Control wanted for environment Ministry

Press, 7 February 1985, Page 12

Control wanted for environment Ministry

PA Wellington The proposed Ministry for the Environment should have a similar control function among Government departments as the Treasury, says the Commissioner for the Environment, Mr Ken Piddington. Mr Piddington’s comment comes as lobbyists prepare themselves for the environmental forum to be held in Parliament early in March. At that forum', the first all-sector conference on the environment since 1970, the main subject on the agenda will be the form of the new Ministry. One of the main criticisms of the Commission for the Environment since its creation in 1972 has been its lack of statutory teeth to enforce its recommendations. Labour, in its pre-election releases, pledged itself to setting up a Ministry to integrate conservation and development. A task force was set up and its options for a new Ministry have been the subject of much discussion in recent months. But some departments have made it clear they do not want to see the new Ministry have the kind of control Mr Piddington speaks of. The Commissioner of Works, Mr Bob Norman, said he regarded planning as very much part of the role of his department. He said he would not like to see the final say on development projects fall to a Ministry with an audit role. Mr Norman said environmental concerns were already very much part of the

planning and development within his own department. Officers from the proposed Ministry could work alongside his department on projects, he said. But Mr Piddington, whose department drew attention to the waste disposal problems at Motunui two years before they attracted widespread attention, says his experience tells a different story. He said the role of the new Ministry was not an issue about status, but of professional effectiveness. In 1981 an O.E.C.D. review recommended the creation of a Ministry for the Environment in New Zealand.

Mr Piddington is vicechairman of the O.E.C.D.’s Environmental Committee and after attending its meeting last June returned more convinced that environmental and economic goals are not at odds.

“Last June at the O.E.C.D. conference, various countries’ studies showed that environment policies have not defeated economic goals, but have in fact supported major objectives in some cases, for example, employment,” he said. Mr Piddington noted that some overseas countries, most notably in Scandinavia, gave their environmental agencies far more clout than did New Zealand.

In Europe, the onset of gross pollution problems, such as acid rain, had forced more fundamental decisions to be made on resource management than were being taken up in New Zealand.