Hauiti Claudette: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to MinistersText is subject to correctionHauiti Claudette: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 07 November 2013. Volume:694;Page:14488. Text is subject to correction.]6.CLAUDETTE HAUITI (National) to theMinister for the Environment: What announcements has the Government made in relation to the national policy statement for freshwater?Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister for the Environment): Today my colleague the Minister for Primary Industries Nathan Guy and I released proposals for improving the way New Zealand manages its fresh water including science-backed national water standards which were a key recommendation of the Land and Water Forum. Ensuring that we protect and improve water quality now and for the future is one of our most critical challenges. The discussion document we have released seeks feedback on a national framework to support communities setting freshwater objectives explicit recognition of tangata whenua values for fresh water ecosystem and human health as compulsory values in regional plans bottom lines for those values and requiring councils to account for all water takes and all contaminant discharges into water bodies.Claudette Hauiti: What is the purpose of the national objectives framework?Hon AMY ADAMS: The national objectives framework will provide regions with both a process and a scientifically informed basis for the difficult communications and conversations that communities are having to have on water quality. When combined with the Government’s already announced collaborative planning process option and better water accounting it is our hope that the framework will result in more informed discussions in communities about the trade-offs and reduce the arguments in councils and in courts over the science that sits behind regional plans and resource consents.Meka Whaitiri: Kia ora Mr Speaker. Why does herProposed amendments to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management contain incomplete standards and standards lower than current levels when the lack of clear bottom-lines was a core issue highlighted by the Land and Water Forum?Hon AMY ADAMS: We have been very clear that the work around completing the table and the values to be attributed for each attribute is ongoing. The science work is still being completed but the scientists have been very clear as has the reference group that we need to start with the information we have. We are not going to wait an interminable number of years as the Labour Government did. We are going to start to improve water quality today and I can assure this House and the member who asked the question that the level at which those bottom lines have been set—and they are bottom lines; they are not targets—is the level at which 60 of New Zealand’s top scientists agreed was the appropriate place to set them.Te Ururoa Flavell: Tēnātātou. How have the rights and responsibilities ofNgāti Kahungunu as tangata whenua in Hawke’s Bay been recognised given that both the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and theRuataniwha Dam project have been dealt with by the Government at a national level and not at a regional or local level?Hon AMY ADAMS: To the best of my recollection in the instance of theRuataniwha Dam application it was the regional council of that area that requested that the application be dealt with through a nationalEnvironmental Protection Authority process. So that has come from the region. The other point I would make to the member is that of course that determination is being made under the current framework and this is about how we improve that going forward. I can certainly advise the member that one of the key messages we took from community consultation was the integration of tangata whenua values within the national objectives framework. Te mana o te wai is a core principle of the document. You will see values such as the mahinga kai use of water andwāi tapu clearly reflected in the framework. When you combine that with theincreased and enhanced integrated role of iwi in the planning process I thinkNgāti Kahungunu and other iwi can be satisfied that they will have a much greater level of involvement in such decisions in the future.