Submission on the Environmental Reporting Bill to the Local Government and Environment Committee

The introduction of an Environmental Reporting Bill is a welcome development.

In New Zealand, there have been only two national State of the Environment reports, one in 1997 and one in 2007, both prepared by the Ministry for the Environment. The latter was strongly criticised for a lack of independence. Ever since then there have been calls from various quarters for the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment to be given the job of environmental reporting.

This Bill proposes that the Commissioner would independently review reports prepared by the Secretary for the Environment and the Government Statistician, and comment on the quality of data, the robustness of the analysis and other relevant matters. This differs from the earlier proposal for the Commissioner to prepare five-yearly reports on the state of the environment.