Shirley Ken: Wellington Regional Council (Water Board Functions) Bill — In Committee 
Shirley Ken: Wellington Regional Council (Water Board Functions) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:623;Page:18930] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (ACT) 
: 
 The United Future member who has just resumed his seat who says he comes from the Hutt Valley seems to be somewhat misinformed. He made the point that all those lands vested in the Wellington Regional Water Board cannot be used for any other purpose because they are confined specifically for the harvesting of water for the urban needs of Wellington. Earlier in this debate we heard him waxing lyrical about Mount Climie. Well as one who was born under the shadow of Mount Climie I can tell him that it is not part of the water-harvesting area. The water-harvesting area is in the catchments of the Tararuas and the Orongorongas which combined with the aquifers of the lower Hutt Valley with the recharge area in the Taita Gorge are the sources of the water. Mount Climie is not used for water-harvesting catchments so the member’s logic has gone right out of the window. 
His logic is faulty in another respect. I made the point earlier in this debate that if we do not want coalmines nuclear power-stations or whatever and if we really had confidence in the Resource Management Act operating as an effects-based gatekeeper then we would not need this sort of prescriptive process. As the Minister would appreciate this approach is against the philosophy of the Resource Management Act. This approach is prescriptive; it is picking uses rather than relying on the effects-based process whereby we can avoid mitigate and remedy the effects of certain actions—and if we cannot do that then we cannot allow the actions. This bill is totally contrary to the whole philosophy of the Resource Management Act and it disturbs me that we are going down this track. We did it with mining on the Coromandel and here we are doing it in specifying renewable energy and confining ourselves to that. 
Again what is renewable energy? I ask that seriously because the definition in the legislation does not make a lot of sense I believe. We have always thought that oil was a fossil fuel. There is growing evidence that in fact oil could well be derived from deep biosphere chemical seep because people are finding that old oil wells that have become depleted are miraculously renewing themselves. There are a lot of very interesting scientific papers around at the moment that suggest that contrary to the common belief whereby we just assumed that oil was a fossil fuel oil may well be chemically derived from deep biosphere chemical reactions. 
 Equally the same can be said of solar energy. Solar energy was said to be wonderful. Solar energy is nuclear energy. The sun is one big nuclear reactor—radiation is what solar energy is. So declaring ourselves nuclear-free is a nonsense. It is virtually saying that we do not want any sunlight. Logically saying that we are nuclear-free is saying that we do not want any sunlight because sunlight is radiation from a very big nuclear reactor that just happens to be a long way away. That is the nonsense of the terms defined in this legislation. 
I ask the Minister why she does not rely on the effects-based principle of the Resource Management Act rather than allow Government departments and Governments of the day to preclude activities like mining in the Coromandel and in this instance to say that we can have only one definition of renewable energy. There is not a lot of sense behind it.