Environment discussion paper released

Press, 17 September 1987, Page 56

Environment discussion paper released

PA Wellington He Environmental Council has released a discussion paper which questions whether there is a need for an environmental “quango." The paper, “A Citizens Voice for the Environment Is there a need for an EnvironmentalQuango?" calls for submissions into the need for an environmental quango and the need for and future of the Environmental Grant Scheme. The council has until the end of the year to report back to the Minister for the Environment on the need for quangos in the area. It plans to hold regional forums in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin in September. Public submissions are due by the end of October. An environmental

quango could act as a watchdog monitoring the bureaucracy, said the convenor of the Council’s quango review committee, Mr Gordon Stephenson. He defined quangos as sources of independent, alternative advice which offered a long-term perspective beyond the threeyear electoral process. “The recent reorganisation of environmental agencies may not have accounted for all needs, and the discussion paper invites the public to consider existing and potential gaps in the environmental administration.

“The question is, would an environmental quango best fill these gaps?” he said.

The discussion paper said an environmental quango had the ability to look at the national significance of particular proposals for using resources, and could act as a mech-

anism for monitoring the State-owned enterprises. The Environmental Council was formed in 1970 and provides the Minister for the Environment with policy advice on general environmental issues.

. The Nature Conservation Council is a statutory nature advocate which focuses on specific issues and is serviced by the Conservation Department The paper said that while there appeared to be an overlap between the two councils’ work areas, in practice this had not occurred.

The paper said that one constraint an advisory council functioned under was that it might appear less valuable if a Minister or Government had little understanding of the council’s perspective or its work. Another constraint was

the way the bureaucracy at times, “worked to protect itself,” and another was the limited resource base available to the council.

In the 1987-88 financial year, it had an allocation of $52,000, of which more than half would go to meeting-related expenses, and the rest to the work programme. “A fourth constraint has been the lack of appreciation of what the council has sought to achieve,” the paper said. “This is partly due to policy advice normally being directed to the Minister.”

"Credit for such policies must go to the Minister. Hence, much of the council’s work has gone unreported to the public. “Possibly the council should have been more concerned for its public image.”

The report said that

there was no arrangement to provide the Minister with independent advice on important environmental issues, nor was there any mechanism for evaluating the national significance of particular resource proposals, or to resolve issues of national development and resource use.

An example was the wise use of non-renewable resources such as gas and coal.

Government departments inevitably faced operating limits, and there was often “a gap between the work that should be done and that which was done,” it said.

It was already clear, it said, that urban issues received extremely limited coverage, and that the “urban environment thus appears to be one of the losers of the new system.”