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:10081] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I stand to speak on the third and final reading of the “Environment Canterbury (Democracy Abolition) Bill” which removes water conservation orders from Canterbury. The bill is all about what the Prime Minister told us in the statement he tabled at the beginning of this parliamentary year. He said to us: “The Government will also take action this year to remove particular regulatory roadblocks to water storage and irrigation in Canterbury.” The Government has decided that the elected regional councillors in Canterbury are part of the regulatory roadblocks and it has decided to remove them which is what the bill does. 
The Government has also decided that water conservation orders—the national parks for rivers and lakes—are also a regulatory roadblock to more irrigation and water storage in Canterbury so it will remove those as well. That very significant part of the bill has had some attention but probably should have even more because Subpart 3 of Part 3 which basically guts water conservation orders is a very significant change to the way in which we regulate the environment in our country. 
The bill at its foundation is all about the fact that water is a finite resource. Water has become incredibly valuable all over the world because it is a finite resource and humankind keeps expanding its consumption of finite resources. Canterbury has access to quite a lot of this finite resource and it has become an incredibly valuable resource. I would say “commodity” but of course the irrigation and dairy companies get it for free so to call it a commodity is perhaps stretching things a little bit. Having access to free fantastic water has been an enormous economic boon to the dairy corporations and to the irrigation companies and that is what is really driving the bill. The bill is being set up in order to allow more access as if there has not been enough to more of the water resources of Canterbury so that more rivers can be dammed like the Hurunui River which is at the top of the list at the moment but there will be others; so that more rivers can be drained of their water—part of the reason why the Ashley River is in such terrible shape and why it keeps killing dogs every year is that so much water is drained from it for irrigation—and so that more water can be polluted. Anyone who has tried to go on Lake Ellesmere Te Waihora recently would have come across the high level of pollution of that lake; the same applies to many other rivers and lakes right across Canterbury. 
Canterbury has been the victim of malign neglect for so long but it looked like the regional council was going to get on top of it. It looked like there was potential for the regional council to finally take some action. However the regional council upset some very powerful vested interests. It upset some very powerful vested interests with some very close connections to the National Party and for that reason it is now paying the price. 
The Prime Minister said that he was going to take action to remove these regulatory roadblocks; the next step was of course to get the Creech report. The problem with the Creech report is twofold. First the person who headed the review had a clear conflict of interest being the director of a dirty dairy company but more than that the review had some fundamental flaws. It was a very short review; only a handful of stakeholders were interviewed. It was anti-science; the report said that the regional council should be punished for being too science-led. It was very anti-environment. It said that the regional council was not sufficiently pro economic growth. The reviewers had no idea I guess because they had not looked at the Resource Management Act that in fact that was part of the job of Environment Canterbury and that was what the “E” in ECan—or Environment Canterbury—stood for. If the reviewers did not know what the “E” stood for then maybe they were not the right people to review the regional council. Maybe they wanted to call it “Exploitation Canterbury”. Maybe that is what they thought the “E” stood for—that its purpose was to exploit the water resources of Canterbury. So the report was very critical of Environment Canterbury because it spent too much time protecting the environment and not enough time exploiting it. 
The bill removes democratic rights from the people of Canterbury—about 400000 people—for about 3½ years or possibly more. I thought Jo Goodhew hit it on the head. She said democracy has been interrupted and will be resumed as soon as practicable. Is that what democracy is? Is that the kind of value National puts on democracy? Does it think democracy is the kind of thing we can interrupt for awhile and when the powers that be who are smarter than all of us obviously—Jo Goodhew knows better than the rest of us—decide that it is possible and practicable then the people of Canterbury can have democracy again? The people of Canterbury are children; that is what National thinks and it has had to interrupt their democracy and it will resume it as soon as practicable. That is what Jo Goodhew said. 
Jo Goodhew also inadvertently hit the nail on the head when she said that the problem is that it takes ages to get a water consent. No kidding! There are red zones in Canterbury where water is over-allocated and Environment Canterbury has tried to restrict the taking of more water in the red zone and boy it has made the irrigators mad. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN 
: This is the third reading of the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill which National and ACT are introducing to abolish democracy in Canterbury. It is also the third reading of the bill that National and ACT are supporting to undermine water conservation orders in the Canterbury region. I think it is important to realise what that means. We can think for example of the water conservation order on the Ahuriri River. The application for cubicle farms on Killermont Station has been much discussed. The farms are reliant on accessing water from the Ahuriri River. It would have been very difficult for those farms to proceed with the water conservation order in place because of the minimum flow regime that it imposed. The passage of this bill tonight which National and ACT will vote for will mean that the Minister for the Environment can vary the water conservation order on the Ahuriri River without going through the proper process so that the developers—in this case Williamson Holdings—can have access to the water in the Ahuriri River so that they can destroy Killermont Station. 
As people may well be aware the Mackenzie has been destroyed recently by massive dairy conversions. There has been the loss of tussock country and a massive increase in pollution of the Ahuriri arm of the Waitaki River and of the whole Waitaki River system. Part of that problem will be made worse by the fact that the water conservation order on the Ahuriri River will now be in danger as a result of National and ACT pushing this bill through the House in the middle of the night. 
It is important to realise as well that there is a great paradox here. The House is passing a bill to abolish democracy in Canterbury and at the same time it is doing it in such a way that there is no democratic input. It is quite extraordinary. There was no select committee process. The public have had no right to submit. Members of Parliament had not even seen the bill until yesterday afternoon and then after we got the bill and a very short briefing from the Minister for the Environment we were given a very short amount of time to look over the bill and try to figure out what it is on about. The other thing about the bill is that when we look at the regulatory impact statement we see that the Ministry for the Environment states that it “has not been able to fully quantify the risks/costs of the proposal.” Well I am not surprised. Who could fully quantify the risks and costs of a proposal that is being forced through at such short notice? 
The other issue that has arisen with regard to this bill is the conflicts of interest. The Minister of Agriculture David Carter saw fit to put out a release in response to some of the claims that have been made in which he confirmed all the key facts. He confirmed that he has a farm on the Hurunui. He confirmed that currently very little of it is irrigated—so much of it is open for irrigation—but he said that at this stage he has no intention to irrigate. Well I am afraid that having no intention is not good enough because he still has the potential to irrigate which is the whole point. That is why there could be a potential conflict of interest and it should be declared. The other thing he confirmed is that he approached those who were applying to the Environment Court for a water conservation order in order to get them to stop doing it. This very interestingly is exactly what he denied doing in an answer to a written question. When I asked him in a written question to this House whether he had approached the applicants for the water conservation order he said no. I think it is very clear that the conflict of interest claims that have been raised with regard to the bill have been vindicated by the facts that Mr Carter has put on the table for our convenience and I am sure we will go into that further. 
This bill is a bill to get rid of democracy. It is a bill to get rid of water conservation orders. It will disenfranchise 400000 to 500000 people for the next 3 years. It is an unacceptable bill to the Green Party. We will not be supporting it. It is shameful that National and ACT are ramming it through under urgency without proper democratic consultation.