Goudie Sandra: Wellington Regional Council (Water Board Functions) Bill — In Committee 
Goudie Sandra: Wellington Regional Council (Water Board Functions) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:623;Page:18928] 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I would like to follow on from my learned colleague the Hon Roger Sowry because I think he is right. I was on the Local Government and Environment Committee. I take up the point raised by Jim Peters. If the Wellington Regional Council expressly wants to ring-fence what it will do on that land as it has done in this bill then essentially it is pre-empting the public’s right to determine for themselves what they want to do on that land as per the Local Government Act of 2002 consultation process. We have taken away the public’s ability to work outside the scope of this legislation. We have denied them the opportunity to think of alternative uses for that land. That is where I think Roger Sowry has it absolutely right. 
I think that the Wellington Regional Council has erred in its fiduciary duty by specifying and confining activity on the land instead of leaving it open-ended so that the community as a whole could partake in a consultative process to clarify what it needs and wants. The council should have allowed that to take place. This process now means that that option is not there. If the community wants to use that land it will be able to do so only for the purpose of renewable energy and no other purpose. That raises a very interesting question about continuing to allow these sorts of bills to go through in relation to local authorities. In particular now that the Local Government Act of 2002 supposedly provides councils with the power of general competence—if one thinks that that is definitely the case—then there is not the need to have a bill that puts constraints in place as this bill does. 
We are supposed to be focusing on the preliminary provisions which include the definitions so I will reiterate the definition of “renewable energy” that I pointed out to Ken Shirley before. It means energy produced from solar wind hydro geothermal biomass tidal wave and ocean current sources. When it comes to energy generation I would think that given that definition of renewable energy at least we will not be limiting ourselves just to the consideration of wind generation. Other options within the definition of renewable energy can be considered. Geothermal generation is one of them and hydro is another. We can even look at tidal and wave power. So there is a far greater range than wind power. But I would like to reiterate that even though I was on the select committee in hindsight I think we have erred in ring-fencing what can happen on the land in question. The area is vast and a lot of underlying provisions apply to various parts of it. 
Going further to the definitions it is good to see that there are some definitions here and that they are quite clear because often that is not the case. In the Resource Management Act the term “sustainable” does not have a definition of its own; it is coupled with “sustainable management” and is included in the purpose clause. Another interesting thing is that in the definitions in the new Resource Management Act amendments an “iwi authority” will be accorded the same definition as a “public authority” so to all intents and purposes a renewable energy project could be under the control of an iwi authority as a public authority. A regional council could actually hand over that function to an iwi authority under that premise. 
Also it is interesting to note that in this bill the Wellington Regional Council has specified a condition. If only local authorities could do the same when under the amendments they have to give effect to regional council instructions in their rules and plans. In this bill if we excluded subclauses (1) and (2) of clause 4 the rest could stand alone. The land provision in clause 4(2) may still have to be specified—fine—but the rest could stand alone. If we excluded clause 4(1) the provision would still work.