Sage Eugenie: Environment Canterbury (Transitional Governance Arrangements) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Environment Canterbury (Transitional Governance Arrangements) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 10 March 2016. Volume:711;Page:9634. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā koe. I think it is extraordinarily rich for the largest geographic area of any region of New Zealand one that has got the second-biggest population—second only to Auckland—to be patronised by Government speakers saying that all we deserve is a half-pie democracy and seven elected councillors. The Environment Canterbury (Transitional Governance Arrangements) Bill halves the number of elected councillors in Christchurch: we used to have eight; we will get four under the bill. It means there is only one elected councillor from South Canterbury one from Central Canterbury and one from North Canterbury. We have got this nonsense that the Government members have been coming out with about how we have had such a wonderfully performing set of commissioners. If they have done such a marvellous job in the 6 years since 2010 why are we not getting regional democracy back now? If they had been so highly effective as the Minister Louise Upston said if they had been one of the best-performing councils why have they not already in that 6 years corrected the issues that the Government claims were present in Environment Canterbury prior to 2010.There is absolutely no justification for this bill. It is all about ensuring that members appointed by Ministers in Wellington can continue to dominate Environment Canterbury’s policy-making agenda to ensure that water is provided to the irrigators. It was very interesting with submissions to see the 15 individuals and organisations who supported the bill—a mere 15 out of 1167. Those who supported the bill were Irrigation New Zealand Federated Farmers the Waitaki Irrigators Collective—all of those—Matt Doocey: Six out of 10 councils.EUGENIE SAGE: —and the rural councils; not the Christchurch City Council which represents the majority of the population in the region Mr Doocey but the rural councils. All of those interests want water to be easily available for irrigation. They want a light hand in terms of Environment Canterbury’s regulation of land use so that water pollution can continue and we do not get high standards of environmental management. That is what this bill is about; it is about ensuring that the pro-irrigation agenda and the weak commitment to water quality and environmental management continue.The Green Party strongly opposed this bill at its introduction and we continue to oppose it. Public submissions were strongly against the bill but once again the Government has failed to listen. Mr Simpson talked about only a few submissions. When the Government ran such a truncated process of submissions and consultation on the review document when the Government has shown that it is intent on proceeding with suspending democracy why would people bother when their views have been consistently ignored?Submitters opposed the bill because they recognised the importance of local democracy: it provides a check and a counterbalance on the powers of central government and the executive. As one of the submitters Professor Emeritus Chris Kissling said in his submission and I would just like to quote from it: “This bill is a denial of democracy in a country that prides itself on being democratic. … Continuance of central government appointed commissioners can be likened to the reservation of 25% of the new parliament in Myanmar for the military under their military dictated constitution. They do not trust their people. Neither does the National Government in New Zealand trust its Cantabrians. Here it is a dictatorship without guns but still a denial of constitutional propriety.”Every other region in New Zealand gets to vote for a fully elected regional council and there is absolutely no reason why Canterbury should be any different. It is interesting that in Kaipara we had a district council completely fail to implement its legal and its accountability responsibilities: it had a wastewater scheme that totally blew out costing over $53 million. There was a major doorstop-sized report by the Office of the Auditor-General into that failure to implement its responsibilities. It was what the Auditor-General called a story of poor governance poor decision-making and inadequate management of both the organisation and the project. That led to commissioners being appointed there yet in Kaipara people will be voting for their council again in October. In Canterbury we had no investigation by the Auditor-General no massive blowout of the regional council’s budget and yet people are being denied their right to vote.This is setting a precedent for the undermining of local democracy throughout New Zealand by having a second-class hybrid model. The Minister has claimed previously that it is like district health boards. District health boards are fully funded by the Crown they do not receive any rates funding—yet around this table come October there will be six appointed commissioners. I suspect that this hybrid model will discourage people from standing. Minister Upston said that the commissioners and the councillors will have a similar role around the table. We know that commissioners have been meeting regularly with Ministers—they have got a hotline to Ministers—so will the appointed commissioners also have a hotline to Ministers? It will be a second-rate form of representation for those who are elected because they do not have that hotline to Ministers. Yet Cantabrians are being expected to pay the salaries of these appointed commissioners. Government puts in its yes men and women but it does not pay their costs. So that is a double denial of elected accountability.This bill is a total crock. It strikes completely the wrong balance because it denies Cantabrians our democracy. It shows that the Government does not trust the citizens of Canterbury to elect a competent regional council to manage land and water pests the coast and air. One of the other major problems with this bill is that it means there is a different standard of law—different provisions applying—in Canterbury from around the rest of the country. We do not have the right to appeal regional plans to the Environment Court which people in Nelson and Marlborough and Tasman and Southland and the Waikato have. Why should two different sorts of law apply to different regions? Again it is because the Government wants to ensure that its appointed commissioners dominate the plan-making process to ensure that there are provisions in those plans that are permissive about irrigation and permissive about land use so that we allow this region of New Zealand which is responsible for 60 percent of the water that is allocated for irrigation in New Zealand to continue to have a weak regulatory regime. This is not about good resource management; it is about being pro-irrigation and it is about denying democracy so that the Government can continue to influence regional plans in Canterbury.We oppose it; submitters oppose it. The Government is being arrogant in the way it is ignoring public sentiment. It is undermining democracy which is consistent with what the Government has done throughout this term to increase the powers of central government and to put its thumb on local government and seek to dominate local government. There is no justification for this bill and that is why we have heard so many short speeches from Government members so many comments and so much criticism of the previous council and yet there is a failure to recognise that in 6 years commissioners should have fixed any of those problems if they existed. They obviously have not been able to do that so how can the Government continue to justify commissioners if they have not fixed the problems that the Government claimed were there? This bill is a crock. It denies democracy to Cantabrians. The Green Party opposes it.