Russell DeborahDr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): This is a very pragmatic bill. It's trying to find a solution for a problem and a very real problem in the Waimea Valley. It's not actually a particularly complicated bill but it's taken a long time to get here—years and years of consultation and agonising trying to work out solutions changes of Government and so on—and it does represent a compromise. The compromise is that some conservation land will be used in order to secure the water supply in the Waimea water augmentation scheme.For that reason I just want to sort of contradict something that the Hon Nathan Guy just said. He felt that the bill was going to the right place in going to the Governance and Administration Committee. Actually I'm very disappointed that it's not coming to the Environment Committee because to my mind the discussion we need to be having is around the conservation values and when we need to perhaps sort of say We understand the conservation values but we're actually going to override them in this instance." or as it were try to barter them or try to come to a solution that's better overall. I think it's a discussion that's worth having at length but I guess the Governance and Administration Committee can have that conversation too. But I am as I said very disappointed that it's not coming to the committee that I chair. I would have liked to have had the opportunity to talk about it. And of course it would be well debated by all members of that committee.I do think that the taking of any conservation land needs to be assessed very very carefully indeed. We heard from the Hon Dr Nick Smith that this was a no-brainer that we should be going ahead and doing it no matter what. The solution was to his mind obvious. I'm not sure that it's quite a no-brainer. I actually do think that taking riverbed taking land that has been set aside for conservation purposes even if it's only stewardship land is not a no-brainer. That is actually an issue that needs to be discussed needs to be debated and needs to be weighed up. Here even though we are being pragmatic about this I do want to refer to a quote that my colleague the Hon David Parker—goodness; all these "Hons"—often makes. It's a quote from the World Bank economist Herman Daly. David Parker often uses it. It says "The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment not the reverse." Now I think the Hon David Parker endorses that often. Actually I agree that the environment doesn't serve the economy; it is the other way around.Yet in this instance we seem at first glance to have an instance of the environment serving the economy. But that's a simplistic way of thinking about it because as has been discussed at length this issue has gone to the Environment Court. It has been closely examined by the Department of Conservation (DOC). The costs and benefits—not in dollar terms; that's a different issue—in terms of the environment have been assessed very very carefully and it does seem that on the whole the environmental benefits of this scheme will outweigh the costs of using some DOC land. I think that has to be the assessment every time we're engaged in one of these considerations of whether or not some DOC or conservation land should be sacrificed. We shouldn't be assessing it simply on economic grounds because it's too easy to sell out the environment every time for the economy. It is much better to assess it on conservation grounds and on environmental values. Given that this has been through the Environment Court given that DOC does support it and given that there does seem to be a huge range of environmental benefits I think pragmatically on the whole this bill is a bill worth supporting.It's interesting to notice that the Tasman District Council has agonised over it as well. No one has come to this decision easily. So this is a bill that is worth supporting certainly through this first reading and it is a scheme I think that—for the reasons that Dr Smith has laid out—does need to find some way of being supported because of the long-term benefits from it. So I'm looking forward to the discussion. As I said I'm just disappointed that the bill is not coming to the Environment Committee."