Often we learn as much from what is not done, as we do from what is done.
Many saw this week’s failure to proceed with James Shaw’s bill to include a “right to sustainable environment” into our Bill of Rights as signalling Shaw’s retirement from Parliament.
That in itself is a significant event but Shaw would be the last person to regard his retirement as more significant than the failure of Parliament to accept this proposal.
The Greens and Te Pati Māori supported the proposal and Labour, while it voted for the first reading, could not resist some hedging and quibbling with their “environment spokesperson” apparently forgetting her rightful focus by suggesting that “floodgates” might open and such things as housing might follow.
Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi.
Intriguingly she then went on to suggest that she was “absolutely not” in favour of “property rights”, which if true, is certainly a radical departure from that party’s normal stance.
The “Cluster” parties of Government were predictably dismissive.
Of course the ideals were fine but where principle meets power, privilege or private enterprise the ideals go the way of all waste materials.
Penny Simmonds, the subject matter Minister, darkly imagined “cumbersome regulatory obligations” which the Bill did not include.
Such things might hinder “growth and job creation”.
Or might not, one could add.
“We simply cannot afford (this) at this time in our country’s history”, she added.
If taken at face value, this could only suggest (1) all environmental regulations were unaffordable and (2) there is some future time at which we would be able to afford them.
Like, when it is too late.
Another Cluster spokesperson opined that the establishment of such a right derived from a “1960s-1970s” view of the world, which will come as something of a surprise to anyone who has followed even at a considerable distance, the global recognition of climate, species diversity and environmental degradation over the past half century or so.
If he would like to go back to that era he might do well to have a listen to Jethro Tull’s 1969 hit “Living In The Past”. “While others shout of war’s disaster/oh, we won’t give in/let’s go living in the past”.
It’s not a bad slogan for the current Government.
Our Bill of Rights is quite limited in its scope to some pretty universal human civil and political rights. But it does not cut across or limit rights under other parts of our law which are explicitly stated to continue unrestricted.
A more radical view would be that protecting the environment as itself rather than as something just for human enjoyment is where we should be heading. But I did not hear that from government speakers.
What this quite obviously leaves open is that rights established under, for example, Te Tiriti o Waitangi and citizen resistance may well be the most effective means of defending and protecting Te Taiao.
If Parliament does not want to recognise a general right to a “sustainable environment” for humans then the weight goes there. I’m not sure that this is the intention of those opposing Shaw’s considered and conservative recognition of a human right of this kind.
Rob Campbell, former chairman of Te Whatu Ora. Photo / Michael Craig
As measure after measure weakens or evades regulatory control, the option is not simply to allow resource exploitation to proceed but for the people to resist.
The role of kaitiaki on behalf of Te Taiao might be more powerful than the limited right they rejected.
Ko au Te Taiao. Ko Te Taiao ko au - I am The Environment. The Environment is me.
Rob Campbell is a professional director and investor. He is chancellor at AUT, chairman of Ara Ake, chairman of NZ Rural Land, and an adviser for Dave Letele’s BBM charity. He is also the former chairman of Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand).
