Environment Council

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32308, 28 May 1970, Page 14

Environment Council

Within two or three weeks the physical environment committee of the National Development Conference will have prepared its final report to the National Development Council. The report will consist mainly of the recommendations prepared by the committee’s working parties and approved or amended by a three-day conference in Wellington last week. Although these recommendations will be passed to the National Development Council, their eventual influence on the policies of central and local government must depend upon the success of the main proposal of the conference —the establishment of an environmental council to advise Ministers and the National Development Council. More by accident than by design the physical environment committee and the conference have attracted far more attention than could have been hoped for when the original committees of the National Development Conference finished their work a year ago. The endorsement of the committee’s work by last week’s conference, and by the Prime Minister and the Ministers who attended, gave the subject the prominence and emphasis it deserved. Although this conspicuous isolation of the environment conference had its virtues, it also presents a challenge: how to weave its proposals into the main fabric of the N.D.C. and into the decisions of the Government. The working party reporting on Government organisation for the control of the environment rightly rejected any thought of a “single, omni-competent environmental ministry” and of co-ordinating all policies through one executive agency. The conference avoided any suggestion of consolidating the many and varied laws affecting the control of the environment. The care of the countryside, town planning, the conservation of natural resources, and measures against pollution are too general and pervasive, too much the responsibility of all Ministers, Government agencies, local bodies, private organisations, and individuals, to permit of such treatment in isolation. Satisfied that the Government is already well disposed towards the recommendations of the National Development Conference, the advocates of an environmental policy are confident that an environmental council, working in conjunction with the National Development Council, will influence the making of decisions. In a brief but closely reasoned contribution to the environment conference the Ombudsman (Sir Guy Powles) pointed to a danger in the growing practice of appointing statutory bodies consisting partly of departmental representatives and partly of nominees who are supposed to represent public

opinion or the opinion of special interests. The danger, he said, was that these are really semibureaucratic authorities, too far removed from direct democratic control. But is this device, with all its faults, not better than wholly bureaucratic control? Ultimately, the responsibility for the authorities’ actions—or their lack of action—remains that of the Government in either case. Nevertheless, his appeal for more direct representation of citizens on public bodies charged with protecting the environment should not be disregarded. Were the New Zealand Parliament very much larger than it is the elected representatives of the people might be allowed a greater share in the executive functions of government. But the environment conference had to deal with the present system of making and executing decisions; and its main proposal should be put to the test. Of the 15 members of the proposed environment council five will be public servants; and it is best that the council should enjoy both the knowledge and sympathy of five departments particularly concerned with the enactment of N.D.C. policies and with the care of the environment. It has been proposed that the environmental council initiate its own reports on environmental policy. In performing this function the other members of the council might be wise to divorce themselves from the departmental members and act more or less along the lines of the Monetary and Economic Council—not as a consultative and advisory body but as an independent commentator on environmental policy. By adopting this position when the occasion demands the council would probably enjoy greater public confidence, and Government recognition, even if it is not an elected body.