Dalziel Lianne: Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 April 2012. Volume:679;Page:1712. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I rise also to support the Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill. It was originally in the name of my former colleague Brendon Burns who worked tirelessly on behalf of not only his constituents in Christchurch Central at the time but also the people of Canterbury in respect of water issues. Water issues are of course fundamental to Environment Canterbury’s role. It is not the only role that Environment Canterbury undertakes but it is an extremely important role as we have heard in this House already.  
I want to focus initially on the report that led to the removal of democratic governance in the region. I think it is important for us to realise that the Government actually intervened in the local government process. It intervened in the process in order to remove a layer of democratic governance that existed in our region. The justification for such a strong intervention and such an undermining of something that is absolutely fundamental in terms of our commitment to civil and political rights in this country was based on a report. That report had two distinct parts to it. One part was clearly a political report. It was politically motivated it was politically inspired and it was designed to give an answer to a problem that had already had a resolution decided by the Government of the day. The Government had decided what it wanted and this part of the report was written specifically to achieve that desired outcome which was the removal of the democratically elected councillors of Environment Canterbury.  
The second report the objective part of the report did acknowledge that there had been problems in the past and identified what those problems were but that part of the report made it absolutely crystal clear that all of those issues were being addressed—every single one of them. They were being addressed in such a way that would give any Government confidence that all it had to do was to allow time for those particular measures that had been put in place to reach fruition and they would achieve the objective that it said it had set in reviewing the operation of Environment Canterbury. That to me was what was fundamentally wrong with the whole process. The Government actually designed a report with a political input and an objective input but it ignored the objective input and just chose the political input which actually gave it the result it had already decided on. It had already made up its mind that Environment Canterbury’s elected representatives would go and that they would be replaced by commissioners and those commissioners were given a task that was actually made much easier as a result of the work that had been going on to resolve some of the problems of the past. They were problems of the past. They were certainly being addressed at the time.  
There was no basis for the sacking of Environment Canterbury when the National Government of the day undertook that task and there is no justification today for the Government to vote against this bill. Christchurch is crying out for the restoration of local democracy and what we have heard today is a Minister of this Government stand in this House and not deny—which is essentially confirming the fact—that the next layer of democratically elected governance in our city is also on the chopping-block. But it will not go as far as it has gone with Environment Canterbury; it will just strip it of its core function. The Christchurch City Council will lose all of its planning function for the central business district as part of the recovery of our city. I am outraged by this Government going down that track and to find that the Government here tonight will not vote for the restoration of democracy in the region. We know that the Government is planning to remove that vestige of democracy that remains in Christchurch through the core function of the Christchurch City Council. It is an outrage.