Dyson Ruth: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — In Committee 
Dyson Ruth: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:661;Page:10025] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 Mr Chairperson Roy in giving me the call you have made a very challenging decision and you handled it impeccably if I may say so. I had a bit of a Harry Potter moment when we were moving from Part 2 to Part 3. I am not sure whether Mr Chair is familiar with the train station that Harry Potter and his fellow students catch the train from—and I do not want to tell you the whole of the Harry Potter story because that would ruin it for you if you have not already read it—but there should be a “Part 2.5” between Part 2 and Part 3 of the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill because there is a big chunk missing. I tell members that a lot of people in Canterbury will be very frustrated by the missing information particularly given the fact that the Minister in the chair the Hon Rodney Hide has steadfastly refused to take a call. I thought that as part of his regime of getting up and bouncing around that he is so highly regarded for he would at least stand up take a call and provide us with the information that we have been seeking through our questions. But he has not done so. I think he should look at what is missing between Part 2 and Part 3. 
Part 2 chucks out all the councillors. Part 3 provides some existing powers for Environment Canterbury which is not even a legal entity after the start of this new regime. Well I want to know what will happen to the stuff that is already started. What will happen to the stuff that our elected regional councillors have already started? Who will pick up that work? How will we download the brain cells of our existing regional councillors on to the as yet unknown non-appointed commissioners so that they can have some competency in carrying on the work that has been started? If we are going to pay them $2000 a day of my ratepayers’ money they had better be giving us good quality. 
Let me give members an example. In terms of the additional functions and powers that are being given to these $2000-a-day ministerial-appointed commissioners I cannot see anywhere in Part 3 or anywhere else in the bill a description of what will happen to the draft annual plan that Environment Canterbury issued less than a week ago. What will happen to that draft annual plan? It was issued on 27 March and the public in the whole of the Environment Canterbury area got a copy of it. We were told that there would be public consultation. Well that is a bit of an innovation for the Minister. He will not have tripped over that particular set of words very often in his lifetime. In case he is not aware of it I tell the Minister that public consultation is where proposals are taken to the people so that they have an opportunity to read think and talk about them within their communities. Then they have a say and the Minister gets to hear it—or in this case the councillors get to hear it—and then decisions are made. But what happens if there are no regional councillors any more as is the case here because we have just passed Part 2 which is “How to sack your regional council 101”? We have until 30 April to make submissions on the draft annual plan for Environment Canterbury but it no longer has councillors who can hear the submissions. 
The paragraph in the Local Government Act that covers this matter states that the purpose of the annual plan is to “contribute to the accountability of the local authority to the community.” As Minister of Local Government Rodney Hide will be very familiar with those words because he is the Minister in charge of that legislation. I want him to tell me how an unelected ministerial-appointed commissioner can have any accountability to the local community. We do not even know who the commissioners are. We did not vote for them; we voted for the ones the Minister has just sacked. So how can section 95(5)(d) of the Local Government Act be complied with? We do not have any local accountability from our elected councillors; we do not even have elected councillors. What will our community think of commissioners setting the Budget for the coming years when they have had no public input? The commissioners do not even live in our region. The provision of the Local Government Act to which I have just referred is being ignored not because the Minister cannot be bothered with it but because he has actually voted to have his own legislation ignored. Part 2 of this bill specifically states that the Local Government Act—