Adams Amy: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Adams Amy: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:661;Page:9941] 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I am very happy to be taking a call tonight on the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill. I am very happy to do it because I think everyone in this House would agree that Canterbury is a tremendously important region to New Zealand. It is tremendously important economically and it is tremendously important environmentally. The regional council is a key body in the success of our region. The regional council is charged with administrating not only the management of our environmental assets but also our economic development. 
The issue is that there have been longstanding and widely held concerns about Environment Canterbury’s ability to carry out those functions. That is what this debate is about and where this need has come from. The Creech report is merely the last in a long line of criticisms levelled at Environment Canterbury’s ability to do its job. That report found that the capability gap between what Environment Canterbury could do and what was needed was enormous and unprecedented. The regional council has failed to properly look after water management in our area. It has failed to control water-quality deterioration it has certainly failed to have a plan for strategic economic development and it has failed after nearly 19 years of the Resource Management Act to even come up with a natural resources plan that is operative in our district. This has happened while other councils are on to their second generation plans. 
The Canterbury Strategic Water Management Study that we have heard talked about so much—and I support it; I think it is a wonderful initiative—is a response from the mayoral forum not from Environment Canterbury— 
Brendon Burns 
: Oh rubbish. It’s an Environment Canterbury initiative. 
AMY ADAMS 
: It is a response from the mayoral forum to Environment Canterbury’s failures I say to Mr Burns which he is closing his eyes to and not dealing with in any way. 
One of the wonderful things that this legislation will do is give the Canterbury Water Management Strategy at least a chance of success. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
AMY ADAMS 
: I will take up a little more of the House’s time although I will not use anything like the 8 minutes I have left. 
I make one final point. When the dinner break came I was referring to the Canterbury Strategic Water Study and the strategy that has come from it. That is a very important document and this bill is the only way that strategy will be given some legislative status. I think that is a very good step in this process. It is good news and I go so far as to say that anyone who votes against this bill is voting against the Canterbury Strategic Water Study. Through this bill we will see that strategy given some teeth and some power and we will be able to work together. 
That strategy has been the work of a number of stakeholders representing the players in this field. Those same stakeholders from across the divide have all been calling for a change in Environment Canterbury saying that there is a problem and it has to be dealt with quickly. This Government is getting up and doing it. This is not the previous Labour Government which knew there was a problem but did nothing for 9 years. We will step in we will step up and we will sort out water in Canterbury. Thank you.