Big step towards new Ministry

Press, 11 March 1985, Page 1

Big step towards new Ministry

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington A big step towards a new Ministry for the Environment was taken by the Environment Forum held at Parliament at the week-end. This week a small task force will be appointed by the Minister for Environment, Mr Marshall, to report to the Government on the substance of the recommendations that came from the fotum and the machinery for putting them into effect. This report will be in the hands of Mr Marshall and the Minister of State Services, Mr Rodger, by midApril. Mr Marshall said he hoped the Government

would be able to introduce legislation in Parliament this year amending the structure and functions of environmental planning, scheme development, and Nature conservation in New Zealand. The forum lasted 2% days and largely endorsed the discussion paper issued by the Government last November This recommended a new Ministry that would embrace all the planning and Nature conservation functions of the Government. It also recommended a separate Parliamentary Commissioner, independent of the Ministry, to audit the Ministry’s work. This structure had been

challenged by a group of six conservationist groups, but the structure still emerged intact after the forum. The only main criticism of the structure was that a Ministry would be seen to be judge and jury in its own case if it did both the planning and development work on the one hand, and embraced Nature conservation work on the other. As a result, Mr Marshall said, the Government may consider breaking the Nature conservation work away from the Ministry and giving it to a Lands and Survey Department which, in turn, had lost all its planning and development functions. Further report, Page 8