Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. This bill will be incredibly incredibly beneficial to Southland where many of our waterways are under incredible pressure. And what I want to just briefly talk about is the New River Estuary because I think it highlights some of the challenges we face. I think when you go out on the estuary you realise that out by where the sea comes in the bottom is actually gravelly sand. But the closer you go up to where the rivers come in you end up getting deeper and deeper into thick oozy mud. The problem we've got is we've got macro algae. There's overgrowth because of nutrients but in some places that macro algae is even struggling to survive and it's dying and we're ending up with sulphur embedded in the muck. It's incredibly incredibly sad to see what was a once beautiful estuary.But I also want to talk about the work that we've been doing in rural communities where farmers and urban people are coming together and taking joint responsibility and ownership of that. I think where this bill comes in is because it's going to give us that broader strategic planning framework. Having that consistency of an approach is going to make a huge difference in terms of what's happening on the ground. What this bill is is it's a first step in a comprehensive review of our resource management system. We've launched that in July this year but some of those findings won't be available into mid-2020. But we can't wait till then particularly for our freshwater management. We need to get on and do some really important things. This is where this bill comes in because what it does is it provides some of that basic infrastructure so we can start to implement our Essential Freshwater action plan. Essential and central to that is the new National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. What this will do is replace the old national policy statement (NPS) the 2017 version which really was inadequate looking at some of the things that we're seeing down south. That will bring it in 2020. But the problem we've got is that we've got incredible variability in terms of regional councils even implementing the old NPS 2017. So what we need to do is put in place a new infrastructure and framework so that we can get on and make those plan changes by 2025. What this bill introduces is a specialised planning process for councils. What they've got to do is make the changes to their regional freshwater plans to implement the NPS for freshwater management no later than 31 December 2023. That's to actually notify those changes and then make the final decisions on them by 31 December 2025 to have those plans finalised by then. What this does is it just creates a framework for consistency around that. So within six months of notifying those plans what the regional councils need to do is provide all the necessary documentation that's outlined in this bill under new Part 4 in clause 72 to the Chief Freshwater Commissioner. So 20 working days prior to doing this they must also notify the commissioner about their nominees for their regional council commissioners and their local tangata whenua nominations for appointment to the freshwater hearing panels. Once that information is received what the Chief Freshwater Commissioner then has to do is to convene a freshwater hearing panel and that will be to hear those public submissions and to engage in that listen to that public debate on the adequacy of those plans and where they might need to be improved. So generally what we're expecting here is that we'll have five commissioners that are on those hearing panels. Two of those will be hearing commissioners appointed by the Minister two of them will be appointed by regional council and one of them nominated by tangata whenua. So the sense is that they will be convening and listening to the public submissions. But the ability to have specialist expertise with those appointed commissioners appointed by the Minister and also having that local expertise and tangata whenua representation means that we've got that right mix of expertise across a whole range of areas that can then come and make informed decisions in terms of recommendations on what those submissions are. So what will happen then is that the recommendations from that panel will then go back to council and council has 20 working days to respond to those recommendations to decide whether they'll accept them or not accept them. Then the bill also provides a framework where you can appeal to the Environment Court and also the High Court in some aspects. So this creates that overarching framework within which we can get those plans in place by 2025 and to start moving forward to improve our water quality. It's an incredibly incredibly important bill and I commend this bill to the House.