Sage Eugenie: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 13 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:7816. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. I join with colleagues in recognising the service to this House of the former Speaker Dr The Rt Hon Lockwood Smith and in congratulating the new Speaker the Rt Hon David Carter. 
The Green Party remains strongly opposed to this bill the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill—what a misdescription of a bill. We are opposed to it because it is undemocratic it is contrary to the rule of law and it weakens and undermines water conservation orders and the Resource Management Act in Canterbury. 
There was a very eloquent submission by the New Zealand Law Society’s rule of law committee presented by its chair Austin Forbes. That submission said that democratic decision-making in local government is a very important and legitimate expectation of citizens. The proposed further suspension of local body democracy runs counter to core constitutional values—most important that of a free and democratic society. The Law Society said that the bill should not proceed. The Green Party agrees. 
If we did not have this bill Environment Canterbury would be set to return to an elected governing body of regional councillors in the local elections in October. Regardless of what people thought of regional councillors in 2010 October 2013 should have been the chance for all Cantabrians to exercise their democratic right and elect councillors to determine and decide how the rates that those Cantabrians pay should be spent how the land water air coast and natural hazards in the region should be managed and how regional transport should be planned. 
That was what Ministers promised in 2010; that was what was the understanding in this House when the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Act 2010 was passed. So the Government has reneged on that commitment because it wants to reorganise local government in Canterbury and the 10 mayors who wrote to the Minister at the time may well regret that if there are proposals for a unitary authority as in Auckland. 
 The Government also wants to continue with its hand-picked commissioners because it wants them to control and finalise the key statutory documents that will guide land and water management in Canterbury for the next decade. It is the regional land and water plan that will set the framework for decisions on water take for decisions on irrigation and for acceptable nitrate levels in aquifers and waterways and will set the rules that control the extent to which dairying can expand and intensive land use can increase the pollution load. 
The Government wants a weak land and water plan because it is desperate for more agricultural intensification more irrigation and more dairying in Canterbury. It is desperate because of its failure to embrace smart green growth and have a smart plan for our future. Its economic agenda is stuck in the 19th century. It is stuck in resource exploitation—more mining more drilling and more irrigation. For Nicky Wagner to go on as a former regional councillor with the mistruths that the new Minister has perpetuated—that Environment Canterbury did not have a plan—is inexcusable. Environment Canterbury had a natural resources regional plan a proposed plan which was notified in 2004. It is this new regional land and water plan that is succeeding that is the second-generation plan. 
What do Cantabrians say about that plan? We have had North Canterbury’s Fish and Game environmental officer say: “We have been presented with a weak and permissive plan that cannot effectively manage water resource decisions over the next five years.” Hearings on that plan which the commissioners have put out begin in the next few weeks. That is why the Government wants them to stay so it can ensure that the plan continues to have very weak rules to control agricultural intensification and irrigation. 
It was that that was the genesis of the substantive Act in 2010. The Government wanted legislation that would favour irrigators and it was under the 2010 Act that we have seen the Minister sign off the changes to the Rakaia water conservation order which allow TrustPower to manipulate the flows in that magnificent river the Rakaia River and promote much more extensive irrigation in conjunction with Central Plains Water.  
So we have had that scheme and the continued changes to water conservation orders continuing under this bill when the official advice from the Ministry for Primary Industries the Ministry for the Environment and the Department of Internal Affairs was that there was insufficient justification for continuing those special water conservation order provisions. Cabinet rejected the advice of officials and we still have now under this bill legislation in Canterbury that is part of the Resource Management Act that is completely different from that which applies in the rest of the country. What did the Ministers also do? They rejected the advice from their own commissioners for a mixed body of elected members and appointed commissioners.  
The 2010 Act was rammed through under urgency with no opportunity for submissions. We have had submissions on this bill and what have those submissions said? Ninety of the 95 submissions opposed the bill. It is interesting to see those who favoured it. They were Irrigation New Zealand the Waitaki Irrigators Collective and Federated Farmers highlighting the way in which the bill serves their interests. As Clayton Cosgrove mentioned the Human Rights Commission noted that the bill has the potential “to further exacerbate the resentment that has arisen in Canterbury as a result of autocratic decision making.” and that was a major theme that came through the submissions presented by Canterbury residents to the Local Government and Environment Committee in Christchurch. As Rosalie Snoyink of Glentunnel said: “The best people to represent …” us on Environment Canterbury are people “elected by us for us.”  
What have we seen with water management under the commissioners? Certainly the collaborative water management strategy has been rolled out but that was developed by elected councillors not by commissioners; they have rolled it out. What is happening with water management in Darfield? One hundred and fifty people got sick because an E. coli bacteria was found in the community water supply. That is not the result of good water management; that is the result of poorly controlled agricultural intensification.  
We need Cantabrians to be involved in decision making. We need to remove that sense of powerlessness that people are feeling with the autocratic way in which the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority goes out making its decisions with the lack of ability to have a real say in what the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority is doing and now with this legislation which tramples over local democracy. It further disempowers Cantabrians. As the Law Society said the bill is a disturbing breach of the rule of law. That is because it removes access to the Environment Court for appeals on regional plans and it sidesteps the Environment Court and that really specialist jurisdiction that the court has.  
In conclusion this bill is totally consistent with the National Government’s changes to the Local Government Act 2002 where it again erodes local democracy by increasing the ability of the Minister to interfere and direct elected representatives to undermine their autonomy. So the Green Party opposes this bill. It is anti-democratic it is a breach of the rule of law and it undermines democracy.