Chris Bishop defends new Ministry under scrutiny

RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has defended the government's new ministry, saying it will "amplified" the environment rather than ignored it.

The Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT), which will bundle several ministries into one, will start operating from 1 July.

An overwhelming majority of submissions opposed the dismantling of the Ministry for the Environment to make way for the new agency.

At a Scrutiny Week hearing of the environment select committee, RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop said the enabling legislation - the Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment Bill - had been "very unhelpfully titled".

"It's not actually being disestablished, it's just being transferred into this new agency."

At the moment, the Ministry for the Environment was a "silo-ised agency that can just be parked off to the side depending on ministerial whim and government priority", Bishop said.

The new arrangements would make sure the environment was integrated into urban planning and development, transport infrastructure, national adaptation and the challenges of climate change, he said.

"All of those things fit together and making sure that we consider them in the round, in a properly joined-up way, actually amplifies the environment."

MCERT presented an opportunity to solve "some of the biggest problems afflicting New Zealand", Bishop said.

"I want this ministry to be the place where the brightest minds in the public service go and work.

"The work they're doing across urban planning and environmental management and adaptation and transport pricing, that's the stuff that's really going to unlock growth and productivity."

Bishop talked a lot about growth and productivity but not environmental improvement, Labour's environment spokesperson Deborah Russell said.

"Do you think that biodiversity and clean waterways and air is also important? People are worried," she told him at Scrutiny Week hearing.

Bishop replied: "I know that, but they're wrong."

"There will be a whole stream of people inside the agency working on the exact issues that you are talking about."

Environment Minister Penny Simmonds said the committee and MPs needed to give the new ministry a chance.

"Stop with the doomsday predictions."

Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said the new arrangements would deprioritise the environment "by making it one of a bundle of considerations".

Recent government proposals, including one to make it easier to swap or sell up to 60 percent of current conservation land, suggested the environment was not a priority, she said.

"What guarantee in legislation or otherwise can you provide us that the environment will be the centre of every decision that is made here and not trade it off against supposed economic development?"

The same advice that environment officials provided now would continue to be created by the new ministry, Bishop replied.

"Governments of both stripes will have to make trade-offs when and where they exist about those policies' advice."

The mere existence of a stand-alone Ministry for the Environment did not mean the environment was protected, he said.

"It's a very important policy shop, but it's not like when Geoffrey Palmer created the Ministry for the Environment in 1989, 1990, all of a sudden New Zealand got a better environment.

"In fact, the opposite has happened in the last 36 years. It's the laws that make a difference, the funding, the data."