Sage Eugenie: Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 April 2012. Volume:679;Page:1711. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak in support of the Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill which the Green Party will be supporting because the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Act was very bad law. Canterbury University law professor Philip Joseph said that the Act—which was passed under urgency in the dead of night with no opportunity for public scrutiny no going before a select committee and no submissions—breached several principles of law that it is “constitutionally repugnant” contains “elements of subterfuge” and is a “constitutional affront”. And as Mr Joseph said in an article in the  
New Zealand Law Journal 
: “Representative democracy and independent courts are the twin pillars of the legal system. The abrogation or suspension of the former even at local government level has menacing implications.” As he pointed out electors have resisted the term of this Parliament being extended and yet that Act put forward no elections for the regional council for more than 3 years and we still do not have the certainty of when any elections will occur—if they will occur.  
That Act was very bad because it was also retrospective. It suspended the ability of the Environment Court to consider the Hurunui water conservation order and the appeals on that order. It interfered with water conservation orders to remove the regulatory roadblocks to irrigation which is probably why the member for Waitaki’s constituents favoured it.  
It has been very disappointing listening to some of the comments from the National members who perpetuate the inaccuracies and the myths that the former Minister of Local Government Rodney Hide and former Minister for the Environment Nick Smith put about that Environment Canterbury had no plan for water. As former judge the Hon Professor Skelton noted soon after becoming a commissioner Environment Canterbury did have a plan for water; it was the proposed natural resources regional plan. It had been notified back in 2004 submissions were held on it and it was ready for decisions to be issued in August 2010. National’s Act and the appointment of commissioners in fact delayed the notification of decisions on that plan.  
The National Government did not sack the Ministry for the Environment. The defects in the Ministry for the Environment and the fact that there was no National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management until very recently were not seen as hanging offences in the same way that the National Government categorised Environment Canterbury. This bill goes a small way to restoring some of the democracy that we need in Canterbury by proposing that there be elections called.  
As Rino Tirikatene noted the cairn—which thousands of Cantabrians erected on a very bleak June winter day in recognition that we need democracy in Canterbury and in opposition to the actions of the National Government in making it much easier to tamper with water conservation orders for irrigators to access our rivers—still stands as a memorial to the very bad law that the National Government introduced to get rid of regional democracy. National’s Act breached one of the fundamental constitutional principles that there should be no taxation without representation. So we have the Environment Canterbury commissioners putting out for submissions their long-term plan which proposes that $79 million be raised in targeted rates and general rates yet there has been no opportunity for elected representatives to decide on how those rates’ revenues should be spent. It is being decided by commissioners without any elected representatives and that is bad. This bill goes some way to redressing that by providing for elections in Canterbury. The Green Party supports this bill.