Peters Jim: Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Peters Jim: Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:619;Page:15280] 
JIM PETERS (NZ First) 
: 
 When I first came to the House on behalf of New Zealand First I called for a reform of the Resource Management Act—not in the real sense of the word but in the sense that after a decade there was an obvious need before the next decade to see whether the Act had got it right. That call was rejected and we have gone through several piecemeal changes of which this bill is but one. 
The background to this bill is quite unique. As members will recall it came to the House in a very unusual form. It was poorly written and in a very short space of time it caused more anger and concern in Canterbury and particularly in the Waitaki catchment basin than any other single piece of would-be legislation. That was one opinion. The other opinion was outlined in a preliminary paper submitted by Meridian Energy which dealt with matters of water allocation as it saw them. It was the other major player and remained so until the bill collapsed in the House although it is not quite correct to say that the reformed bill that came from the Local Government and Environment Committee was necessarily the reason for the withdrawal of Meridian Energy from that very ambitious and very costly project. Some would have said that the project was flawed in the beginning in seeking so much land. A very high cost was put to it before the geotechnical work was done. I have no doubt that there are two issues. One of them is and ought to be part of this bill—namely the Order in Council of 1969. In addition there are the geotechnical issues plus there was the uncertainty that the bill once it was enacted would have brought delays to Meridian Energy which caused it to withdraw. 
I take up the point that I believe there were a variety of issues that could cause any prudent company especially a company acting on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayer to rethink its position and I have no doubt that in time to come Meridian may come back to the area again—much to the horror of some people living in Kurow and other places. But the issues have changed since then. Since the bill came to the House in its first form the Otago Regional Council which impacts in a small way on this district has prepared a water plan and right now the Canterbury Regional Council has a proposed Natural Resources Regional Plan which is a very extensive document that looks to give some immediacy to the total region in regard to water. Two chapters within that plan cover both water quality and water quantity. 
The third factor is that water is an issue. Water should be an issue in New Zealand just as it is in Australia. When the bill collapsed New Zealand First gave firm support to bringing a renewed bill back to the House. The simple reason for that was that when we saw the whole application by Meridian Energy and the wealth of material in that application it seemed very obvious that if some use was not made of the extensive work done by Meridian Energy and to a secondary degree by Environment Canterbury and the Ministry for the Environment then that value would be lost. But in the normal flow of things although a regional water plan or in this case a catchment plan for the Waitaki catchment area could be developed under the Resource Management Act that plan would not meet the real issue—the Waitaki River allocation in the bill. 
The real issue is “first come first served”. Although we have heard some people talk about that issue in the past it is still the current understanding. If we look at the history of the plans over the last decade and the jurisprudence that has resulted from those plans step by step and Environment Court by Environment Court case nothing overcomes the fact that “first come first served” was in. In this case “first come first served” for the Waitaki River was Meridian Energy. Meridian Energy was “first come first served”. It would have had absolute prior rights and that is the fact of the matter whether or not members think so. In practice that is how it works. 
Alongside that are a whole number of other issues. We know that in the last 15 years the Canterbury region has more than doubled the area under irrigation. In the strategic plan for the Canterbury region there is a discussion document that states that the region has a capacity to irrigate 1 million hectares. There is huge economic wealth out there that is dependent upon water. If that is to be realised that plan would do it.