Fitzsimons Jeanette: Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:15281] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 This bill is now totally unnecessary and the Green Party will not be voting for it. There was a case for it when it was first introduced—when a single application wanted to take 73 percent of the total flow of the Waitaki River and there was no plan against which that application could be tested. However Meridian Energy says that Project Aqua is off and it is no longer seeking to take that water. So I have to ask why Parliament would legislate for a special arrangement to make a plan for the Waitaki River which is less allocated than many South Island rivers that also do not have plans and which has far more surplus water if Project Aqua is not in the offing than many South Island rivers. 
What we need is integrated catchment planning that deals with the management of the whole river its associated aquifers and wetlands and the land that drains into it. There are very good techniques and tools available for that now that have been developed by Landcare but that is not what this bill relates to. This is a plan simply for the allocation of the water. It is a very very narrow proposal. We need regional planning for river catchments to be mandatory under the Resource Management Act rather than optional so that we do not have any more rivers like the Waitaki River completely without a plan and suddenly facing massive applications to take water. 
But that is not the issue here. Project Aqua has supposedly fallen over—or has it? I note that Meridian Energy has never withdrawn its applications. I do not place much importance on the fact that it has not sold its land; the land is making it a good return. It does not want to dump all its land on the market at the same time and depress prices. Meridian Energy is doing very well out of its land at the moment. But it has not withdrawn its applications. My guess is that when the board allocates a certain amount of water for the category “hydro” then Meridian Energy will again apply for the whole of that category “hydro” for a modified Project Aqua. 
The Minister Marian Hobbs answered a question in the House a while ago. She said that Meridian Energy had left its applications in so that it would be able to bring a submission to the board. That was nonsense. Anyone can bring a submission to the board. 
We were told this bill was extremely urgent. We were told that the Local Government and Environment Committee had to sit at all hours in order to report it back fast. We did that. Since Project Aqua fell over months and months have gone by. What has the Minister done in that time? She has changed the word “framework” to the words “regional plan”. That is not a huge job but it has taken months. 
The select committee unanimously agreed on a large number of amendments to the bill. We worked very hard we listened to a great many submissions and we took them seriously. We reported back—though I say it myself—a very much improved bill. There was unanimous agreement across all the parties at the select committee. But what has the Minister done? The Minister has issued us with a very large Supplementary Order Paper that undoes a large amount of the select committee’s work even though she agreed to that work at the time the select committee was doing it. 
This is the second time the Minister has done that to my committee. When the first Resource Management Act amendment bill was being considered in 2000 the committee heard 400 submissions. We considered it for a year and discussed amendments. All the Labour members of the committee agreed and we reported the bill back with substantial amendment. After leaving the bill in the House for 2 years the Minister then made substantial amendments to it again without any reference back to the select committee. In my view it is an abuse of parliamentary process for a Minister simply to wipe what a select committee has done in its consideration and substitute something else instead. 
The Green Party will not support this bill. There is no need for it. It may be a back-door method to get Project Aqua away after all in some reduced form. There is absolutely no reason why the Waitaki River should be singled out in this way. The other applications for water—60 or so of them have been called in—are on hold. They have been on hold for a long time. They should simply be heard and dealt with.