Watchdog role needs bite
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment plays a special role in our politics. The commissioner is appointed by Parliament and is therefore not a creature of the Government or the ruling party. The commissioner advocates for the environment and under retiring Commissioner Jan Wright has built a fine reputation for fearless independence and deep respect for evidence. So the appointment of former National Cabinet Minister Simon Upton is a matter of public interest and importance. New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, an old National colleague of Upton’s, says the appointment of Upton, ‘‘whose political career was far from a blazing success,’’ smacks of jobs for the boys and the old boys’ network. Is Peters right?
The fact that both Labour and Green MPs have backed Upton should suggest that the reality is more complex. Both conclude he is the right man for the job. Upton’s early career was that of a somewhat precious, far-right freemarket ideologue. He was part of the caucus fringe which infuriated National Prime Minister Robert Muldoon and then played a vital role in National’s neoliberal heyday in the early 1990s. Upton, who was elected to Parliament at 23, was once a crusader for shrinking the state and for letting the market rip. Peters is correct in saying that Upton’s career was not a blazing success. His most memorable failure was his highly ideological upending of the health system in the 1990s. This, and the Ruth Richardson-led deep cuts in social services, was a disaster for the health system and was duly disowned by a more pragmatic Minister of Health, Bill English, who told National it must stop ‘‘defending the indefensible.’’ By that he meant stop the Upton health reforms.
The evidence suggests that the crusading wet-behind-the-ears young Upton has grown up and become more sensible since those bad times in the 1980s and 1990s. He appears to have become more amenable to social democracy and the need for state intervention of various kinds.
He now seems to be a species of blue-green. He will need to show as Commissioner that he is more green than blue and more interested in evidence than in ideology. He will above all have to show that he is utterly independent of his former National Party colleagues. He has already shown signs of this. His OECD report this month on environmental performance in New Zealand was hard-hitting, well-informed, and critical of government policy. He said our economy, based largely on natural resources, was starting to show its environmental limits with increasing greenhouse gas emission and water pollution. Upton has international expertise with climate change and in an interview in 2015 criticised New Zealand for not doing enough. He usefully rubbished the small country’s plea that its gas emission are globally insignificant, saying that the same argument could be run by most countries in the world. This suggests a certain political robustness.
As commissioner, Upton will need to show a similar independence.
- Fairfax NZ