Williams Andrew: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8224. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on this very important Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill involving Environment Canterbury and the temporary commissioners in particular. In doing so I would like to refer to the regulatory impact statement. This was of course published by the Department of Internal Affairs and also by the Ministry for the Environment jointly. For those New Zealanders out there who may be watching this broadcast and who perhaps are not aware of the background to the preparation of papers for Parliament these reports are prepared by officials to give guidance to Government and to Parliament as to the recommendations of the various ministries in terms a particular bill. 
I would remind the Minister of Local Government—the new incoming Minister—and I would remind the members of the National Party sitting on the other benches of what the regulatory import statement stated in regard to the commissioners for Environment Canterbury. It suggested that there were five options. Option one was “Legislation to establish a transitional mixed governing body for ECan (with provision for Minister of Local Government to review the arrangements by 2017)”; that was option one. Option two was “Legislation to establish a permanent mixed governing body for ECan”. Option three was “Legislation to extend or entrench a governing body for ECan of appointed Commissioners”. Option four was the “Status quo - returning to a fully elected governing body under the Local Government Act 2002 and Local Electoral Act 2001”. Option five was “Ministerial direction for an independent review of matters relating to ECan governance”. 
In this particular instance the officials of both of those ministries recommended that option one be the preferred option adopted by Government and by this Parliament. Option one I will remind you was “Legislation to establish a transitional mixed governing body for ECan”—in other words a transition back to elected representation. In that regard the commissioners themselves under Dame Margaret Bazley—probably the most experienced public servant in this country who has led many Government departments and has now a damehood obviously for her services to public service—also recommended that there be a transition back to democratic representation in a mixed governing body. So over a period of a year or two you would have a mixture of the existing commissioners and elected representatives with the intention to then fully return to an elected body in due course. 
That was a sensible solution for everyone. We could all probably live with that. We would say it is not ideal it is not returning to full democracy but it is a step in the right direction. I think the Hon Nick Smith would have been very supportive of that. He gave indications certainly in that direction. It seemed that that was a fair way to go so that everyone would basically get a reasonable shake of the stick out of this whole situation. We would have a situation where those commissioners who have sat there for a couple of years now could have helped the newly elected people to move back into the transition and helped that handover process. That often happens in all sorts of corporate situations and all sorts of governance situations and that is a common model. Certainly that would have been a workable model. It was very interesting. 
So all the advisers were suggesting this—the ministries the commissioners—everyone was advising this. It seemed sensible. But what does this Government do? It does exactly the opposite. It just says: “No. We are not going to have elections. We are just going to leave the commissioners there and we are going to extend this from the 2013 elections out to 2016. We are going to ignore all the advice that we have.” It is a little bit like the way it ignored the advice in Auckland where the royal commission wrote an 800-page report and the Government threw that out and 8 days later Rodney Hide came out with a 34-page report that did exactly the opposite to what the royal commission was recommending. 
That is the modus operandi of this Government that it just ignores the advice. It just ignores the good expertise that it has around it from the ministries from the officials and from the likes of Dame Margaret Bazley. The Government just ignores that and goes with how it wants to do it. That is what the Government does. When you are a money wheeler-dealer and you are trading things around the place and just throwing things in the pot like Skycity and all sorts of other things you just throw things in the pot you run with the hares and then you try to push your way through and forget the actual democratic consequences. 
It is very interesting that this Government is working that way. Interesting too that the Christchurch City Council itself recommended that there be a return to local democracy in Canterbury. There is Mayor Bob Parker and his council saying: “No it’s time that we—