Dean Jacqui: Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dean Jacqui: Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 April 2012. Volume:679;Page:1710. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 The Government does not support this member’s bill in the name of Ruth Dyson the Environment Canterbury (Democracy Restoration) Amendment Bill. The people of Christchurch were badly let down by Environment Canterbury. The problem of water allocation around the area that was administered by Environment Canterbury was that we had a highly contested resource which in many parts was overallocated already with a high demand for more allocation. Environment Canterbury utterly failed in its duties to meet its responsibilities so much so that the Minister for the Environment at the time Nick Smith made the wise and brave decision to appoint commissioners in its stead. 
Environment Canterbury had 19 years to develop a water plan and it did not do that. What was happening in Canterbury was that water allocation decisions were being made in a policy vacuum. A policy vacuum is not a good method to deal with an important resource. I am mindful of the debate in the previous bill the Crown Minerals (Protection of Public Conservation Land Listed in the Fourth Schedule) Amendment Bill where members across the House were decrying the use of schedule 4 land potentially for mining. They seemed to be fixated on bringing in more regulation and legislation around that yet they seemed to be perfectly comfortable with the fact that there was a policy vacuum in Environment Canterbury at the time which meant that water allocation was being done in a haphazard and unplanned way. There is a bit of an irony in there which I suspect is lost on members across the House. 
As the constituency member of Parliament with responsibilities from Geraldine south down to the Waitaki River I had a number of my constituents who were either looking to renew their water allocation permits or going for new water allocation permits and who were suffering from an ongoing battle of cost. They would wait for years for Environment Canterbury to deal with their allocation requests or indeed any form of trouble or complaint they had. They would then come to me. Of course I would ring Environment Canterbury or I would write to Environment Canterbury and I too experienced the frustration of trying to get a decent level of service out of Environment Canterbury. So it was those failures—those failures of not doing its job properly—that led Nick Smith to appoint commissioners to Environment Canterbury and since then I am happy to say that the complaints have all but dried up. 
Of course no farmer will ever be completely happy with their regional council; that is a bit of a given. But I have to say that the performance of the commissioners has been outstanding. We now have a lot of progress on water management strategy. In fact more progress had been made not only by the Environment Canterbury commissioners but also by this National Government in 3 years than was made in the entire 9 years of the previous Labour Government when it had its much-vaunted water plan of action which in effect became the water plan of inaction. Well I have to say that since that time a lot of progress has been made to the benefit of the people of Canterbury and that is something that I suspect is lost on those members opposite who are so fixated that they cannot see the wood for the trees. National opposes this member’s bill.