Ardern Shane: Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Ardern Shane: Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:15417] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to follow on from my colleague who does represent the farmers of that area and their views. Can I start by just running through a brief history of how we have got into this fiasco here tonight. I say first of all that the Resource Management Act was passed in 1991. It was described then around the world as being a fine piece of environmental legislation. 
Jill Pettis 
: Who was the Government then? 
SHANE ARDERN 
: The member over there from Whanganui interjects. What she forgets of course is that it was the work of Geoffrey Palmer. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: How many countries have copied it? 
SHANE ARDERN 
: That is something I will have to wait for Mr Shirley to take a call on and answer but it was described by world environmentalists as a fine piece of legislation. Then of course as time went on it was discovered that perhaps it was not as pure as the driven snow and that amendments were needed. Owen McShane was employed by the then Government to carry out an extensive study of the Resource Management Act and the effects of it on both environmental management and the economy. He recommended 12 significant amendments to the Resource Management Act. That was sent to a select committee. The select committee came back. At that stage unfortunately there was an election and a change of Government. The then incoming Minister for the Environment the Minister in the chair the Hon Marian Hobbs put a red pen through every single one of those recommendations. 
Now here we are tonight debating the Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill. Why was that introduced? Well primarily because a State-owned energy producer or power supply company Meridian Energy needed to do some expansion in its hydroelectricity development on the upper Waitaki scheme. So what happened then? The Labour Government who had put the red pen through all Owen McShane’s recommendations and the recommendations of the previous National Government introduced its own legislation that was very much like the Clyde Dam legislation—which the Labour members when in Opposition had entirely condemned up and down the country. 
Then what happened? Project Aqua the Meridian project after $100 million worth of taxpayer funds tipped over could not go ahead and would not proceed. So the Government had a look at its bill which had by then been made redundant—because make no mistake that is entirely why this bill was introduced; there are no other reasons for it—and said: “Well we don’t need this heavy-handed environmental amendment now so we’ll put a red pen through it again.” That is where tonight’s debate becomes very interesting. My comments earlier during the debate on Part 4 were about Part 4. The Minister took a call afterwards—one of the only calls she has taken; and I invite her to take another call after I have finished my speech—and said I was wrong because the Government had a Supplementary Order Paper that guts Part 4. Well Supplementary Order Paper 244 had not been voted on at that stage so clearly the Minister was pre-empting what the Parliament was going to do in saying that the debate on Part 4 was out of order. I say to the Minister that while she has time she should have a look at Standing Order 176—and I know that the Chairperson will be very familiar with that Standing Order—and have a read up on it. 
What happened then was an absolute abuse of the parliamentary process—if it had not been bad enough up to that stage. The Minister said I did not know what I was talking about and that Part 4 was not up for debate because there was a Supplementary Order Paper that effectively wiped out everything that was intended in Part 4 and every other part of the bill for that matter. All that this bill actually does is set up another Labour Party quango which will have no teeth to achieve anything whatsoever and it is only for the upper Waitaki River. 
A substantial amendment was proposed to the Resource Management Act. The Minister kicked it out and now we have this ad hoc legislation that will not achieve anything other than another Labour quango. It does not even honour a 1969 Order in Council that supported the farming folk of the upper Waitaki area in taking 1.7 percent of the water flow from that river for agricultural irrigation and it gets worse.