Clendon David: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clendon David: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8001. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill. A lot of the speeches we have heard tonight have come from MPs from Christchurch and from Canterbury and that is as it should be. They are representing the people most directly affected. Nobody however must believe that this is just Christchurch’s problem. This is not just Canterbury’s problem. This is a problem—this bill and this extension of the denial of democracy—for every single New Zealander who believes in living in an open and transparent democracy where people have a chance to select their representatives to select the people who will make decisions on their behalf. That is what is being denied to people in Canterbury for another 3 years.  
This is actually creating a second class of citizen in New Zealand. We will have first-class New Zealanders who have the right to elect their representatives and we will continue to have second-class New Zealanders in Canterbury denied the right to elect their representatives at the regional level. In a few months’ time I will have the opportunity to vote for a mayor for councillors and for regional councillors. That is a right that Cantabrians deserve as well as anybody else.  
Let us look at the chronology here. In April 2010 the Canterbury Regional Council Environment Canterbury was deemed to be dysfunctional. Let us just accept for the sake of the argument—which actually I do not and many others do not—that that council was dysfunctional. A Government that had the political will to enable democracy to facilitate democracy could between April 2010 and October 2010 have enabled a legitimate and a democratic election of new regional councillors for Canterbury. It may have required legislation—I am not sure off the top of my head of the requirements in terms of the closure of nominations and all of those things. However I am convinced that had a Government of the day come to this House if necessary to pass special legislation to enable democracy in Canterbury in 2010 that would have happened. It could have elected a new regional council and got on with the business of representing Cantabrians.  
We have heard from the Government that the commissioners are doing a splendid job. It is the best thing since sliced bread apparently. We are hearing that the extension is sensible and practical—the decision to deny democracy on the grounds of being sensible and practical. This is extraordinary from a Government that talks a great deal about choice supported by the remnants of one of its support parties. “Choice” is a word it uses a great deal. Where is the choice in this decision? This is being imposed on people. Is it not interesting? A former Labour-led Government that occasionally made decisions to do things it believed to be in the best interests of people—from this side and from this party now in Government nanny State was its favourite—