Kuriger Barbara; Parker DavidBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki-King Country): Thank you Madam Chair. I accept what the Minister is saying about the flexibility in and around it being that one size doesn't fit all and so we need to have some flexibility but just on this Part 6 Management of particular resources and areas" around water it's been drawn to my attention lately around particularly not just irrigation—and when people talk about irrigation or water storage they often talk a lot about that being for dairy cows. I think we can assure the population that environmentally that may have been a thing of the past but it's not going to be the thing of the future because it will be for I guess resilience to do with climate change. It will be for some small hydro production it will be for perhaps some horticulture or it will be for leisure—there's a whole range of things that water can be used for. But the thing that's being brought to my attention around spatial planning is that if we don't get this right in our use of the water that we use particularly for small mini-hydro plants that may service agricultural rural areas those people in those areas might end up paying a lot of money for their electricity if it's going into a local grid rather than if it's going into the grid and supplying the network. Therefore the city dwellers may be better off than the rural dwellers when it comes to people spinning off small hydro schemes and I guess—let's face it—we're past the days of Think Big where we were going to have massive hydro schemes and hopefully that includes Lake Onslow so that we won't have that either. But there will be a lot of ability to put some small schemes in place; it just seems like the playing field isn't even. So when we're talking about water allocation it'd be really good to put some thought into how that might become fair and equitable. Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I will given that Project Onslow has been raised a lot of times just respond to some of the criticisms there. Now Onslow needs to be conceived of as a mechanism to cover dry your risk and provide a hedge against intermittency for new renewables in a way that encourages market competition in the provision of new generation in New Zealand. Those who believe in the project including the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and some very experienced people who have been involved in the electricity system for a long long time—like Dr Keith Turner the former head of Meridian and the former head of Electricorp Generation way back when and currently head of Transpower—think that that is the greatest benefit. It will enable competition in renewable generation investments by international capital as well as New Zealand capital because they will not be as reliant upon the tight four or five main generators at the moment to whom they have to look for a hedge against intermittency and in a dry year that's effectively Huntly which drives up the prices of electricity. Anyway I respond to that just to defend Onslow against some of the incorrect criticisms of it that are made here even though it's not directly affected by this part of the bill. But it's been raised by others. In respect of the issue of water storage: yes there is a need for more water storage in New Zealand on the dry East Coast particularly. In the prior part of the legislation in respect of consents there was reference through to the limitation on the length of new consents that can be given for the abstraction of water and that's because now that most water has been allocated or over-allocated in many catchments on the "first in first served" basis if you enable new consents to be given for 35 years or the renewal of all existing consents for 35 years you've effectively put off the more efficient and reasonable allocation of water resources in New Zealand for up to 35 years which would frustrate the purpose of the Act which is for more fair as well as economically efficient and environmentally proper outcomes. There were some exceptions made for large hydro projects. We've now made it clear that all existing hydro has the benefit of those exceptions to that limitation on the term of those consents. So you can get a 35-year renewal but we haven't applied that to all new water storage projects although we have created a pathway for those sorts of projects to be given a longer-term consent in order for them to be banked."