‘An absolute travesty for democracy’: Critics decry death of Ministry for the Environment
Thursday, 28 May 2026
Government MPs voted to disestablish the Ministry for the Environment late on Wednesday after a perfunctory debate in which one National MP was asked by House speaker Greg O’Connor to take his earphones out and at least pretend he was listening.
The third reading of the Environment (Disestablishment of Ministry for the Environment) Amendment Bill as part of the Government’s agenda for economic growth and efficiency was a formality witnessed by only a handful of MPs.
The Ministry for the Environment’s functions will be passed to a mega-ministry called the Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (Mcert), ending a 40-year political consensus on having a ministry with the sole purpose of environmental protection.
Opposition MPs made impassioned speeches decrying the move during the bill’s third reading.
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National MPs speaking for the Government replied in speeches of less than a minute each, with each repeating the formula that the Government was “fixing the basics, and building the future”.
Catherine Wedd spoke first for the Government saying it was focusing on efficiency and removing duplication through the creation of Mcert.
Grant McCullum argued the Government was reflecting the importance of the environment by “putting it at the heart of the planning for our roads, for our urban development, and our housing”.
National MP Ryan Hamilton claimed opposition MPs seemed “a bit confused … They seem to think we are dissolving the Ministry for the Environment, that we don’t care”. .
He had assembled four drinking glasses on his desk to explain the rationale for Mcert.
One glass represented cities, one glass represented regions, and another represented transport. The fourth, which he held aside, was the environment “all by itself feeling quite alone”.
He then grouped the glasses together, claiming that would mean “they could all get along together”.
His speech was greeted with groans of dismay from the opposition MPs among the very few MPs in the House at 7.30pm on Wednesday who were present to witness the vote to dissolve MFE, which was always going to go the Government’s way with coalition partners National, ACT and New Zealand First all supporting it.
Labour’s Priyanca Radhakrishnan criticised the Government for rushing through a bill its constituent parties had not campaigned on in the last election, calling the process “an absolute travesty for democracy”.
She said there had been no debate on the substance of the bill, which opposition MPs saw as further evidence of the Government prioritising short-term economic growth over the environment.
She criticised Wedd for her “30-second” speech, suggesting that was in keeping with the speed at which the bill to dissolve MFE had passed through Parliament.
The bill was referred to the Environment Select Committee on February 19, she said, and the public was given a consultation period of just one day to make submissions, with submissions closing on February 20.
“One day for people to submit on the fact that this Government has decided to close the Ministry for the Environment without campaigning on it,” Radhakrishnan said.
She said 588 submissions were made, but just 22 submitters were able to speak to the select committee in hearings lasting just three hours.
“The committee deliberated for 14 minutes on this bill,” she said.
Radhakrishnan said the Government was pretending there was a choice between a healthy environment and a healthy economy.
But, she said: “There is no economy with polluted rivers. There is no productivity with eroded land, There is no growth on a warming planet. The environment is the economy. They frame nature as an obstacle to growth. That is lazy politics. That is lazy economics.
“When members and ministers say that it’s growth versus the economy, what they are really talking about is short-term gain for long-term loss… of wellbeing,” she said.
“This is a government with a failing economic model, and they are pillaging the environment to prop that up,” she said.
Green Party MP Steve Abel said many Government law changes had promoted private property rights over the environment.
“The disestablishment of the Ministry for the Environment comes in the context of a Government that is the most radically anti-environment that we have seen in our history,” he said.
“You cannot have swimmable rivers by focusing on private property rights. You cannot have drinkable water, and you cannot have a stable climate, by focusing on private property rights.”
Abel gave the example of a gold mine granted the go-ahead under the new Fast Track laws on conversation land occupied by endangered Archey’s frogs.
“There’s gold throughout the entire universe, Mr Speaker, but as far as we know in the vastness of that universe, there’s only one place that life exists, and it is on this earth. If anyone was looking down and wondering that we were choosing between looking after that rare, endemic, 200 million-year-old Archey’s frog, or we were choosing 30 years of royalties from a Canadian gold company they would say you are fools,” he said.
In what seemed an emblematic moment in the performative third reading of the bill, speaker O’Connor stopped to tell one National MP: “Most members, I realise, do other things while they are sitting in the House, but they go through the motions of pretending that they are actually attending to the business of the House. Sitting there with earphones on, in another space, I’m not quite sure is in keeping with that pretence.”
He invited the MP to remove his earphones.