Dyson Ruth: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Dyson Ruth: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:661;Page:10089] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 I will begin my final contribution to this debate by going back to the very beginning and asking “How did all this start?”. Well we have heard during the course of this debate that one of the National members of Parliament approached her local mayor and said that there were major concerns with Environment Canterbury within central government and that that mayor could start the ball rolling by writing to the mayoral forum. Jo Goodhew approached Janie Annear to write to the mayoral forum saying there were major concerns about the operation of Environment Canterbury. The mayors then decided on the assumption that they were not just mayors but also the local authorities to take the matter further. That is how this sorry saga began. 
My message to the public as a result of this debate and of what has happened in the last 24 hours is not just to look at Auckland any more and say “Be very afraid of your democratic rights.” the public can look now at Canterbury as well and be very wary because it could be coming to a city near them soon. We have lost all our democratic rights in terms of voting for our regional council. 
The Minister for the Environment has introduced a shoddy little bill. I say that with the greatest respect to officials who I guess had no other option but to write it. But if the officials had been given a decent amount of time and guidance perhaps the bill could have been a bit tidier. The shoddy little bill was given to us in draft form half an hour before it was publicly announced as being introduced. It was introduced into the House yesterday afternoon at 5.30 p.m. It was debated until 10 p.m. with just an hour and a half for the dinner break and then begun again at 9 o’clock this morning. Soon the debate will be concluded. 
Well what is urgent about this legislation? What is not only urgent but so urgent that this Parliament considers that it is OK that not a single submission can be called for and not a single submission can be heard? People in Canterbury are really outraged. Some people would have actually come along to a select committee and said “Good move Minister. Get rid of ECan.” But they cannot. Others would have come along and said with a more considered opinion in my view that they did not agree that this measure was the way forward for our regional management in Canterbury. But neither of those perspectives nor any in between have had an opportunity to be heard because the Minister unilaterally decided that the legislation had such a high priority it had to be passed under urgency and not a single submission would be called for. I think that that is an outrage. 
We have done our best through the first and second readings through the Committee stage and now through the third reading to try to put the facts of the situation on the table. I mentioned in the dying stages of the Committee stage the water plan excuse that the Minister has constantly raised. He has been going on and on about the fact that there is no water plan. I said then that not only did we have the Canterbury Water Management Strategy—and asked whether he had noticed it because it is actually in the bill—but we also had the Canterbury Natural Resources Regional Plan which members of Parliament like Amy Adams Jacqui Dean Jo Goodhew and Nicky Wagner would do well to familiarise themselves with. They are attacking the council on the basis of misinformation and that is not a good basis for debate. It is OK when trying to score cheap political points I guess to make things up and not tell the complete truth but when the action is about disestablishing a regional council then it should be done on the basis of facts truth and honesty and open debate. 
Environment Canterbury notified its proposed Canterbury Natural Resources Regional Plan in 2004. The plan was notified in 2004 and it is operating. It does not have full legal force under the Resource Management Act because of various things such as submissions hearings decisions and appeals which all have to go through a process before the plan can become operative. But the objectives policies methods and rules of the natural resources regional plan have continued from 2004 to guide decisions on resource consent applications. So the Minister said something that is completely and factually untrue because we have two plans: the first the Canterbury Water Management Strategy was specifically developed because of the huge amount of tension around Canterbury and water and the second is the Canterbury Natural Resources Regional Plan. So the Minister is just wrong and I hope that he takes the opportunity to say he is sorry to the people of Canterbury and particularly to the staff and the councillors who have been working on those plans for many years. 
The other issue that I will shine again and take a brief opportunity to have some factual input on is the comparison that National was making—I noticed it stopped yesterday—between the process that this bill is going through and the process that the Labour-Alliance coalition Government went through in May 2000 in relation to the Rodney District Council. The first difference is that the Rodney District Council voted unanimously to ask the then Minister of Local Government the Hon Sandra Lee to intervene and appoint a commissioner. That was a unanimous decision of the council whereas there has been no such decision from Environment Canterbury. The Rodney District Council agreed that it should write to the Minister and ask for her intervention; no such request was made by Environment Canterbury. The Rodney District Council said that a commissioner should be appointed; no such recommendation came from Environment Canterbury. 
So the processes started from a completely different basis and the Minister made sure that the people in Rodney were involved in looking at the options and deciding what the problem was. She said for them to agree on the problem and then look at some solutions. They agreed on the solution. The Minister made sure that the role of the commissioner was not to take over the council as it is in this case but to ensure that relationships were mended and that systems and infrastructure were in place to deliver efficiently so that the commissioner could walk away and leave an elected council once again to take over. That happened in about a year. The Minister even ensured that the Rodney District had its elections early rather than having to wait until October. There is no such commitment to a return to democracy in this legislation. In fact one of my colleagues said that we should have a bet on who will get the vote back first: Fiji or Canterbury. Who will get a democratic vote again first? Will it be entitlement in Fiji or will it be democracy in Canterbury for our regional council? It could be Fiji. 
The other factual point that I will make is in relation to what the Creech review actually said. That has been the cause of some frustration for members on this side of the House because National has insisted on misrepresenting Wyatt Creech and the recommendations. I will put on the record what the Creech report said in relation to the negative perception of Environment Canterbury—and there is no debate that there is a negative perception. The report said: “Almost all external parties interviewed had a negative perception of ECan’s governance.” But the reviewers interviewed only 20 parties in the whole of Canterbury and it was a very narrow list. The reviewers said that they had heard that the councillors were “polarised” and “dysfunctional” that there was “insufficient leadership” and that the council was “too busy protecting individual/Party perspectives” and failing to pay enough attention to the region. But the Creech report said “Our investigation did not bear this out.” The reviewers had heard the stories. They had heard the rumours. They heard them repeated by National members but the repetition of stuff about Environment Canterbury is just not true. This is what the Hon Wyatt Creech said in his report: “Our investigation did not bear this out. … The Review found that while the process for debating strongly opposing views has been marred by poor behaviour and reflects past grievances in some cases”—well that is not good but it is not unusual—“the governance of ECan is functional and enables it to meet its statutory obligations.” 
There is no need for this disembowelling of Environment Canterbury. There is no need for us in Canterbury to have our democratic right to vote taken away from us and there is no need for this legislation to proceed.