Delahunty Catherine: Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 29 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4912. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
Tena koutou katoa. It is great to see the public interest in this moment in history! I am very excited about both my bill the Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill and the subsequent one the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill because they are both about passionately held important issues of justice. 
To return to my bill I would like to thank the speakers from New Zealand First and the Labour Party for their very helpful and supportive comments as well as my own colleague from the Greens. I have heard some interesting attempts to justify not sending the bill to the Local Government and Environment Committee. These include that this bill is for only one river. It is at the moment but in the past section 107(2)(a) of the principal Act has also been used in the notorious Paokahu - Tai Rawhiti sewage battle which some in this House are well aware of and the Rotokawa Joint Venture and Mighty River Power battle versus Taupo District Council. 
What is more this kind of open-ended section could be used again. I have already seen it used twice and I have also seen that the lack of a time limit means that regional councils and companies can rely on it as Environment Bay of Plenty and the pulp mills in fact do. They are hoping that they can keep relying on section 107(2)(a) without a time limit. Successive mill owners have told communities that the effluent in the river is so improved that we should not have to worry; they have paid their experts to say this. 
When the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research appeared in front of one of the hearings that I was at and told the court that putting 150000 tonnes of pulp mill effluence into a river every day was enhancing its life-supporting capacity I thought I had heard it all. But what I had heard was that money talks in the Environment Court and the poor cannot be heard. 
The scientific knowledge about the toxic effects of chlorine bleaching has been considered by the courts according to last century’s level of understanding about the effect of chemicals. The persistent organic pollutants and emerging chemicals of concern which are associated with chlorine bleaching are much more toxic than we suspected and in smaller amounts. We need to catch up with the modern and precautionary understanding of chemicals rather than license continued pollution. We can have pulp and paper; we can modernise our industry and keep our jobs. 
When Dr Russel Norman and others went down the Tarawera River in an inflatable last year they arrived at the river mouth with bad headaches because the “black drain” as it is unfortunately known is dirty and it smells bad. I urge you to drive through Matata and have a look at it. If you would like to look at it you will see Coca-Cola - black water pumping into the Bay of Plenty after 77 years of pollution. 
Another argument was that the local council and regional council do not like my bill therefore it is not local. It may be news to some in this House but local and regional councils are not the only voices we need to listen to. I know at least one regional councillor in the Bay of Plenty Tiipene Marr who has fought all his life for the clean-up of the river even though he is outvoted and out-lawyered. 
We need to hear from people who gave up submitting and protesting but have not stopped grieving for the 77 years of pollution. And all the memorandums of understanding the experts and the planting of nice little trees along the polluted river in the world by the pulp mills does not change the fact that the river is still a drain and the river is black. If companies like NorskeSkog and Carter Holt Harvey want to they can afford the experts and pay them well and say that there are no cultural social or environmental issues that are ongoing. But I swear to this House that there are people—some living and some who have passed on—who although they cannot win in court have a legitimate and profound view that we need to hear about section 107(2)(a) and also about the sludge pond and the contamination hidden behind the barbed wire fence around the wahi tapu at Kawerau. Just as the gallery tonight may be full of people who are here for justice this is an injustice they may never have heard of and it is time that they did know about what is going on behind the pulp mills at Kawerau. It is time that you heard this story.  
The workers at the mill and every activist campaigner over 77 years have acknowledged the need for jobs and for food on the table in the Bay of Plenty. But do we really believe that after 77 years of pollution we cannot incentivise these companies to change? We can protect this and other waterways by giving them a clear message about the law. Exceptional means exceptional and a river is not a drain. I would like to thank all of you who have supported this bill and I say once again kia kaha te Tarawera Awa.