Sage Eugenie: Environment Canterbury (Transitional Governance Arrangements) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Environment Canterbury (Transitional Governance Arrangements) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 05 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10864. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. The Green Party strongly opposes the Environment Canterbury (Transitional Governance Arrangements) Bill. I have called it an abominable bill in the past and nothing that I have heard in either the Committee stage or the second reading has convinced me that it is otherwise. I expected in this third reading debate that we would be hearing some justification from National members and Ministers as to why 6 years after the National Government removed regional democracy in Canterbury we had to see that half-pie model that they are proposing with appointed commissioners continue for another 3 years. But what we have heard again is a whole lot of misinformation about where the regional council was at in 2010.Having been on that council I would like to correct some of that. There was a natural resources regional plan which had been proposed and notified and was being used by the regional council. In 2010 the Canterbury Regional Council was receiving more applications for water consents than every other regional council in New Zealand put together. There was no national policy statement on freshwater to provide any guidance for the council. Christchurch had the worst air quality in New Zealand so the council had focused in previous years on developing an air plan in order to clean up the city’s air and reduce the number of premature deaths from respiratory illnesses. So there are a lot of major resource management challenges in the region. The Government was doing very little if anything to assist in providing guidance there.Last Saturday 6 years on from the loss of regional democracy a small group of people gathered in Cathedral Square to remember that loss of democracy. We put wreaths on a cairn that thousands of Canterbury citizens had come together to build on a very cold day in 2010 using stones from rivers throughout the region. That cairn stands today and will not be dismantled until we get regional democracy back and until there has been a substantial improvement in water management in the region.The Green Party stands alongside everybody in Canterbury who wants an elected regional council back to better provide for the management not just of water but of the coast air regional transport pests and biodiversity. There were over a thousand submissions on this bill and only 15 of those submissions supported this half-pie model that the Government is imposing on the region. Those interests that supported it were rural councils irrigation interests and Federated Farmers. Those interests went to the Ministers in 2010 and demanded a change in Environment Canterbury because it was an elected council with councillors who wanted improved water management and that had strengthened the flow regime for the Waimakariri River. Graeme Sutton one of the directors of Waimakariri Irrigation went and complained to the Minister. We had rural councils that did not want a regional council calling them to account on their sewage discharges in Hanmer and their water takes in other areas—a regional council that was actually trying to enforce the Resource Management Act. So it was those irrigation interests along with rural councils that lobbied the Ministers for an overturning of democracy. It has been those rural councils that support this half-pie model that we are getting back in October.The Christchurch City Council which represents the majority of residents in the region strongly supports the call to return democracy to the region. It is very interesting. We have got 78 councils in New Zealand; none of them will be having appointed commissioners around their tables come October. Even Kaipara where we had a massive over-expenditure by about $50 million in a waste-water scheme and a doorstop-sized report by the Auditor-General gets to elect its council in October.What National is saying—that we need balance and we need some continuity with this model where we are having six appointed commissioners—does not make sense. It seems to ignore the fact that there are staff at the regional council who could have provided that continuity. It ignores that there are other models where two of the commissioners could have been retained as consultants rather than just giving Cantabrians this second-class model with half a vote.It substantially reduces our representation. In Christchurch we are down to four elected councillors when previously there were eight. Each one of those councillors in Christchurch will have to represent 90000 voters. In South Canterbury the elected councillor there will represent only around 60000 voters. To me this is gerrymandering when a vote in South Canterbury is worth much more than one in Christchurch. It is giving the rural sector much more influence.That is what this bill is all about. It is actually giving the Government influence on Environment Canterbury to ensure its agenda of promoting more irrigation having very loose controls on land use and allowing irrigators to capture a community resource to generate private profits. That is why the Government wants to continue to appoint six commissioners at that council table. What we have seen under the commissioners is the promotion of irrigation. We have seen the chair of the commissioners writing to the Selwyn District Council encouraging that council to give an $8 million loan to Central Plains Water to enable it to go ahead with stage two of its scheme.Citizens want an independent objective regulator in Environment Canterbury not one that is promoting more irrigation and more intensification. Under the commissioners we have seen the proportion of rivers in Canterbury that are suitable for swimming decline from 74 percent in 2010 now down to 64 percent. In the new regional plan we have seen nitrate levels set that are several times higher than those that trigger algal blooms in our rivers. We are not seeing the improved water management that the Minister claimed he was appointing commissioners to put in place. Why 6 years later if these commissioners have done the good job that Ministers claim have they not finished developing zone plans for everywhere in Canterbury? That is because water management is challenging.In the Green Party we believe that elected councillors would do a much better job in representing the view of citizens throughout the country that we need much more controls on land use. We need to focus on cleaning up our rivers not allowing them to be further burdened with more faeces and with more nitrates from more agricultural intensification and we need not to be burdened with locking farmers into the high-input high-cost high-debt intensive farming model that these big irrigation schemes like Central Plains Water promote. People in Canterbury want our water back; we want our vote back. That will be achieved only by returning to a fully elected council not this half-pie model that the Government is implementing through this bill.We have not heard any arguments that are credible from Government Ministers or Government MPs as to why 6 years on we cannot have our democracy back. That is because this National Government fundamentally distrusts local government. It distrusts citizens having access to the courts. That is the other really noxious thing about this bill: there is a different version of the Resource Management Act that applies in Canterbury to the one that applies everywhere else in the country. In Wellington in Otago and in the Hawke’s Bay citizens there can appeal their freshwater plans to the Environment Court. In Canterbury this bill denies citizens that right. It makes it much harder for citizens and groups like Fish and Game and Forest and Bird to appeal plan provisions that are too weak and to appeal plan provision that do not provide for clean water.Not only is this Government stomping on regional democracy; it is also denying citizens access to the Environment Court. We want our water back; we want our vote back. This bill fails to deliver that. The Green Party believes that Cantabrians can elect a competent council to provide much better water management than appointed commissioners will and to provide a much more credible system. Thank you.