O'Rourke Denis: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
O'Rourke Denis: Supplementary Estimates — Imprest Supply Debate 
[Sitting date: 26 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3384. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Speaker. I hope you can hear me now. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I can. Yes I can. 
DENIS O’ROURKE 
: First of all I would like to say that some previous speakers have talked about growing the economy and certainly New Zealand First supports that. But what the previous speaker Michael Woodhouse did not understand is that it is necessary to grow an economy sustainably with all that that means. That is where he was also wrong about his comments about the Green Party. Secondly of course the benefits of an economy must be fairly distributed and that is one of the things that I think this Budget simply does not do. 
I want to refer particularly to two subjects amongst these appropriations. The first is the national cycleway. There has been a reduction in commitment to this by National over the years. It was 4 years ago that National campaigned on a national cycleway as a means of supporting tourism. But there has been no real supporting strategy for that and therefore no real substantial result. It was mostly puffery. And we see in this appropriation even less commitment to that particular strategy. Nevertheless some good works were done. Some good works were done but not enough—not enough. There is a need for innovation in support of tourism because tourism under this Government is simply failing. Tourism even with the Prime Minister’s support is simply failing in this country and not succeeding at all. So innovations of this kind and more innovation are needed to support tourism. It would in fact be better if the Government was to apply this allocation and more to the support of urban cycling as a good means of supporting transport strategies and also tourism because cycling is good for tourism within urban areas as well. 
The second subject I want to move on to is the allocation for water storage and investment. Water issues are huge issues globally and will be for the whole of this century—huge issues also within New Zealand. I might say that they are particularly huge issues where I live in Canterbury which has 70 percent of the nation’s irrigated land. Irrigation schemes have been struggling in New Zealand and there are many reasons for that. One of them is the consent processes which are often far too long produce far too little benefit and sometimes have some perverse outcomes. I might also say that the rules applied by regional councils in this country are too often irrational confusing seem to move from year to year and make it difficult for projects to get going. Access to water resources is the main challenge and storage of them—which is one of the purposes of the allocation in this Appropriation (2011/12 Supplementary Estimates) Bill—is a very difficult issue. Many legal challenges a lot of competition for water and the storage problems still remain and have not been properly addressed by this Government at all. 
I would like to say that I am involved personally with one of these schemes the Central Plains Water scheme—a 60000 hectare scheme. I am the chairman of a trust that is to hold the consents for that scheme. The bottom line for that is sustainable development. A sustainable farming protocol is what the application was based on and has been granted on which is enforceable under contract and through the consents. But it took 10 years and $10 million - plus to get that far and that was without any Government assistance whatsoever. So after all those consenting barriers and all the barriers put in place by regional councils we still have no substantial water storage in Canterbury. There is some strategy but very little. The Government response as we see in this legislation has been completely inadequate—a small amount for the purposes of assisting schemes to final design stage and a capital provision of somewhere between $400 million and $450 million. But in terms of New Zealand’s requirements that is actually a drop in the bucket and is a completely inadequate provision for the development of sustainable agriculture through properly developed water schemes for irrigation in this country. So what we need from the Government is a lot more than we have seen in the Budget and in particular in this particular allocation. It is absolutely vital for New Zealand’s future and it is vital that these provisions be sustainable. The Government needs to do a lot more.