Environmental watchdog wants more tax, less growth

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter

Parliament's environmental watchdog has questioned the Government's drive for faster economic growth, and wants new taxes on packaging and tourists.

Dr Morgan Williams, a former Agriculture Ministry ecologist who has been Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment since 1997, says economic goals need to shift from growth to "sustainable development".

In a 182-page report issued today as a prelude to this month's World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa, he says successive New Zealand governments have "largely ignored" the promises made at the last Earth Summit in Brazil 10 years ago.

The report will embarrass Environment Minister Marian Hobbs, who is due in Johannesburg for the conference opening on August 26, and Prime Minister Helen Clark, who plans to attend the summit sessions from September 2 to 4.

In a written response last night, Ms Hobbs welcomed the report, but her spokesman said she would not be interviewed about it.

The Government would study the report and assess its implications before responding formally to the commissioner, Ms Hobbs' statement said.

The Green Party, which is negotiating with Labour over a possible coalition government, welcomed the report.

Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons said the party was yet to receive a copy of the report, but it seemed to be promoting ideas which the green movement had been pushing for 30 years.

The report says the Government's February innovation statement gave priority to economic growth over environmental and social values.

The statement set a goal of lifting New Zealand's average incomes into the top half of the Western world. Finance Minister Michael Cullen said 4 per cent a year growth in gross domestic product would be needed to achieve that objective.

Dr Williams told a briefing in Auckland that economic growth should be only a means to an end, and the real goal should be "quality of life".

"We have used quality of life because that is the outcome that society is trying to achieve - not necessarily 4 per cent growth in GDP, which is simply a measure of some of the activity in society," he said.

"It's about qualitative advancement, rather than quantitative advancement."

His report says that quantitative growth can become "uneconomic" if its benefits to people living today are outweighed by damage to ecosystems needed to sustain future generations.

The report recommends taxing activities that damage the environment and subsidising activities that protect it.

"We are very, very light on environmental taxes," Dr Williams said. "They are about half the OECD level, and well behind the leading countries like Denmark."

Energy taxes and taxes on carbon dioxide and other pollutants raised about 10 per cent of tax revenue in Denmark in 1998, compared with 5 per cent raised in New Zealand from petrol tax, car licence fees and road user charges.

Dr Williams said New Zealand was third-worst in the Western world in energy efficiency, and one of the biggest users of packaging, because of the lack of such measures here.

He said British supermarkets had estimated that they could save £2 billion ($6.7 billion) by charging customers for plastic bags instead of giving them away free with their groceries.

"In New Zealand there has been a lot of discussion over five or six or seven years on voluntary packaging accords," he said.

But little had happened, so "maybe it needs a prod along, and a prod along would be to put some charges on packaging".

Dr Williams said tourists should bear some of the costs of protecting New Zealand from foreign bugs that threatened farming and the environment.

This could be done through higher airport taxes, as well as the fees already charged if officials need to fumigate anything entering the country.

nzherald.co.nz/environment