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ABSTRACT
An emerging consensus among scholars of environmental politics includes public participation in the legislative process as a critical condition of the transition to sustainability. The select committee process in Aotearoa New Zealand has long been celebrated for its apparent openness to public participation. We examine the select committee process as it functioned in the case of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill 2019, employing a quantitative analysis that mapped categories of submitters’ policy propositions through the constant comparative method, and compare them against the recommendations of the majority and minority perspectives of the Environment Select Committee. In addition, we compare the majority and minority recommendations to the Departmental Report. The results of this case study incline us to question the assumption that submitters have influence with select committees and the extent of committee deliberation. If the transition to sustainability depends on the government’s capacity for transformative change, and that capacity in turn depends on the strength of its deliberative system, then our study provides some reason to worry about the capacity of government in Aotearoa New Zealand to respond to the challenge of climate change.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. The terms ‘transformation’ and ‘transition’ are sometimes used interchangeably, but they have come to refer to different things in the literature on environmental sustainability. ‘Transition’ here refers to the process of moving from one social-ecological state to another (often, from unsustainability to sustainability); transitions can occur at many levels including for example sectors or regimes of production. ‘Transformation’, by contrast, signals more fundamental, holistic change in the way human and natural systems operate (often, from unsafe and unjust operating spaces towards safer and more just spaces). Hölscher, Wittmayer, and Loorbach (Citation2018) .
2. See Hammond, Dryzek, and Pickering (Citation2020), pg. 127: ‘many of the signature problems of the Anthropocene are the product of dominant institutions that emerged in the previous epoch – the Holocene. These institutions remain stuck in “pathological path dependencies” that decouple human institutions from the Earth system by systematically repressing information about ecological conditions and prioritising narrow economic concerns. As an antidote to pathological path dependencies, institutions need to cultivate ecological reflexivity, which refers to the capacity of an entity to recognise and anticipate its impacts on social-ecological systems and listen to feedback from those systems; critically reflect on core values in light of this feedback; and respond by transforming its practices.’
3. Kurian, Munshi, Cretney, and Morrison, this volume.
4. See Eckersley, op. cit. pg. 17 − 18: ‘Fostering innovation and experimentation in social organisation, and new discursive designs to debate and address transition tensions and pathways in ways that do not privilege powerful vested interests, should receive at least as much attention as technical innovation.’
5. David McGee was the Clerk of the House from 1985 to 2007.
6. A recent example of this is the Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationship Registration Bill. The Government and Administration Committee by majority recommended a process that would make it easier for individuals to change the sex recorded on their birth certificate, including adding intersex and non-binary options. The process around gender self-identification was not a part of the bill’s first reading (Government and Administration Committee Citation2018).
7. See McQueen, pg. 4: Guides for the development of legislation only ‘encourage consultation with interested parties and Māori … [a] process [that] will often involve the circulation of draft Bills to various interested private organisations.’
8. In 2019 a SOP was successfully introduced during the Committee of the Whole House for the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Amendment Bill to remove section 15A of the bill, which had been recommended unanimously by the Health Select Committee, and accepted in the second reading vote (Health Select Committee Citation2018; New Zealand House of Representatives Citation2018; New Zealand, Citation2019).
9. Departmental officials are not the only staff that work for select committees. Select comittees have a number of staff that work for them on a permenant basis, including a secretariat. They may request advice and support from Officers of Parliament, legislative drafters, and other independent sources (McGee Citation2017). However, departmental officials are ‘the principal source of advice available to committes considering Government bills’ (McGee Citation2017, 300).
10. In future research, interviews with MPs would help us understand how MPs engage with submissions.
11. Due to the fact that the committee system as a whole is proportional (rather than each individual committee), not all committees have a government majority. The number of majorities a government is able to hold depends on the extent of the government’s majority in the House. In the 2017−2020 term of Parliament five subject select committees had a government majority, and seven had tied membership between the government and opposition.
12. The definition of each category of submitter is up for debate, but would distract from the purpose of this paper.
13. There was one submission that (despite our categorisation) equally fit in both Business/Industry and Individuals. We included this submission in both categories, but did not end up analysing it.
14. It should be noted that the select committee report noted one case where the Green Party member differed from the majority perspective. The member was supportive of the Climate Change Commission having decision-making power over carbon budgets. David Hall explores the consequences of the Climate Change Commission’s lack of decision-making power in terms of epistocratic arrangements and authority elsewhere in this Special Issue. He outlines the challenges that the Commission will face as an advisory body, and argues that the Commission must ‘derive its authority from its expertise’ instead of decision-making authority and find a way to ‘represent diverse policy perspectives in their policy advise.’
15. The Minister of Climate Change, James Shaw.
16. This recommendation was not full, rather a recommendation that the House should consider whether they wish to amend the clause.
17. One of these recommendations was not full, rather a recommendation that the House should consider whether they wish to amend the clause.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Will Dreyer
Will Dreyer is a PhD student within the Political Science and International Relations programme at the Victoria University of Wellington. His research focuses on the policy impact of select committees and their engagement with the public
Elisabeth Ellis
Elisabeth Ellis is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics programme at the University of Otago. She is also co-editor of the journal Political Theory. Her work investigates how we can make policy decisions that serve our interests in flourishing now and in the future. Her current project, “the collective implications of discrete decisions in environmental policy,” includes papers in environmental democracy, the collective ethics of flying, the value of biodiversity losses, climate adaptation justice, and species extinction.