24 Sep 2008: Eighteen months as Commissioner

Eighteen months in a new job sounds like a long time. But the time I’ve spent as the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has flown by.

When I took on the role in March 2007, the office was focussed on celebrating the PCE’s 20^th anniversary and the progress made during those two decades. Since then, my focus has necessarily been on the future. I have restructured the office to align it closely with my functions in the Environment Act.

We have developed a new strategic plan and embedded it in our Statement of Intent. That exercise involved the whole office developing a new mission statement and set of values. Although it has been a time of significant change, we continue with much of the PCE “tried and true”, such as undertaking investigations in multidisciplinary teams.

We have worked hard to complete and publish reports into some important investigations. Of note over the past six months, we concluded a major investigation into the clean-up of the contaminated site at Mapua, published our report into the Levin landfill,  finished a review of the Electricity Commission.

I look forward to keeping you up-to-date with the progress of our work programme and other PCE events in this column. If you have any feedback or comments, please email pce@pce.parliament.nz.