Connell Brian: Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Connell Brian: Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:15283] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 I took part in the first reading debate on this bill and I was as concerned then as I am now about the Government’s intentions as they pertained to Meridian Energy and in particular to Project Aqua. No amount of talk from the most despised and despicable member of the Labour Party will convince me otherwise. 
This bill’s purpose is all about trying to promote Project Aqua. I see the Minister in the chair the Hon David Benson-Pope shaking his head. If he believes that that is not the case then he believes in garden fairies. When I look at this guy I see that he probably does believe in them. I thought this guy was out of his depth in the fisheries portfolio but in this one he is absolutely hopeless. When Project Aqua fell over the Minister for the Environment must have found herself between a rock and a hard place. I do not think it is too big a bow to pull to say that she probably has acted illegally because one has to have the national interest at heart to call in consents. If there is not a national issue then what reason did she have for calling in those consents? The only reason she did what she did was so that she could fast track Project Aqua. 
I am prepared to say that members of the Local Government and Environment Committee did do some good work namely the limitations placed on the intent of ministerial discretion around the allocation of water in the Waitaki. But this bill is still ad hoc and it is a retrograde step. The National Party is strongly opposed to it. We were opposed to it at the first and second reading stages and nothing I have heard so far in this debate will change my position. Rather than fix the issues around the Resource Management Act this Government continues to play around the edges. I am not holding my breath for what Mr Benson-Pope is going to announce in a couple of weeks’ time. I can tell members right now without fear of contradiction that it will be a bit of rubbing around the edges because he does not have the conviction the intellect or the drive to fundamentally change the Resource Management Act although it is recognised as the biggest handbrake on growth. Rather than fix that issue Labour members would rather pervert the provisions of the Resource Management Act for their own narrow purposes. 
The greatest concern to me is the amount of administrative intervention and the fact that it takes New Zealand further away not closer to some leading world practice around how we should be allocating water. The best and closest example to hand is what is happening in Australia at the moment. Australia has not gone down the track of tradable water rights but it is looking and in fact it has engaged in transferable rights and I expect it will go to tradable water rights. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: They have on the Murray. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: Oh I stand corrected they have already gone that far. Here was an opportunity for this Government to think strategically to think laterally and to bring to this Parliament some world-class best practice around how we would deal with this issue of water usage and allocation. 
Richard Worth 
: And did they? 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: They have not done that. What we have is a Supplementary Order Paper that actually guts further the ad hoc nature of this bill as it has come back to the House. It is an appalling mess and now that we have got down to the technicalities around this legislation I note that the Minister in the chair is not jumping to his feet. He is clean out of insults. Now that he has to deal with the content of the bill he has not got anything to say at all. This lack of strategic insight will stop investment in capital-intensive water use and that will do New Zealand’s economy a huge amount of harm. 
The member from the New Zealand First Party talked about Canterbury and its irrigation potential. But unless we have a water allocation process or a transferable tradable water right mechanism that investment will simply not take place. One has to ask the question: why would one invest if one did not have some certainty? So that is an issue that concerns me and it is an opportunity lost by this Government in its rush to get this information to the House.