Goudie Sandra: Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Goudie Sandra: Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:15415] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 The Minister said that the Resource Management Act did not need changing and that indeed it was beautifully written and beautifully balanced. But then what happened? It got absolutely sidestepped for a favoured project. The Minister put all the water applications on hold because—what did she have up her sleeve? She had Project Aqua for the Waitaki River up her sleeve and so the farmers waited. All their applications were put on hold even those for farmers who had been taking water consistently for many years—and still they wait. They are waiting to this day and by all accounts will wait at least another year or more. 
In setting up that water allocation model at the time when we worked through this bill at the select committee it became quite clear that the model could set parameters around different categories of water take which meant that some things could happen automatically. In actual fact if the water allocation model were structured correctly any water take for a hydro project could almost have been a permitted activity within that allocation model. That was one of the things that became clear during the select committee process but as we know there are a whole lot of exemptions to the Resource Management Act. As I have said before there were to have been exemptions from section 32 but at least that was changed. 
So what happened with the Resource Management Act under this particular bill? It was sidestepped. We had ministerial interference and that Act was sidestepped to introduce another bill to create another Act—which sidestepped the Resource Management Act that was so beautifully written and so wonderfully balanced. 
What did we have then? We had the continued interference of the Minister within this bill. It has only partially been removed. It is certainly still there with the establishment of the board and with the Minister setting up the chair and deputy chair and picking the members. As we all know the Minister was advertising for applications for the board during the select committee process—at the very time we were hearing submissions to the original bill. 
We all know as well that the original bill has 55 clauses so with about 29 deleted we are now down to about 26 clauses. We have to ask ourselves why we did not just can the bill. Perhaps the Minister could support Environment Canterbury to do the allocation model and get that up and running pretty quickly so that we could help to look after those farmers who are still waiting for their applications for a water take. 
I agree with my colleagues wholeheartedly about the deplorable lack of support for the upper Waitaki catchment farmers. That has been an absolute disgrace. We had the opportunity through the Supplementary Order Paper from the Hon Dr Nick Smith but that was ignored by none other than Jim Sutton— 
Brian Connell 
: Did Jim Sutton support it? 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: No Jim Sutton did not support it. That is his area—the area he purports to represent—and he did not support protecting the interests of the upper Waitaki catchment farmers and nor did United Future members. For all their grand phrases and time in the area spent talking to farmers they did not support that Supplementary Order Paper either. I believe that that is a disgrace. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: They didn’t walk the talk. 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: No they did not walk the talk. I believe that that is an absolute disgrace but I take my hat off to my colleague for putting such a supreme effort into making sure we all made an effort to support and protect the interests of the upper Waitaki catchment farmers. 
The Minister has interfered throughout this whole exercise. Her Supplementary Order Paper is really quite extraordinary. When we look at Part 4 we see that it has been totally gutted. It has come from 27 clauses down to 10 clauses so we have to wonder. Under clause 50 the “Panel” now becomes the “local authority”.