Goodhew Jo: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Goodhew Jo: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:661;Page:10078] 
JO GOODHEW (National—Rangitata) 
: 
 I rise to make a brief contribution to this debate on the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill. I do so because since well before being elected to Parliament I have been well aware of a high degree of frustration amongst the regional authority’s ratepayers who form part of my constituency. Despite significant changes in my electorate boundaries at the last election the level of disenchantment has remained and perhaps has even increased. 
All levels of Government bear the brunt of the disaffection of those who feel their level of taxation might not be matched by services or outcomes. It happens to central government politicians as well as to those at the territorial local authority level. In my time as an MP I have worked with one regional council and five district councils. I have received complaints about ineptitude whether perceived or real about all of those entities but the complaints about Environment Canterbury have been remarkable in the extreme. Most of the time regional ratepayers have felt a sense of disquiet in that they also feel vulnerable in complaining. There is no doubt that when someone has already battled for some 5 years to get a water consent for a small dry-land holding—5 long years—the last thing he or she wants to do is to annoy the powers that be when maybe just maybe there might be some progress tomorrow. I have heard stories about environmental enhancement being slowed up then costing far more than was advised—that is environmental enhancement I am talking about. I have heard stories about economic enhancement through the obtaining of a water consent having the same problems. In the dozens of examples that I have been approached about there has been a consistency of message in terms of distrust of Environment Canterbury’s procedures. Time and time again I have heard of council officers changing and the new case manager wanting to start again and wanting more information. Time and time again I have heard about the rules changing mid-process. 
In all of the time I have spent over the years discussing issues that relate to Environment Canterbury it has been comprehensively proven to me that there is validity in the view that the institutional failure of Environment Canterbury requires comprehensive and rapid intervention on the part of central government to protect and enhance both regional and national well-being and that failure to intervene would lead to continued lack of progress in water management in Canterbury. How the regional council has managed our water has been critical for our economic success or lack of it and for our environmental well-being or lack of it. All stakeholders agree on the importance of sound management of that resource yet we do not have after all those years a proper water plan we have growing problems of water quality and we are not making progress on the opportunities for water storage and economic progress. 
The principles of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy begin with environmental protection so there will not be a takeover by dairying or irrigation interests and in order to underline that I will read members the vision of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy: “To enable present and future generations to gain the greatest social economic recreational and cultural benefits from our water resources within an environmentally sustainable framework.” That is in schedule 1 of the bill. There have been some 10 years of work on exactly that there is huge buy-in and the people who feel passionately about that water strategy say it is not going anywhere under the current Environment Canterbury and therefore something should be done. This Government has done something. 
So too the rhetoric of coup d’état and the abolition of democracy from the Opposition parties would suggest to me that they have been watching far too much drama on TV. Democracy has been merely interrupted to be resumed as soon as practicable and certainly by 2013 and the interruption absolutely is because Environment Canterbury has demonstrated that it has no ability to manage the precious resource that is gold culturally gold to our environment gold to our recreationalists and gold to our economic future. That resource is water. 
I finish by wishing commissioner Dame Margaret Bazley all the very best because her work is of vital importance to my constituents and to New Zealand as well. Thank you.