Norman Russel William: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Norman Russel William: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:661;Page:10051] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 We are dealing with this bill under urgency with no select committee process as we strip away the way for Cantabrians to have the vote. Subpart 3 deals with water conservation orders. Water conservation orders are a tremendously important part of the environmental regulation of New Zealand. To be fair most people probably are completely unaware of water conservation orders which is why the Government is quietly moving on them in this bill. Water conservation orders are national parks for our rivers; they set standards. For example the water conservation order on the Ahuriri River sets a minimum flow rate of 10 cubic metres per second of water that has to flow through it and if the rate falls below that then water takes have to drop out. So water conservation orders are a way for us to protect our rivers and they have a whole bunch of conditions attached to them. 
This bill fundamentally changes water conservation orders for Canterbury—both the process for dealing with water conservation orders particularly the Hurunui one and what could happen to the existing water conservation orders. So the first issue is the Hurunui River order. It is not correct to say that currently there is a water conservation order on the Hurunui River. In fact the process is under way. It was due to go to the Environment Court in May or June and that has been an issue of contention. This bill cuts that process off at the knees. After the applicants have spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get this process through going through a special tribunal to the Environment Court and then to the Minister this bill intervenes in the middle of that process and sends it to the Government’s hand-picked commissioners to make the decision about whether the Hurunui water conservation order will be decided. Then it goes to the Minister for the Environment. So this bill cuts through the existing process. 
From my point of view and the point of view of those who care about rivers this is a totally unacceptable cutting off of the normal process for water conservation orders. That would be worrying enough in a bill that ostensibly is supposed to be about Environment Canterbury but at the back of this bill there is the process for cutting off the application for the Hurunui water conservation order—that is the attempt to put a national park on the Hurunui River. 
The Hurunui River for those who do not know is the last remaining wild river that runs from the mountains to the sea via a natural lake on the east coast of the South Island and is subject to an irrigation scheme. They want to put a 70-metre dam on the south branch and a weir on the north branch. This bill intervenes in the process of trying to protect the Hurunui through a water conservation order and the danger is that we will open it up to the irrigation project that has been so talked about. 
If it was just about the Hurunui it would be worrying enough but the other problem is that this bill now makes it possible for any irrigator in the country to apply to the Minister for the Environment to open up any of the existing water conservation orders without going through the normal process. Normally if we want to amend or revoke a water conservation order we have to go through a very elaborate process because they are like national parks. This bill suddenly opens up the existing Canterbury water conservation orders so that they can be contested by the irrigators. Graeme Sutton from Irrigation New Zealand is jubilant about this bill because he knows what it means for the existing water conservation orders. For example people may remember that the cubicle farm application on Killermont Station relied on taking water out of the Ahuriri River in order to irrigate the station. There is no way that project could have gone ahead under the current law but this bill allows those who were putting forward the cubicle farm application to go to the Minister for the Environment without any of the normal due process to get a variation on the water conservation order on the Ahuriri River so that they can get access to water to irrigate Killermont Station even though it would take the river below the minimum flow that is currently outlined in that water conservation order. This bill is setting up a situation whereby we can revoke and amend existing water conservation orders on the Ahuriri River the Rakaia River the Rangitata River and Te Waihora. All of them can be amended through basically a stroke of the pen of the Minister for the Environment. 
We thought we had national parks for our rivers. The environment movement has fought battle after battle and spent literally millions of dollars to get water conservation orders in place across New Zealand including in Canterbury and now because of the votes of National ACT and the Maori Party we will see water conservation orders upended at the whim of the Minister for the Environment at the stroke of a pen. Water conservation orders protecting some of our most important rivers in Canterbury can now be overturned. 
On the one hand we have the special situation tucked away in the schedules that relate to this part which deal with the Hurunui to give special consideration to the Hurunui so that the irrigation scheme can go ahead and Mr Carter can get access to water for his farm. Aside from the Hurunui situation we have a more general problem whereby all of the water conservation orders in Canterbury are now under the gun. The environment movement fought long and hard and worked with tangata whenua over many years in order to get in place water conservation orders to protect our wonderful rivers. 
I was on the Hurunui on Sunday. I met with Mark Solomon from Ngai Tahu. We spoke at great length about what a precious river that was and how important it was that there be a water conservation order to protect that river from irrigators yet here we have the Maori Party voting today for a bill that threatens the Hurunui River. It seems to me totally unacceptable that anybody who cares about the wild rivers of this country could vote for a bill that threatens the water conservation order on the Hurunui and opens up every existing water conservation order in the Canterbury region so that it can now be overturned at the stroke of a pen by the Minister. 
What kind of a national park do we have then? We have a national park that is a bit like—oh the schedule 4 national parks which can be mined. We have that kind of national park the national park that we thought was for good but in fact the water in these water conservation orders can now be mined for irrigation schemes because of the changes that the Government is forcing through all through the day and all through the night without a select committee process and under urgency. 
I will respond to some of the Minister’s comments and his attacks on me and the Green Party. The Minister has made various comments at which personally I take offence. He said that we are doing an ad hominem attack on Mr Creech. That is the allegation essentially. I dispute that. I say that the issue with Mr Creech is not Mr Creech himself. The issue is that he was the director of a dairy company that was doing a review of the regulator of the dairy industry in Canterbury. That was the issue with the appointment of Mr Creech. It was not that Mr Creech was a bad person. It was that Mr Creech was at that time a director of a dairy company that had multiple convictions for pollution of water and who was at that stage doing a review of the regulator of the dairy industry. That is not an ad hominem attack. It is a problem with setting up a structure whereby we appoint someone who should never have had that role. It is that review that has provided the basis for this bill. 
The extraordinary thing about the water conservation order provisions in Subpart 3 is that there is no way we can take the changes to water conservation orders out of the fact that Environment Canterbury may have been too slow on its resource consents or it may not have processed enough resource consents to suit some irrigators. We cannot blame water conservation orders for that. It is not the fault of water conservation orders which have been fought for in good faith by the environment movement and tangata whenua over many years. We cannot blame water conservation orders for that yet in Subpart 3 and hidden away in schedule 2 there is a whole series of changes to the way that water conservation orders currently work. These are the orders that protect our nationally significant rivers. 
It is also important to look at the way the test will be changed. There is quite a lack of clarity in the test of what will now be a water conservation order in the Canterbury region. This bill introduces a whole series of conflicting things that must be taken into account in any consideration of a water conservation order in the Canterbury region. It is unclear where all of this will end up. It is almost certainly the case that it no longer prioritises water bodies of national significance which was always meant to be the whole purpose of a water conservation order. It was to protect water bodies of national significance in perpetuity. The whole idea was that it was like a national park for rivers and that is what is being overturned in this bill. The test for getting something even into being considered for a water conservation order has now been muddied and made very unclear because there are now multiple and competing demands on any decision maker when it has to be decided whether a body of water qualifies for a water conservation order—what used to be called a water body of national significance. These changes are fundamental to the way we manage water in New Zealand and to water conservation orders and we will be opposing them.