We should not tolerate parties which tolerate this

In the wake of National MP Nick Smith's resignation on Monday night, people have finally been talking about what a scumbag he was. Newshub reports that his behaviour was an open secret around Parliament, something everyone knew about but no-one talked about, with people saying (anonymously, for fear of repurcussions):

• "Smith was notorious for that red mist"
• "One of the most difficult assholes I've ever worked for"
• "I have no fond memories of that guy"
• "He was prone to bouts of extreme verbal anger towards other ministers and staff. It was out of the ordinary even then. But we didn't complain because we were Gen Xers. We should have"

Meanwhile Stuff reports that the complaint which led to his resignation was not lodged by his immediate victim, but by "another National Party staffer who recorded the incident and made a complaint". Which suggests that Smith's behaviour was so toxic that his own staff were habitually recording him to document it. Which raises the obvious question: why do parties put up with this? Because as Smith shows, abusive MPs are a PR bomb waiting to go off, and when they do it damages both the party (who are rightly suspected of covering up and/or condoning abuse) and our political system as a whole. They're simply bad politics. So why not downlist, de-select, or otherwise show them the door to remove the risk?

Sadly, the answer seems to be that the main parties are staffed by bullies and run by bullies. Judith Collins is out there this morning defending Smith, saying he was under "tremendous stress" and suggesting that recording his outburst was illegal (which is getting pretty DARVO). But then, she's a bully herself. As for Labour, Meka Whaitiri (who allegedly assaulted a staff member) is not just still in Parliament, but has been reappointed to Cabinet. So Labour supports bullying as well. Voters should not. And we should make that clear at the ballot box.

Good riddance to a climate criminal

Nick Smith has announced his retirement from Parliament to beat a news story on his bullying. Good. As the announcement makes clear, his "employment issue" is about him being a bullying arsehole, and people like that should have no place in our Parliament. But beyond that, he's also a climate criminal, having fought tooth and nail for over twenty years to prevent action on climate change. He opposed carbon pricing in opposition, and gutted the ETS as Climate Change Minister. The floods the South Island is experiencing today? His actions - or rather, his deliberate inaction - helped cause them. And one day, he should be held responsible for that in court.

For election-day enrolment

Yesterday the government announced some minor tweaks to the electoral system, including more locations for advance voting, and allowing people to enrol on election day. The changes were recommended by the Electoral Commission in its post-mortem on the 2017 election, and would lead to an extra 19,000 votes being counted. So you'd expect them to be accepted by all parties, right? But instead, National is claiming they are a "stitch-up":

National MP Nick Smith told RNZ the move was a "stitch-up" because same-day enrolment favoured left-wing parties.

"The government is simply cherry-picking electoral law changes that will improve its own chances of re-election in 2020," Dr Smith said.

"That should really raise the hairs on the back of those people who want our democracy to have integrity."

A democracy has integrity when everyone who is eligible to vote is able to. Currently the law prohibits this in a completely arbitrary manner: people who vote before election day - about 50% of us at present - can enrol and have their votes counted, while people who do it on the day can not. This may have made sense back in the day of pen and paper bureaucracy, when rolls were closed weeks before the election because it was simply not administratively possible to enrol people over the election period and verify their data quickly enough to have their vote count, but it makes no sense today. The Electoral Commission can check whether an enrolment is valid, and they did for about 130,000 people who enrolled during the election period. Excluding election day enrolments seems simply arbitrary and cruel. And there's no threat to the vote count: late enrolments are special votes, and so counted separately, after checking.

At least 19,000 extra votes would have been able to be counted if we'd done this last election. It speaks volumes about National's values that they don't want these people to vote. But like the British Tories in the C19th, or modern day US Republicans, it seems that if you scratch a right-winger, you find that they're really not that keen on democracy, and certainly not keen on high turnout. Its almost as if they think their policies aren't actually that popular, and that the only way to gain or retain power is to stop people who would vote them out from being able to do so...

Banning foreign donations

So, afte rewriting electoral law to reduce transparency over party funding, National's Nick Smith suddenly wants to ban foreign donations to prevent "foreign interference". It's pretty much a no-brainer, but what would it actually entail? At the moment, the law prohibits foreign donations above $1,500, but there are two obvious ways around it: making multiple "anonymous" donations below the $1,500 threshold, and using a New Zealand-based corporate shell to launder the donation. The first is easily fixed: reduce the threshold to a nominal level, and align it with the party and candidate disclosure thresholds, so that every non-trivial donation is publicly declared and subject to scrutiny. The latter would require effectively banning some or all corporate donations. There's a strong argument that the right to donate should be limited to natural persons - eligible voters - but people should also be able to do collectively what they are entitled to do individually, which suggests there should be some exemption for democratic, membership-based organisations such as incorporated societies and unions. while that is also potentially open to abuse, it seems a lot less so than at present, when anyone can set up a New Zealand company and use it to launder donations to whoever they wish.

A backdoor to environmental destruction

Next week Parliament is likely to vote on Nick Smith's mini-Muldoonist bill to seize land from a protected conservation area to build an irrigation dam. Smith's spin is that this is a one-off, but as Forest & Bird points out, there's a very real risk of setting a precedent for using Parliament as a backdoor to bypass the RMA and Conservation Acts:

[E]nvironmental lobby group Forest & Bird warns the bill might set a “moral” precedent, allowing a developmental back door for schemes, particularly those for water storage schemes, like the Waimea Dam, that are contrary to the Conservation Act.

“It just seems that everybody’s looking at ways that they can get around the Conservation Act for water storage schemes,” Forest & Bird solicitor Sally Gepp, of Nelson, says.

“The really concerning thing is, if this goes through then why just this one? Why not any other one? So all the other potentially damaging impacts on conservation land, which are not allowed under the Conservation Act, could potentially be facilitated by local bills. All you need is a willing local MP, who can put it forward and then get the votes in Parliament.”

Constitutionally, of course, Parliament can do what it likes. But that doesn't mean it should. Using legislation to bypass the law and the courts is obviously corrosive to the rule of law, and to the extent that it is successful, encourages developers to try that path rather than obeying the law. And as we've seen in Australia, having MP's involved in big-money development decisions is an invitation to corruption. There's no suggestion that that is what is happening in this case - Smith is just an orc, who is happy to destroy even our most protected areas so someone can make a buck - but "donations", kickbacks, and outright fees for legislation is the future behaviour that this invites. And every MP who votes for this bill is voting for that as well.

Labour supports Muldoonism

Last month, National's Nick Smith pushed a Muldoonist bill aiming to force the Department of Conservation to surrender part of a protected forest park so farmers in his electorate can build a dam for irrigation. Sadly, it seems that Labour has decided to support it:

However, the Labour Party caucus has agreed to support the legislation while Shane Jones, of NZ First, this week said the social and economic benefits of the dam were large. Nelson MP Dr Nick Smith, who is sponsoring the local bill, in July said he had secured support for it from all 56 National MPs.

The local bill seeks to gain an inundation easement over 9.67 hectares of conservation land in the Mount Richmond State Forest Park needed for the creation of the reservoir for the proposed dam in the Lee Valley. The bill would also secure a right to construct the dam on Crown riverbed.

[Green Party co-leader Marama] Davidson said the Green Party believed that conservation land should be protected for its innate values and that the transfer of conservation land "for use as part of a dam cannot be reconciled with the fundamental commitment to protect it for conservation".

The Green Party caucus was listening to the concerns of environmentalists "and the local community, and will not support the upcoming Waimea dam-enabling legislation".

So, when it comes to a choice between conservation and farmers, Labour chooses farmers. Its good to know which side they're on, and that they cannot be relied upon to protect the environment. And hopefully, the Greens will be taking that into account when considering their support for government legislation in the future.

Mini-Muldoonism

Back in 1982, National Party Prime Minister Robert Muldoon wanted to build a big dam. But the courts said no: granting water rights to the dam was against the law. So Muldoon passed special legislation, the Clutha Development (Clyde Dam) Empowering Act 1982, in order to get his way and build his pet project.

Fast forward 36 years, and only the scale has changed:

Nelson MP Dr Nick Smith says he has secured the support of all 56 National MPs for a local bill that aims to secure land access for the proposed Waimea dam.

"My ambition is to secure the full support of all parties and MPs, and I will be working on this in the coming weeks in preparation for the first reading and vote, due in August," Smith said.

The local bill, which was notified by Tasman District Council this week, seeks to gain an inundation easement over 9.6 hectares of conservation land in the Mount Richmond State Forest Park, near Nelson. The easement is needed for the creation of the reservoir for the proposed dam in the Lee Valley. The bill would also secure a right to construct the dam on Crown riverbed.

Its a smaller dam, but the same issue: the law says National's friends can't do what they want - in this case, ruin part of a protected conservation park to line the pockets of local farmers. So rather than respect the law, National's solution is a special carve-out for its mates. The idea that conservation areas are for conservation seems to be beyond them, and it should make everyone worry about what they will do to our conservation areas and national parks next time they're in government.

The good news is that like most of the others, this dam project is financially marginal and will be cancelled if prices escalate. At which point its worth noting that its one of three dams the government is still funding. Cancelling that funding would seem to be an excellent way of ensuring this land stays protected.

Nick Smith strikes again!

Last week, the government finally published guidance to councils on sea-level rise that National had been sitting on for a year. Over on Newsroom, Eloise Gibson explores the reasons for that delay. And it basicly boils down to Nick Smith being obstructive, as usual:

Documents from this period show staff were worried about the reputational risk to ministers from not releasing the guidance in 2016, as they had promised to do. The new plan was to publish it on about February 25, 2017, perhaps at an event “related to the Kaikoura earthquake recovery” or at the BlueGreens conference.

By March, though, it was clear that Smith was worried about the economic implications, including costs to property owners if insurance or value was affected. He decided, over strenuous objections from his ministry, that the guidance needed to go through Cabinet. On March 15, the Ministry’s climate change director Roger Lincoln wrote a strongly-worded briefing to Bennett and Smith, noting that taking the guidance to Cabinet would “delay it several months at least”.

Of course, it took much longer than that, because Smith then refused to take the paper to Cabinet. In the meantime, residents groups worried that their property values would suffer if potential buyers knew the real risk of their property flooding lobbied hard, and managed to get a further delay for yet another round of consultation (they had already been consulted twice). Of course, consultation requires Cabinet approval, and Smith didn't bother asking for that - in effect, burying the entire proposal. And in the meantime, councils screamed for guidance, while approving developments that should never have been approved, because they didn't have something official they could point to to justify saying "no". And the developers laughed all the way to the bank, having offloaded their risk on others, who will no doubt then demand compensation from councils when their homes flood in the future...

Pretty obviously, we should present the bill for that to Nick Smith. Because the only reason this stuff was approved was him and his delaying tactics.

Gagging the public

Since coming to power in 2008, National has been desperate to lock the public out of resource management decisions. That's been the central feature of their RMA "reforms", but that's taken forever to pass. So they've found another way of doing it: gutting the Environmental Legal Assistance fund:

The Government have quietly changed the rules around an environmental legal assistance fund to render it basically useless, critics say.

The Environmental Legal Assistance (ELA) fund is a contestable pool of cash that organisations can apply to use in order to legally challenge developments on environmental grounds under the Resource Management Act.

It helps those groups fund the cost of lawyers and expert witnesses in Environment Court cases and Board of Inquiry hearings for "matters of national significance".

[...]

A new criteria, added on Friday with no press release, requires the panel who consider applications to to take into account whether granting the money will "contribute to impeding or delaying the ability of people and communities to provide for their social, economic and cultural well-being in relation to important needs, including employment, housing and infrastructure."

[Control-freak Smith had already decided that he and he alone would determine which cases were funded...]

Which effectively frustrates the fund's key purpose: funding lawsuits in the public interest to test resource management decisions. These are important in an adversarial system, but National sees them simply as pointless delays to the wishes of their developer cronies and donors. But the challenges funded - for example to the Basin Reserve Flyover in Wellington and the Ruataniwha Dam in Hawke's Bay - have exposed poor decision-making and failure to consider core environmental costs by local government. In other words, without this fund, we would have worse environmental decision-making. But National doesn't care about that. Instead, it simply wants to give developers whatever they want, and fuck the public.

Nick Smith strikes again!

Back in September, a headline National conservation policy collapsed due to Nick Smith's arrogance and refusal to consult iwi. Now, he's done it again:

A new fight may be developing between the Government and iwi over fishing rights, this time in the Marlborough Sounds.

Proposals to reserve parts of the Sounds for recreational fishers has angered Maori based at the top of the South Island, and they are urging the Government to abandon the idea.

[...]

The combined fishing trusts of those iwi, known as Te Tau Ihi Fisheries, said the recreational fishing parks "usurp the historical and traditional rights of ... iwi to exercise tino rangitiratanga over our fisheries".

The parks "directly impact on our Treaty settlements", Te Tau Ihi said in its written submission. The iwi also said the proposals gave recreational fishers priority over their customary and commercial rights.

As with the Kermadecs, I support a recreational fishing park in the Marlborough Sounds. I also support the government keeping its Treaty settlements and respecting iwi rights. These are not incompatible goals, and I don't think it is beyond the wit of a competent Minister to negotiate a deal which enables both ends. The problem is that Nick Smith is not a competent Minister. As the article points out, he has a history of trying (and failing) to steamroller policy through while ignoring Maori rights, on Auckland housing and the Kermadecs. Given that history and the significant Maori interests around the environment portfolio, he is the last person who should be trusted with it. But apparently sharing your holidays with the PM trumps competence in the National Party. And we all get to pay the price for that.

Why are we paying Nick Smith a Ministerial salary?

Nick Smith is our current Housing Minister. For that, we pay him $281,881 a year. But while he now admits we have a housing crisis, he is refusing to do anything about it:

Auckland house prices hitting the magic million-dollar mark won't force the Government to make any sudden moves, says Housing Minister Nick Smith.

[...]

"The million-dollar thing yes, the seven-figure sum generates a lot of media activity. But in terms of, does it chance the core things that the Government needs to do?

"Look, New Zealand's doing great. Unemployment's low and dropping. We're a safe, stable country. Our population's growing faster than it ever has. My simple message this morning is the Government just needs to keep to plan and grow that housing stock."

So, we have a crisis, but no problem, and no need to do anything (at least, not until Smith's National Party friends have cashed out of their Auckland investment properties).

Nick Smith should earn his outrageous pay packet. And if he doesn't want to, then he should quit and make space for someone who will.

Failure

Last year, Nick Smith promised to solve Auckland's housing crisis using "spare" crown land. He failed:

Housing Minister Nick Smith has so far only managed to secure 25ha of spare Crown land for housing in Auckland after promising to deliver 500ha in last year's Budget.

The plan to find pockets of publicly owned land to turn into housing in Auckland was a key plank in National's Budget last year which Dr Smith said could result in thousands more houses. Dr Smith later took media on a tour of Auckland to inspect some of the sites. However, he revealed on One News that only 25ha had since been secured for housing and the $54 million budget for the project had been exhausted.

However, he had not given up and was still confident he could get to 500ha in the long term, saying he expected to make further announcements soon and had asked Finance Minister Bill English for more funding in next month's Budget.

...which at the rate Smith is paying, is going to cost just over a billion dollars. I think we can all predict Bill English's respone to that.

Unless of course English decides to pillage ACC and the Cullen Fund again. He's already using them as a slush fund to provide revenue for tax cuts and build subsidies for farmers; maybe he'll get them to pay top dollar to Auckland property developers for land to build houses on as well?

Arguing from incompetence

New Zealand's rivers are filthy, filled with cowshit and unsafe for swimming - and they're getting worse. National's "response" to this crisis has been to issue "national standards" which are effectively a licence for pollution and allow rivers that will make you sick; they're not committed to cleaning up our rivers, despite overwhelming public support for it, because it would upset their sacred cow, the dairy industry. So instead, when pushed about their failure, they spout nonsense about how ducks and volcanoes and floods are responsible for dirty rivers - echoing their earlier climate change denialist arguments about "sunspots".

But this invites an obvious question: if National thinks that ducks and volcanoes and floods are responsible for (some) dirty rivers, why not regulate around them, and target the problem we can clean up easily, cowshit? Green MP Catherine Delahunty asked this very question on Tuesday. The government's answer: More excuses:

Catherine Delahunty: Why is it not possible to regulate a nationwide minimum standard of swimmable rivers by simply exempting fresh water contaminated by natural phenomena such as volcanic ash and birds, or during high flood events?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The first point I would make is this is the first Government in New Zealand history to set down national policy and standards for freshwater bodies across New Zealand, and I do find it a bit rich that members opposite who did nothing for decades now challenge this Government’s very comprehensive programme around fresh water. In respect of freshwater bodies, there are examples where it is birdlife and sometimes it is volcanic issues, but there is also the very practical issue in most of our urban areas where we have small streams that nobody swims in where it literally would cost billions to get the water quality up to that level, and we are not about spending billions of dollars of New Zealand ratepayers’ money in areas where people would not, practically, swim.

Note that he didn't even pretend to answer Delahunty's question. As for the issue of urban streams, again, the same question applies: if National wants to clean up rivers, but thinks that its not worth cleaning up urban streams that nobody swims in, then it is surely not beyond their wit to craft a regulation exempting them from tougher standards. By throwing his hands up and crying "it's all too hard", Nick Smith is basicly arguing that he - and by extension, the government he represents - is too incompetent to be in charge of this issue. In which case, why are we paying him $280,000 a year?

But the truth is that its not too hard. National's inaction is a matter of choice, not difficulty. And we should hold them accountable for it.

The blind watchdog

Yesterday, the Ombudsman, the guardian of the OIA, told a select committee that she had found no political interference with OIA requests. And that very day, we have this:

Housing New Zealand has confirmed Nick Smith’s office had a hand in covering up embarrassing information exposing National MPs rorting taxpayer-funding to campaign, Labour’s State Services spokesperson Kris Faafoi says.

“Housing New Zealand has confirmed the Minister’s office blanked out sections of an Official Information Act response which exposed National List MP Parmjeet Parmar using taxpayer money to ‘raise local profile’ in the event of a by-election in Mount Roskill.

“Text, which was redacted in three places in the released documents, was accidently left in, in another section.

Note that the request was to Housing New Zealand, so Nick Smith was dictating to them how they should respond (and that they should lie by mislabelling material as "out of scope") - something the Chief Ombudsman says never happens and which Chief Executives (whose continued employment, salary and bonuses depend on a good relationship with their Minister) would resist.

I guess we should all be glad that she's retiring in a week - because she's just shown herself to be an embarrassment to her office and fundamentally useless at doing her job.

Another crony appointment

This morning Nick Smith appointed former National Party President and MP Geoffrey Thompson to the board of the Environmental Protection Authority. Naturally, of course, they don't mention those rather pertinent facts in his bio, referring only to his "central government" experience.

As with other appointments, he may or may not be qualified, but his political background makes it look like pure cronyism and casts doubt upon the integrity of the appointment process and the Minister.

"A scientific view"

Back in May, the Our Seas Our Future campaign called for the government to phase out plastic bags The call was immediately rebuffed by Minister for the Environment Nick Smith:

However, environment minister and Nelson MP Nick Smith said plastic bags made up a "tiny portion" - 0.1 per cent - of total waste that goes to landfill and the government was "not giving any consideration to a ban nor do we think it's justified".

"I take quite a scientific view of issues of this sort and the advice is that plastic bags are a tiny portion of the waste stream and a tiny proportion of the overall waste problem," he said.

So what was the advice which led to such a strong, "scientific" conclusion from Smith? I asked, and yesterday I received the response. The total amount of advice Smith has received on phasing out or reducing use of plastic bags in the past five years? One document - a fragment of a briefing paper from late 2013. Which starts out by saying - without any evidential basis - that "the New Zealand Government does not consider that such a measure is practical or necessary". As for the scale of the problem, it has this to say:

The Ministry for the Environment does not hold any comprehensive data on the quantity of plastic bags in New Zealand and what proportion of the waste stream they make up.

In short, according to his own advice, Nick Smith appears to be pulling his figures out of his arse. That's his "scientific view".

What the report does show is that overseas levy schemes have been highly effective at reducing plastic bag use while raising a revenue stream for funding small environmental projects. Yes, its a small part of our environmental problems (and much less important than climate change and water quality) - but that doesn't mean its not worth doing.

Another clusterfuck

Last month, National announced it would be giving "unused" government land in Auckland to developers to build houses in an effort to deflate the housing bubble. There were a lot of problems with that idea, both with the Public Works Act and with Treaty Settlement legislation. And now it looks like its going to court:

Ngati Whatua and Waikato-Tainui have decided to go to court to challenge the Government's interpretation of "right of first refusal" in light of Budget moves to free up surplus land in Auckland for private housing developments.

But in a bid to avoid souring their relationship with the Government, the tribes are inviting the Crown to join them in seeking clarification of the law.

The tribes have asked the law firm Russell McVeagh to seek an urgent meeting with the Solicitor-General Mike Heron to discuss the possibility of a joint approach to the courts.

So, the major policy platform of Budget 2015 just turned into a total clusterfuck.

As for how it will go, I think its hard to imagine the courts letting the government shit all over a Treaty settlement like this. But either way, Nick Smith's houses aren't happening anytime soon, and he will need to look for another solution.

Good luck with that

Back when Nick Smith announced that he would be giving "unused" government land in Auckland to developers to build houses, I highlighted some of the problems - among them the possible rights of local iwi over the land. This now seems to be blowing up in their faces. Andrew Geddis has all the legal details here, but the short version is that Ngati Whatua has a right of first refusal over almost all government land in Auckland. Meaning the government can't just sell it to developers, and their plan of giving it to developers on credit for purchase once the house is built is basicly dead.

So what can the government do? Nick Smith seems to think he can finesse his way around this by pretending that selling land to private developers is "state housing". I'm with Geddis in saying "good luck with that" - because its difficult to imagine the courts permitting the circumvention of a legally binding treaty settlement like that. "The honour of the crown" is an important part of judicial interpretation, and it basicly means that the courts will interpret the law so as to be consistent with the government's obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi (this is basicly the judiciary applying a presumption that the executive are not lying arseholes, and that they intend to keep the bargains they make). They would only overturn a settlement if there was clear black-letter law saying "we are overturning this, yes, we are, really, no kidding, and we damn well know what we're doing".

So what are the odds of such a law, a foreshore and seabed Act for Auckland housing? Again, good luck with that. Who would vote for it? National, obviously, and its a fair bet they'd have the support of ACT as well (whose professed concern for property rights haas never extended to those of Maori, or indeed anyone other than rich white dudes who want to dodge their taxes). But who else? The Maori Party? Opposing such a law is the literal reason for their existence. Peter Dunne? He's an unreliable footstool, and I don't think he'd be willing to countenance overturning a settlement Parliament passed just last year. New Zealand First? The same logic applies. Labour and the Greens? Not a hope in hell. And if the government tries to force the issue by making it a matter of confidence, the Maori Party would walk, and I would hope Dunne would too.

This is not something National can win on. Their only way forward is to negotiate with Ngati Whatua. And if they want their policy to survive intact and benefit the cronies they had hoped to benefit, well, good luck with that.

Environmental Reporting Bill: Our fears are realised

Back in March, Statistics New Zealand announced their Ministerially-approved national environmental reporting topics for their 2015 Synthesis Report - basicly, a prototype for reporting under the yet-to-be-passed Environmental Reporting Bill. They were dismal, a political hatchet-job which ignored key drivers and impacts while obfuscating the causes of our environmental problems. And it wasn't just climate change: the other domains, air, land, freshwater and the marine environment all received similar treatment.

Statistics New Zealand made a lot of noise about the robust and independent method they used to develop the topics. So how did this happen? Because Ministers micromanaged the whole process and systematicly watered down the robust topic list developed by the Technical Advisory Groups. The dismal tale is told in a series of release from the Minister for the Environment, Ministry for the Environment (part 1, part 2), Statistics New Zealand, and (most illuminatingly) the Minister of Statistics. Some highlights:

• From the beginning, Ministers pushed for highly detailed and prescriptive topics - "global greenhouse gas emissions" rather than "climate change", "economic production by primary industries" rather than "economic impacts of climate change". This caused consternation in Statistics New Zealand, with an email from MfE noting that "Stats are very keen to avoid any ultimatums being put to Ministers but clearly feel their independence is being compromised by the specificity of the topics areas". Eventually the Government Statistician issued a (heavily redacted) briefing note which appears to have basically read Ministers the Riot Act. Amy Adams did not agree, and there are a large number of highly specific topics in the final list. By saying "you will report on this in this way", they have prevented Statistics New Zealand from using more illuminating statistics.
  
  
• Ministers also repeatedly watered down reporting on impacts on Maori, successively rejecting topics on wahi tapu and customary use in favour of a vague "cultural significance of the [X] environment to Maori" - which was then left out of the final report. This is pitched as due to Amy Adams seeing it as "a ‘nice-to-have’ and not ‘must include’", but earlier comments make her real reason clear: she wanted to avoid "unintentionally committing the Government to report on Treaty of Waitangi issues as part of the Environmental Reporting Bill". Unstated: because doing so might give rise to Treaty claims.
  
  
• As an example of the suspicion Ministers regard the reporting with, they wanted to micromanage final peer review: "Ministers would like to be consulted on who peer reviews the synthesis report to ensure 'extreme ideas' don't find there way into the report."
  
  
• The final topic list was signed off on September 1, 2014 - after which there was an election, a cabinet reshuffle, and a new Minister for the Environment. Who immediately wanted to interfere:
  

  Minister Smith expressed concern with some topics for the 2015 Environmental Synthesis Report, and requested time to consider them. He is concerned that officials may go wide of the mark and infer value judgements because of the measures selected. He is happy with draft ERB legislation with respect to Ministers setting topics, but wants to consider it further.
  
  Overall, Minister Smith was more comfortable with state topics than pressure or impact topics. He expressed doubt that officials could measure some of the latter topics rigorously; for example, Maori measures. He did note he wants to use international best practice, however.
  

  Unfortunately, information on exactly what effect Nick Smith had on the synthesis report was not part of the release. But given how it appears to have been watered down even further in exactly the way he suggested, he may have had some influence.
  

Supposedly, if the Environmental Reporting Bill is eventually passed, there will be a round of public consultation before the final topics are set by regulation. But looking at the process so far, I don't think we can have any confidence in that process. The big risk with the bill as it stands is that the Minister can choose the topics to suit themselves, steering reporting away from areas of key environmental concern. And judging by the behaviour of the Ministers involved, that concern is fully justified. As long as Ministers can set the topics, their environmental report is a joke with no credibility.

More bullying from Nick Smith

This morning Radio New Zealand reported on Nick Smith's crude attempt to bully Fish & Game into silence on water quality:

Dr Smith met the Fish and Game Council in Wellington on 18 July, and four people who attended told Radio New Zealand News he gave councillors a dressing down for their stance on trying to protect water quality in lakes and rivers.

Association of Freshwater Anglers president David Haynes, who was at the meeting, said Dr Smith was bullying the Fish and Game councillors in a clear attempt to stop it carrying out its statutory role to advocate for water quality.

[...]

But Fish and Game chief executive Bryce Johnson said Dr Smith was hostile towards his organisation at the meeting.

The minister implied he would restructure the organisation if it did not tone down its stance on water quality, and Mr Haynes had given an accurate account of what happened at the meeting, Mr Johnson told Nine to Noon.

"He said that he's worried that Fish and Game is losing its way, that Fish and Game struggles with being a Government statutory body and instead is being a rabid NGO," he said.

Smith's response? Threaten to sue for defamation in a further effort to bully those who have blown the whistle into silence. He's also released meeting notes taken by one of his officials, which show that he indeed questioned their role and was "keen to introduce an F + G Amendment Act". Whoops. As for the threat of defamation, its empty: he's a politician, and so virtually impossible to defame in a political context. But he's probably hoping no-one realises that.

I think this shows the sensitivity of the government around water quality. They know their dairy agenda has consequences for our rivers which kiwis are deeply uncomfortable with. But they're hoping to bully their way through to further enrich their farmer-cronies. The only way of stopping it is to vote them out, and vote in a government which will properly protect our waterways from the rapacious, polluting dairy industry.