Norman Russel William: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
Norman Russel William: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee 
[Volume:661;Page:9972] 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Part 1 deals with the purposes of the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill—the bill to get rid of democracy from the regional council in Canterbury. I think that if we are to understand the purpose of this bill we need to go back to the Prime Minister’s statement at the beginning of Parliament this year. He said “The Government will … take action this year to remove … roadblocks to … irrigation in Canterbury.” That is the purpose of this bill. 
It is important to note how this bill has evolved and the different steps that it has come through when looking at its purpose. The first purpose was outlined very clearly by the Prime Minister—that is to allow more irrigation in Canterbury. Hence there is to be more pollution of the aquifer in Canterbury more pollution of the rivers in Canterbury and the taking of more water from the rivers and aquifers in Canterbury. Those rivers will become even lower than they are now even more degraded than they are now and even fuller of pollution than they are now. That is the purpose that the Prime Minister gave for this bill when he made his statement to Parliament. He said he would take action to get rid of the roadblocks to irrigation in Canterbury. That is the purpose of this bill. That was the first step. 
The second step was the appointment of a review panel headed up by someone from the dairy industry. Let us remember that Environment Canterbury’s major role is to be a regulator of the dairy industry in Canterbury. What did the Government do as its second step? It appointed someone from the dairy industry to conduct a review of the regulator of that industry. What does that remind members of? Does George W Bush come to mind when we think about getting an industry to conduct a review of the regulator of that industry? Of course George Bush took it one more step: he appointed the industry itself to be the regulator—and we may yet come to that depending on who the Government appoints to be commissioners at Environment Canterbury. So the second step was to get someone from the dairy industry to conduct a review of the regulator of the dairy industry in Canterbury—that is Environment Canterbury the regional council. 
Surprise surprise the review came back from Mr Creech and it said the review panel did not like it that Environment Canterbury was slowing economic growth by saying no to some of the irrigators. The review panel thought that was outrageous and Environment Canterbury had to be abolished because it was saying no to some of the dairy corporations which was unreasonable. Of course the facts that Canterbury has had one of the fastest rates of economic growth in New Zealand and that there have been dramatic increases in irrigation and in approvals for irrigation across Canterbury do not matter. No no the review said things have not been going fast enough. We are going to put more ticks next to irrigation schemes and give more ticks to dairy corporations because the review conducted by a director of a dairy company of the regulator of the dairy industry has said we should do that. So the second step in understanding the purposes of this bill is to understand that someone from the dairy industry conducted the review of the regulator of that industry. Wyatt Creech came back and said things were not going fast enough. 
It is also important to remember the other things that the review said. It said Environment Canterbury paid too much attention to science. That is an outrage! The regulator of the dairy sector according to the dairy person who was put in to review it was paying too much attention to science. The review said Environment Canterbury was science-led. Imagine that. Imagine a regional council paying attention to science. That is an outrage; Environment Canterbury has to be abolished! So the Minister said the Government would abolish it and put in people who would not pay attention to science because it is wrong to do so. The Minister said Environment Canterbury should be paying attention to irrigators and dairy corporations not to scientists. Imagine employing scientists in a regional council to give us information about water quality. It is a shocking activity! That is why Wyatt Creech said the council had to go: because it was not employing enough people from the industry side and there were too many scientists. What a waste of time that review was. 
Of course the other thing that Wyatt Creech said was that Environment Canterbury does not process consents fast enough. Of course this is really the nub of the matter. In the last 12 months the regional council processed nearly 90 percent of consents within the statutory time frames—nearly 90 percent. So although the Government says it has to get rid of the council now actually the council is performing better than it has ever performed. The reason why the Government is trying to get rid of the council is that the council has improved its performance. The purpose of this bill which is the part we are dealing with at the moment is to speed up the process of converting more and more of Canterbury to irrigation. More and more we will see rivers drained of their water and more pollution of the aquifers and we are to have less science because that is not important. As Mr Creech said too much science was being done—what a waste of time! If we have less science there will be less evidence on the basis of which people can complain about what is going on in Canterbury. We will have less ability to challenge Synlait and all the different dairy corporations when we go to court because less science will have been done. 
Let us remember that the Linton dairy case was lost because the Canterbury Regional Council did not have enough scientific evidence to give around the aquifer. The regional council tried to get more scientific work done and for that reason it is being sacked. The council is being sacked because it is too much into science. The reason that the council lost the Linton dairy case was that it had not done enough science. The council did more scientific work and now it is being sacked. The Government thinks that if the council does too much scientific work it might say no to more irrigation and more intensification of agriculture across Canterbury. As we know from the Prime Minister’s speech when Parliament resumed in February this Government will take action to remove roadblocks to irrigation in Canterbury; hence this bill to get rid of the democratically elected regional councillors in Canterbury. 
I think it is also important this afternoon that people may have seen that the Environmental Defence Society after originally cautiously welcoming this bill in its second press release has come out opposing it because the society has realised what is going on with regard to water conservation orders in this bill. One of the purposes of this bill is to overturn the water conservation orders on the Rakaia River and the proposed water conservation order that is coming through on the Hurunui River. The reason that the Government does not like those water conservation orders is that they will preserve too much water for the rivers and not give enough water to irrigation. The Government thinks it cannot possibly let the Hurunui River water conservation order go through. The Environmental Defence Society has now come out and raised serious concerns about what this bill does to the water conservation order process. This bill overturns the current process and takes the Environment Court which is where the Hurunui River water conservation order would have gone next out of the process. 
One of the purposes of this bill—and I am surprised it has not been written here in this part—is to overturn water conservation order processes. Rivers subject to water conservation orders are the national parks of rivers; that is what they are. People do not understand how important water conservation orders are. They are like giving national park status to our rivers. When this Government introduces a bill to dismantle the way that water conservation orders work in Canterbury it is because it wants to mine another kind of national park: it wants to mine the Rakaia River and the Hurunui River for irrigation. It is another kind of mining of national parks but this time our rivers are the national parks that are at stake. This Government in the purpose of this bill wants to overturn the way that water conservation orders work.