Adams Amy: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Adams Amy: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:661;Page:9952] 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I am happy to take a call on the second reading of the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill. I start this brief call by bringing us back to a little sense of history. The previous speaker David Parker spoke repeatedly about this bill’s being passed under urgency and the like. On 2 May 2000 the Labour Government kicked out the Rodney District Council’s elected councillors with a bill that went through all stages under urgency with no select committee deliberation so it is a bit rich for that party to sit there now and cry crocodile tears about using urgency to pass a bill to take out a council that is not performing and replace it with a group of commissioners until the council is back on track. It is a bit rich. I remind those listening to this debate that those Labour members were more than happy to use urgency when it suited them to achieve the same end. The difference is that National members did not play politics. 
Colin King 
: We support it. 
AMY ADAMS 
: We supported them on that. The Labour Party and the Green Party are now far more interested in playing politics with Canterbury’s water than accepting what all the stakeholders are telling them which is that Environment Canterbury does not have the capabilities to do what it needs to do. It does not have the capabilities. 
This debate is about getting the regional council of Canterbury right in order to manage our economic development and our environmental management. I quite happily stand here and say that we have not done either of those things well in Canterbury. We have failed to make the most of our economic growth potential and we have failed to do the right thing by our environment. I would be the first one to say that the path we have been on with water take and water management has not served our environment well in Canterbury. We can do an awful lot better. 
I touch on the moratoria aspect of this bill which will allow the commissioners to come in and put a hold on new water applications while this issue is sorted. So although members on the other side of the House play up the issues about making more water available—and if that happens I will welcome it—I say that the bigger part is ensuring that that is done only in a way that better protects our water management. That has not happened in Canterbury for a long time. It needs to happen. The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society the Environmental Defence Society and the Water Rights Trust are all telling us that that needs to happen. 
This is not coming just from one side of the debate. Anyone who is actually listening to stakeholders knows that everyone is telling us this. I have had a constant stream of people through my office telling me of issues with Environment Canterbury. They are not all farmers; they are not all irrigators. A number of them have nothing to do with those fields. But they have one thing in common which is frustration with a regional council that has become disconnected from its obligations to Canterbury and that has failed us environmentally and in economic growth. 
This bill is an important step to getting that council back on track so that we can return to a proper functioning regional council. I look forward to that happening. It will not happen without this bill and that is why I am very pleased to support it.