‘End of an era’ as vote to disestablish Ministry for the Environment nears, but is NZ making a novel mistake?
Tuesday, 19 May 2026
ANALYSIS: Not every country has a pure environment agency, but New Zealand’s plan to merge the Ministry for the Environment (MFE) into a mega-ministry focused on Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport is novel among OECD countries.
The Government is moving to create an amalgamation of all those - dubbed MCERT - and the third reading of the bill to disestablish MFE is due tomorrow.
At its first reading in February, then-Minister of Conservation Tama Potaka said the move would “unlock” the potential of New Zealand cities and regions, boosting economic growth and productivity through lower transaction costs, a simpler and more responsive public service, and a more integrated planning and investment environment.
Opposition parties were, and remain, outraged.
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Labour’s Priyanca Radhakrishnan called it an “absolute disgrace” which spoke to the Government’s “war on nature”.
And the Greens’ Lan Pham said burying the Ministry for the Environment in a superministry designed to drive development, growth, and infrastructure was the clearest possible signal the Government could give that environment came last.
Last was, ironically where the “E” for environment came in an earlier proposed name for the mega-ministry: “MCRE” - Ministry for Cities, Regions and Environment. But the need for a more pronounceable acronym appears to have promoted the “E”.
At the first reading of the bill to abolish MFE in February, Pham said the move ended a cross-party consensus dating back to 1986 that like other developed countries, New Zealand needed a “dedicated voice at the heart of Government” to speak for the environment.
On the eve of the third reading of the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill, Pham said: “40 years of a dedicated voice for the environment disestablished after 40 minutes of select committee.”
Countries with mega-ministries
Around the OECD organisation of rich nations, the vast majority retain standalone ministries for the environment. There are exceptions, although in all cases there is a close link between the policy areas twinned with protecting the environment.
And the “environment” is usually the first function in the name.
In the UK, for example, there is the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), and also the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).
Austria’s Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology has a remit that includes transport infrastructure, which has a natural crossover.
Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety, oversees the atomic reactors in the country, though nuclear energy plays no part in the country’s net zero climate emissions by 2045 plans.
Switzerland’s Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications includes responsibility for the country’s communications infrastructure.
And in highly-federal Belgium, the Federal Public Service Health, Food Chain Safety and Environment is a central agency with a broad remit, with many aspects of environmental policy decentralized to the regions.
Controversial merger
Whether a merger like the creation of MCERT can work is controversial.
Bronwyn Hayward, a professor of political science at the University of Canterbury, said a paper to Cabinet was presented with “incorrect/misleading statements made by the Ministers in charge of the bill”.
“Ministers were informed, ‘Some stakeholders may fear environmental priorities will be diluted. Others may worry they will hinder growth. These concerns are unfounded. MCRE [the earlier working name for the mega-ministry] improves delivery. It does not change what is delivered. Other countries successfully integrate similar functions. New Zealand can too’.”
But, Hayward told MPs in her submission: “I can find no evidence of other countries that have successfully integrated such diverse oversight as environment with cities other than the Maldives and Kosovo.”
She said: “Democracies New Zealand normally compare ourselves with retain a focus and coordinated objectives around related nature-based solutions and sectors or industries particularly agriculture, water and food and sometimes energy.”
Merge with MPI makes more sense
Simon Upton, New Zealand’s Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who has a statutory duty to advise Parliament on matters involving the environment, offered the frankest of advice.
“My advice to you is this change is unlikely to help the environment,” he said.
The ministry into which MFE will be folded would be a very urban-focused ministry and, he suspects, will be dominated by people who live in cities, and focused on urban spatial planning.
What was more, Upton was concerned that bulk funding for the ministry could mean that the chief executive could end up making funding “trade-offs” behind closed doors.
Such trade-offs between the environment and economic growth, should be made in a “contested, public arena, with ministers making the decisions”, Upton told MPs when he spoke to them during select committee hearings that preceded the 40-minute deliberation Pham referred to.
Upton likened the MCERT mega-ministry to a “big blender”.
“Frankly, I don’t have a lot of confidence in large internal bureaucratic trade-off exercises,” he said.
The fear that the submerging of MFE into a mega-ministry would see it’s voice silenced prompted a concession from the Government that the new ministry would have to publicly report each year on progress towards its statutory environmental goals.
Upton, a former National Party MP who served as Minister for the Environment between November 1993 and December 1999, told MPs, that if MFE needed to be merged (What Upton refers to as “shifting around the Lego bricks of Government”), he said it would make sense to do it with an agency with rural, and heavy scientific capability.
That, he said, would be the Ministry of Primary Industries.
“That might shock some people,” he told MPs.
Farming was the biggest impactor on the environment, and he did not avidly support the idea of MFE and MPI merging, but he said MPI had serious capabilities on issues much closer to the environment than a “very urban-focused” ministry.
“It’s got serious technical capabilities in areas like biosecurity and animal health that are much closer to the natural environment than people advising on how many apartments you can squeeze around a bus stop,” he said.
Upton also pointed out how ideological the process can be when deciding which national priorities warrant their own ministry.
“If we can justify a separate ministry for regulation, we can certainly justify a separate ministry for the environment,” he told MPs.
High risk move
Upton also had one last warning for MPs. There couldn’t really be a worse time to merge MFE into a new mega-ministry just when masses of new legislation was being created and bedded in.
He said the Government did not want MFE staff trying to do their jobs while reapplying for their jobs.
Official Information Act requests made by Pham showed on many fronts, the restructuring to create MCERT created new risks, and many of those risks were seen as being “high”.
These included staff burnout, key staff leaving, and priority work not being delivered on time.
Under questioning from Pham at last week’s Committee of the Whole House (the last stage before the third reading), Nicola Grigg, the new Minister for the Environment, said she was confident of the transitional arrangements.
Pham also wanted assurances that the very role of Minister for the Environment would not be disestablished.
After the hearing, Pham told The Post: “She [Grigg] didn’t respond at all.
“This really is the end of an era,” Pham said.