41970 (2025). Lemauga Lydia Sosene to the Minister for the Environment

41970 (2025). Lemauga Lydia Sosene to the Minister for the Environment: How many international flights in total, if any, counting each leg of a journey as an individual flight, has each department or entity that the Minister is responsible for paid for in the period from November 27th 2023 to August 1st 2025; and what was the total cost broken down by month, destination, cabin class and the purpose of the flight?

Hon Penny Simmonds: The information sought by the Member is provided as part of agencies' Annual Review submissions. I invite the Member to review the Ministry for the Environment's response to Question 98 of the 2023/24 Annual Review submission which is publicly available on Parliament's website at: https://www.parliament.nz/resource/en-NZ/54SCENV_EVI_46dc8331-b0b8-43fe-6fd7-08dcebf31e9f_ENV76964/88b2b4bd353632e61f287709e57f03283b0fb789. A further breakdown of details on international flights can be found in the following link - see Appendix 11: https://www.parliament.nz/resource/en-NZ/54SCENV_EVI_46dc8331-b0b8-43fe-6fd7-08dcebf31e9f_ENV76965/3e601937ac7e1b18bb218a4b6f09ae8a2f554008 Information for 2024/25 and 2025/26 will be provided as part of the Ministry for the Environment's Annual Review submissions in advance of December's Scrutiny Week in each year. In accordance with the Ministry for the Environment’s Travel Policy, flights under ten hours are to be booked Economy class and flights over ten hours can be booked in Premium Economy class. Business class travel will only be approved in exceptional cases.