Environment committee  That's correct.

Environment committee  It was Agenda 21.

Environment committee  There was a very, very good reception, particularly from the local government in New Zealand, and that's where a lot of what we were trying to say was picked up, and many things started to evolve. So think of it as an empowerment of voice within local government, both executive a

Environment committee  No, this is Wellington.

Environment committee  Yes, I trust you can see the beehive behind me.

Environment committee  No, the only contrary statement has come from some of the more right-wing elements of our Parliament. It's not specific to this office. It's whether you need these sorts of instruments in our democracy at all—the so-called grievance industry model—that they get concerned about. I

Environment committee  The first thing is that the question of whether we should be part of the audit office has never been asked, because we never have been. Maybe that's a blind spot that the whole of New Zealand has. We've never thought of that model, because we had an auditor's office, we had an om

Environment committee  No, I have a completely independent staff currently of 19. We're a totally independent statutory entity. I have a current budget of $2.7 million. But what I have said is that we work closely with the audit office, both in our work and in the select committees of Parliament and

Environment committee  The main committee we work with currently is the Local Government and Environment Committee. We have also acted as an adviser, on occasion, to the Primary Production Committee.

Environment committee  We have a very wide range, and in fact that's a very good question. I come from a science background, as did my predecessor. When I started this role 10 years ago, I was tending to recruit in specific science disciplines. But quite quickly we found that we needed a much broader b

Environment committee  The fundamental model that was the starting point was our ombudsman's office. New Zealand was one of the first in the world to create a citizens' ombudsman. So that's where the fundamental model came from, and that's what we built the functions of this current office on, which, a

Environment committee  Do you want me to answer that?

Environment committee  The point I'd really make is that I didn't and wouldn't wish to describe myself as an environmentalist. I think that is a term that has all sorts of baggage around it. The role of the office, the role that I and my predecessor have essentially carved out, is a very broad one, whi

Environment committee  The only amendments that have occurred have been amendments to the language in our Resource Management Act, such as, for example, the use of the words “sustainable management”. There have been no amendments to reshape the New Zealand office on the basis of any other office anywhe

Environment committee  You can't do this job unless you're advocating for better environmental management, advocating for more critical thinking about how you approach the management of natural capital, and advocating for the intelligent and sharper uses of the tools that we use in our economies and so