Dean JacquiHon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you Mr Speaker. National opposes the Resource Management Amendment Bill—opposes this bill—vehemently and the first comment I would make on this bill is that in terms of good public policy this bill fails at the very first hurdle which is: does this bill in any way achieve the objectives stated for the bill? Clearly it doesn't.When the Minister David Parker announced his action plan for healthy waterways which is the context for this Resource Management Act (RMA) bill he made some pretty bold statements and with the House's agreement I will just quote a few. Our rivers lakes and wetlands are under serious threat after years of neglect." If that isn't a divisive comment pitching town against country then I really don't know what is. My colleague Scott Simpson pointed to the fact that within this amendment bill for the RMA the penalties for having stock in waterways are increased by 100 percent but there is no penalty regime showing any amount of increase for other forms of nutrients going into waterways—for example people putting rubbish into waterways. So that is a fail at the very first hurdle.Our action plan for healthy waterways aims to stop the degradation of our rivers and lakes achieve a noticeable improvement in five years and restore our waterways within a generation. Nothing the Minister has said in any of the commentary has indicated or acknowledged the years of hard-working stewardship over water-quality issues and land use of course by our farming community. I'm not standing here as an apologist for the farming community even though I do represent a large tract of land in Otago South Canterbury and North Otago which is subject to some pretty intensive farming operation and of course the application of irrigation over the past decade or so which has led to that intensification. The responsibility for improving water quality we understand we accept and we know belongs to all New Zealanders—not just the farmers not just the towns not just the cities but all New Zealanders. I want to turn to some of the planning processes which are contained and outlined in the bill which merely—far from being a step forward in resource management planning which will give rise to magical improvements in water quality—will in fact impose pressures and costs which will fall on every New Zealander. Because a number of the costs which surround the implementation of this RMA bill will fall on ratepayers because ratepayers are the ones who are going to be funding the development of new plans.This bill requires that councils notify changes to their regional policy statements and regional plans and that is to implement the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management no later than 31 December 2023. So that's little over three years away. The plans have to have been through their final decision-making process by the end of 2025. So that's only five years.If one were to contemplate the work that particularly regional councils are already involved in around plan changes—which happen almost on a constant basis. Think about the work that Environment Canterbury for example are doing at the moment at a cost of something like $12 million paid for by their ratepayers—that's you and me those of us who live in Canterbury. That work that is ongoing now particularly around plan change 7 which means little to people outside the Environment Canterbury area but means a lot to those people involved in that plan change process—what will happen to that under this new requirement under this RMA bill for new plans to be notified in three years' time? Is that work to be put aside? Will that work be subsumed? Will that work be superseded? Well simply we don't know. But what we do know is that the Minister is making an unashamed grab for control over regional councils by putting a provision in his bill that the commissioners that will be in place appointed to conduct these plan change processes will not be appointed by the regional councils but by the Minister himself. Hon Eugenie Sage: Not true.Hon JACQUI DEAN: Well the Green member says "not true". Well I will pass this paper to the Green member when I have finished my bill which is imminent. So I just wanted in this first reading to make that very first point among many many interventions and points that the National Party will be making on this flawed piece of legislation."