it is playing catch-up to the kinds of initiatives that communities have already initiated and we are trying to provide a bit of support to them.

The purpose of the bill arises directly from Green Party policy. The Green Party policy on waste minimisation has been advanced through this bill by a number of members of my party. I am standing here today on the shoulders of my predecessors—the late Rod Donald, who was a great campaigner on waste; Mike Ward, in whose name this bill was originally put forward; and, of course, Nandor Tanczos, who has guided this bill through the House over the last couple of years. I also add that we have had some incredibly able advisers during that period: Chris Teo-Sherrell, who is now a councillor in Palmerston North, Quentin Duthie, who is here tonight, as well as the Ministry for the Environment officials, who have provided tremendous advice and support. The Green Party does not always see eye to eye with the Government on everything, or with National, or with other parties. Different parties do not always see eye to eye on different policies, but with this bill we have collaborated with the Government, the Opposition, and with other parties to address the waste issues.

We considered the purpose clause of this bill early on in our negotiations with different Ministers. The intention was to create an Act to implement the principles of the New Zealand Waste Strategy. Although the explicit reference to the strategy was removed for various reasons, the Government and the Greens agreed on the purpose of the bill, and streamlining the mechanisms it contained flowed from that agreed purpose. Some comments have been made here tonight about the original bill being slightly cumbersome. The Greens acknowledged those comments and we were very appreciative of the contribution from others for streamlining the bill. I think that the Government, the ministry, the National Party, New Zealand First and other parties have contributed to making the bill much more streamlined. I thank all of them, including the former Ministers for the Environment. My challenge to the Government, to this Parliament, and to future Governments is not to lose sight of the ideal of minimising waste to its absolute minimum. Why do we not have zero waste as our goal? This is not the end of it, it is just the beginning. We look forward to collaborating with others in terms of implementing this bill and building on it in complementary ways so that we can head towards a zero-waste goal.

The purpose of the bill is to encourage waste minimisation and to decrease waste disposal. One of the final campaigns of the late Rod Donald was to try to save the South Island’s iconic glass milk bottle. Of course the glass milk bottle is a reusable package. It is not just recyclable; it is reusable. At that time 25,000 bottles were still in use, but those bottles are now all history. Using this example, the purpose of the bill is to protect the environment from the harm of un-reusable plastic bottles—or, even worse, un-recyclable mixed-material bottles; as I am sure members know, some bottles are not recyclable because of their mixed materials—and at the same time provide benefits: economic, environmental, social, and cultural. These are the benefits that arise from recycling and reusing, in particular, and I hope that this bill will see the return of the reusable glass milk bottle. Why not? We had it once, so why cannot we have it again? The ubiquitous milk bottle! I also congratulate companies who are doing reusable bottles. We all know they are out there—Foxton Fizz, and the Green Man Brewery. Producers out there are doing this now, in terms of reusing bottles and not just recycling them. I think that that is a great initiative, and with the passage of this bill I hope that we will see more of it.

The purpose of the bill also contains within it a rationale for wanting to minimise waste in the first place—that is, the aim is not just to deal with all the waste later; it is to minimise waste in the first instance. After all, with our small population and a generous land area, some people have argued that waste is not a problem for New Zealand. There are lots of places where we can go and dump it, so it is not such a big deal. We can just—you know—dig holes. In fact, we recently had a case in the Wairarapa where a family was simply dumping their waste into their local stream, and were using it as a kind of landfill, or a “waterfill”, if you like. It was going down the side of the stream and then simply being carried out to sea, and that is exactly the kind of thing that we do not want to do. Of course, when we talk about burying waste and hiding it away, that is how it seems to most of us. But that is not so to the residents of Kate Valley in Canterbury or even Happy Valley in Wellington, who have to smell the waste, hear it being disposed of, and see it.

One of the rationales for reducing waste in the bill is the protection of the environment from harm. The “New Zealand is big enough” argument—that is, the argument that New Zealand is big enough just to dump all our waste wherever we want to dump it—implies that all waste is inert. A lot of people think that all waste is inert and harmless—as long as it is out of sight it does not matter. The problem is the tonnes of landfill methane that contribute to climate change and the leachate that pollutes our waterways. It is not just the individual items; it is the leachate that comes out of the bottom of them. I think that it is seldom understood how toxic a lot of the leachate that comes out of landfills is. We have problems in Horowhenua, where the old dumps up there are leaching into the coastal environment. That is a real problem there. There are plastics that break down into smaller and smaller pieces, which threaten wildlife, and I am sure that people have heard about the great plastic continent in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We also have toxicity, which is an issue that has come up just recently, as the Minister mentioned earlier, with compact fluorescent light bulbs. But of course the problem is batteries, treated timber, and electronic goods, all of which have toxic waste in them, like mercury.

We have come a long way from the days of being a tidy Kiwi by not littering. Not littering is really important, but it is just the beginning of a consciousness around waste. Today’s society accepts that the three R’s—reduce, reuse, recycle—are the goal, and this bill begins the process of our law catching up with people. It is catching up with the movement from simple waste management, which of course has dominated our treatment of waste, to actual waste minimisation, and making that the goal rather than waste management by itself. Waste minimisation, especially the eventual goal of zero waste, is about more than being a tidy Kiwi, or even religiously following the three R’s of reduce, reuse, recycle. This bill seeks also to encourage the redesign of products and packaging to reduce waste even before it is created. The redesign of packaging and products, I think, is one of the more exciting parts of the bill. The fact that we can intervene at the design stage to mean we get less waste at the end of the whole process is great and this bill seeks to encourage the redesign of products and packaging to reduce waste even before it is created. It enables the internalisation of the costs of recovery, which we heard about earlier tonight, and it creates the potential to set up a situation where a fee can be applied at the beginning of a car’s life, and is then returned when the car finally reaches the end of the road, so to speak—there are lots of roads these days—in treatment and disposal.

The bill also seeks to get as much organic and green waste as possible out of landfills, which we know reduces greenhouse emissions. When organic waste is put into a landfill, the result is that it produces methane. Methane, of course, is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and some of our landfills have managed to tap that methane and use it to generate power, which is great. But it would be better in the first place if that organic material had not ended up in the landfill. That would be a much better option.

I believe that the purpose of this bill is one that almost all New Zealanders would agree with, and the Green Party’s policy goal tied to this bill is that we will be waste-free by 2020—would that not be great—and we want to make clear and significant progress by 2010. We believe that this legislation will facilitate us to make that progress, and the bill’s purpose is to achieve that—to make that kind of progress. We have confidence that the bill will mean we will reduce waste going to landfill in the next few years, and head towards a zero-waste future.

Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Minister for the Environment) : I want to make my speech in two parts—the first as Minister for the Environment. I think it will then be appropriate to take that hat off and speak as the member for Hutt South. There are a few technical things I would like to check with the member in charge of the bill, or possibly with the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee, because I am somewhat of a perfectionist and I want to make sure we do have things right in these matters.

The first question I have is whether the definition in clause 5 of “Secretary”, which means the Secretary for the Environment under section 29 of the Environment Act, must necessarily be the same person who is appointed under the State Sector Act by the State Services Commissioner as the chief executive of that organisation. I just want to make sure that in making these changes, we are not doing anything that would in any way contradict the State Sector Act and the very important processes that we have for the appointment of chief executives under that Act. It is something that, as a Minister formerly responsible for that area, I took quite seriously. There are a lot of i’s to dot and t’s to cross in this area, and I want to make sure that we are not, by anything within this legislation, interfering in that matter.

In a similar way I want to ensure that the member in charge of the bill, or the chair of the select committee, is familiar with the relevant provisions in the Health Act. In clause 5 there is a definition of “Medical Officer of Health” that is cross-referenced to the definition of “Medical Officer of Health” in the Health Act. The definition in the Health Act includes a reference to “any medical practitioner acting under the direction of the Medical Officer of Health”. What I am not sure about is whether in fact the ability to delegate in that way, and possibly even the ability to sub-delegate, is appropriate for this bill. Clearly, it is necessary for the emergency use of a lot of the powers of the Medical Officer of Health, which I have recently become quite familiar with. But I am not sure that the sub-delegation powers and, in fact, the delegation powers are appropriate for this particular legislation. Therefore, I would like to check that it is something that has been properly considered.

Possibly more important, though, is the reference in clause 5 to the definition of “nuisance”, which is to have the same meaning as in section 29 of the Health Act 1956. I am relatively clear in my opinion that there are parts of the definition of “nuisance” for the purpose of the Health Act 1956 that are entirely inappropriate for waste minimisation legislation. For example, section 29(f) of the Health Act deals with overcrowding that is “likely to be injurious” to occupants of workplaces or residential areas. I am not sure that that particular part of that definition is appropriate for this definition. Therefore, I ask the member whether that is the case.

In a very similar way, the key part of section 29(i) of the Health Act goes to lighting and to the nuisance caused by having a lack of proper lighting in workplaces. There might be a relevance to do with waste minimisation legislation, but I am at a loss at the moment as to work out what it might be. The question around section 29(k) in the Health Act, relating to parts of carcasses, could well be relevant, but I think it would be worth working that provision through.

Mark Blumsky: Are you moving a Supplementary Order Paper?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: Well, I think there is a possibility, if there is not sufficient explanation on this, for a Supplementary Order Paper to be put forward to pick out the relevant points of section 29 of the Health Act of 1956.

Mark Blumsky: Is it on the Table?

Hon TREVOR MALLARD: No. If there are satisfactory answers from either the chair of the select committee, or others who have been involved, or the member in charge of the bill, or possibly officials over the next month or so before this bill comes up again, then I think it could well be appropriate for it to be looked at.

The question is also whether this does apply, in fact, to streets, roads, or rights of way, as per section 29(o) of the Act. It occurs to me that it is pretty unlikely that premises related to the Waste Minimisation Bill would be situated on streets, on roads, or on rights of way, but again some might be, and if that was in fact the case, it would be inappropriate.

Another question is whether the funnels of ships or the chimneys of private dwelling houses are, in fact, relevant in relation to this particular clause—clause 5, the interpretation clause of the Waste Minimisation Bill, which we are currently considering. Chimneys, including the funnels of ships and the chimneys of private dwelling houses are included in the Health Act. There is reference to them in paragraph (m) of section 29, “Nuisances defined for the purposes of this Act”.

So those are issues, at a minimum, that I think should be discussed. The member in charge of the bill might want to give us his views on the definition of “priority products”. I know that they were dealt with in clause 7, but the definition and the prioritising of the priority products is something I had substantial discussions on with his predecessor, Nandor Tanczos. Whether we have a long list or a short list of priorities is important, and I would be interested in the member’s opinion as to whether the interpretation of “priority product” is something that is important in that matter.

I would now like to make clear that I am now taking off my “Minister for the Environment hat”, although any of the comments I have just made could well have been made by any member in the Committee and did not require any special briefing. I now put on my “member for Hutt South hat”. I will talk a little about the effect of poor recycling and poor attempts at waste minimisation, and about the dirty, dirty antics of Exide Technologies Ltd in dumping very badly under-treated waste in the landfill at Wainuiōmata, causing an enormous stink for a period of months and leakage into the Wainuiōmata stream, which is alleged to have killed off a large number of very important trout. There were a lot of complaints and certainly some allegations from fishers who have fished the Wainuiōmata stream at a point below the Wainuiōmata tip.

I commend the Wellington Regional Council for the work it has done in tightening up the conditions around the Exide plant, but I also make it clear that twice already there have been prosecutions for breaching those conditions. I want to make it clear that I think that people involved in prosecutions need to be more prepared to prosecute individuals as well as companies.

There was a case of that in the Waikato recently where someone who, after repeated warnings, burnt plastic and ended up with a jail sentence. That is appropriate. If there are gross breaches of the Resource Management Act, then individuals as well as companies should be prosecuted. Companies like Exide, a large international company, just take the $50,000 fine as part of doing business, but if their individual managers ended up with a criminal record for the repeated breaches, as well as the company having a record, then—

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): I am sorry to interrupt the member, but the time has come to report progress.

• House resumed.

• The Chairperson reported the Corrections (Mothers with Babies) Amendment Bill with amendment, and progress on the Waste Minimisation Bill.

• Report adopted.