Brooking Rachel; Kuriger BarbaraHon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you Madam Chair for this opportunity to speak. I'm actually going to take the opposite angle to the previous questions about what is in clause 101 and this amendment of section 138. And then I'm also interested in talking on the King Henry VIII" clause as well. But we've heard from people and we've had an answer from the Minister about the hierarchy that you find in the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. I'll make some comments about that in a minute but my main point is: why was this inserted into this bill when Taumata Arowai section 138 doesn't mention the Resource Management Act or any of the instruments under the Resource Management Act? So we know that the national policy statement is a regulation made under the Resource Management Act. Taumata Arowai doesn't talk about the Resource Management Act at all or its instruments. So is this a proactive—I'm assuming and this is what the question is to the Minister—action to stop any future changes to the Taumata Arowai Act to have regard to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management? I fundamentally don't understand why it's been included in this bill given the framework of Taumata Arowai in the legislation that's been amended the section 138. That makes no sense to me. I'd really like an answer to that.And then of course we have the Minister's response just before talking about the hierarchy that is in the national policy statement—and I acknowledge that the Minister in the chair is the Minister for the Environment—and saying to paraphrase her answer somewhat that councils need to be able to discharge to water. I think that is the fundamental tenet of what the Government is trying to do here. They're trying to say it's very expensive if you discharge to land. And normally that is what iwis' preference is—a discharge to land. It is also the thing that has much more environmental benefits. Normally—I'm talking in generalities here. So if you discharge to land it can be more expensive particularly if you have old treatment stations that are just used to doing a bit of filtering and then discharging into the rivers. This is for waste water obviously. So we want to change all the laws to make sure that councils can continue to discharge into rivers. And if that's what the Government means then they can just say that. Surely a better provision here would be "Wastewater environmental performance standards": "Councils do not have to discharge to land." If that is the nub the crux of the problem that the Government is interested in why are they not saying that?And again we keep hearing that this National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management is the cause of all problems and that nobody can get consents. And of course sometimes I've been lucky to sit on another select committee about a different bill where we've heard many people say that in fact it hasn't been stopping consents the way the hierarchy operates because of course it all needs to be in the plans. And the big issue the big inefficiency issue that's happening with water in this country at the moment is that councils are being told to delay those plans to not have the plans that can then permit activity so that people don't need resource consent. And a lot of that is being done with a great disregard for the processes of this House and the processes of making regulations as well. You cannot make regulations by press releases and we've seen that happen around these national policy statements made under the Resource Management Act both with freshwater in relation to the Otago Regional Council and also with what Minister Hoggard was trying to do with biodiversity.Then we come to clause 102 which is the new section 138A and this is to repeal provisions relating to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management at some later point. And this is a "King Henry VIII" clause. So we know and I'm sure other people will want to speak to this as well that "King Henry VIII" clauses are unusual. [Time expires]Hon Rachel Brooking: Madam Chair may I continue?CHAIRPERSON (Barbara Kuriger): Yeah. Can we come to the questions?Hon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you Madam Chair. Yeah well the question is: why on earth do we need a "King Henry VIII" clause about a National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management that doesn't even apply to the Taumata Arowai Act? So I mean the question is: why do we have clause 101 here at all? It's completely unnecessary. Even if you put all of the politics and the disagreement about the national policy statement for freshwater it doesn't need to be in here. But then given it is in here the justification for using the "King Henry VIII" clause needs to be strong and it just seems to be incredibly weak. So I'm asking the Minister what the justification is for using a "King Henry VIII" clause in this situation when it appears entirely unnecessary."