Sage Eugenie: Environment Canterbury (Transitional Governance Arrangements) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSage Eugenie: Environment Canterbury (Transitional Governance Arrangements) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 05 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10161. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]EUGENIE SAGE (Green): That contribution from Minister Smith was very interesting because if you do look at what the record of the commissioners has been it has not been about improving water quality. We have seen in Canterbury despite what the Minister says a decrease in water quality. We have seen in Canterbury some of—Te Waihora Lake Ellesmere. The Waihora-Selwyn catchment drains into Lake Ellesmere. Te Waihora is New Zealand’s fifth-largest lake and it is an important taonga to Ngāi Tahu and yet we had the chair of the commissioners writing to the Selwyn District Council encouraging the council to agree to an $8 million loan from ratepayers to subsidise the second stage of the Central Plains irrigation scheme.The Minister can talk about the hundreds of millions that are being spent on cleaning up our lakes and rivers but it does not make any sense to put more money into subsidising irrigation to intensify land use in a catchment where that drains to Te Waihora and that will increase nutrient pollution in the lake. At the moment we have got a major increase in nitrogen and phosphorous loadings in the lake. We need a 50 percent reduction in the current levels of nutrient pollution to get to a trophic lake index of six or less which would help the lake to restore itself. We are not getting that where we get the chair of the commissioners not only in regulation but involved in promoting irrigation through encouraging the Selwyn District Council to fund the second stage of the Central Plains Water scheme.What we have also seen in Canterbury is the decline in the number of swimmable rivers. We had the commissioners promising that 80 percent of rivers would be suitable for swimming by 2015. In 2010 74 percent of monitored river sites were safe for swimming; yet in 2016 only 67 percent are. The commissioners have not improved water quality—sure in a few small areas but across the region no because of the huge scale of intensification.Yes the Minister is right: intensification was increasing under the elected councillors’ regime but there had been a failure by successive Governments to actually implement national direction through a national policy statement and national standards. Yes we now have that national direction under this Government but it provides an aspiration of wadeable rivers not swimmable rivers. So we continue to see water quality declining in the region.We had a lot of submitters talking about that—about high-country lakes that were previously rated clean and blue by the regional council in its monitoring and now most of them are rated just of moderate quality. You have had dairying expanding in the catchments of high-country lakes rather than being prohibited by Environment Canterbury. As one submitter Penelope Snowdon-Lait said: “Despite the small gains in pulling back pollution here and there overall we are on a treadmill without hope under the current model.” This bill is not about improved water management as the principal Act claimed to be when we have seen a continued decline and deterioration in water quality.The Minister said that all of the councils supported the commissioners replacing the elected councillors. This time on this bill the Christchurch City Council highlighted that there should not be a continuation of this half-pie model. Yes the Minister is holding up his hands. Christchurch—in case the Minister did not realise and I am sure he does—is the second-largest city in New Zealand. This bill halves the representation for elected councillors for Christchurch and it substantially reduces our overall representation by increasing the number of citizens who are represented by each councillor.In 2007 when we had elected councillors in Christchurch there were between 37000 and 39000 citizens for every councillor. Under this bill we will now have 90475 citizens represented by one councillor. The number of councillors representing the city of Christchurch is halved from eight to four and they are having to represent almost double the number of citizens. That is not democracy in action and that is why the Christchurch City Council made a very strong submission calling for a return of an elected council. We have not heard a justification from the Government either in the discussion document it put out—