Mackey Moana: Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 07 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17622. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Contrary to what the previous speaker Phil Heatley just said I do not think that the Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill is a very complicated piece of legislation at all. I do not think that changing a time frame in a piece of legislation is particularly complicated. It might be complicated for Mr Heatley but in fact it is quite a simple change in that regard.This bill does amend section 107 of the Resource Management Act and it aims to limit the period for which a consent can be issued in what are called exceptional circumstances to a 5-year maximum from the current maximum of 35 years in the Act. Thirty-five years is simply the default position in the Resource Management Act so if you do not define another time frame then in the Act it is automatically 35 years. So 35 years was not chosen for any particular special reason; it is simply just the default provision of the Resource Management Act.As Phil Heatley said in his speech the way this particular section 107 of the Resource Management Act has been applied has been upheld by the Environment Court. I find it very interesting that Minister Heatley said we should therefore never ever pass legislation where a court has made a determination because I sincerely hope and my colleague Ruth Dyson would agree with me that the Government continues to uphold the board of inquiry decision on theRuataniwha Dam which would have turned the Tukituki River toxic. I sincerely hope that it is going to abide by MinisterHeatley’s comments—Hon Ruth Dyson: No no he’s not a Minister now.MOANA MACKEY: —oh sorry the former MinisterHeatley’s comments that we should just stand by these decisions and not overturn them and that we will not see any legislation from the National Government in this House that overturns the board of inquiry decision onRuataniwha in much the same way as it overturned the court decision on paid family caregivers. But consistency has never been one of MrHeatley’s strong points so I am prepared to let that slide.This bill came about—and I want to commend the member Catherine Delahunty not just for the bill but for the years and decades of work that she has actually put into the issue of the Tarawera River in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. Of course this bill if it passes will not impact on the consent that the mill on the Tarawera River has been given. It still has another 21 years to run of a 25-year consent. It applied for 35; it got 25. That was 4 years ago so there are still 21 years to run. This bill will not impact on that consent but it could potentially impact on future applications for consent.It should be acknowledged that the Tarawera River has gone basically to hell and back really in terms of what a river can cope with. In 1954 there was an Act of Parliament that was written that actually had the explicit purpose of enabling the mill to discharge waste into the river. It really is unthinkable that Parliament would pass that kind of legislation today but it did in the 1950s. Before I came into Parliament I was a team leader of a persistent organic pollutants laboratory. We tested organochlorines and we tested a lot of product from mills around the country to make sure that the kinds of chemicals that were being used in the past that persist in the environment for a long time—which are very expensive to remediate and which are damaging to human health and to the health of animals and to anyone who uses the river—are not being used again.In 1954 that Act of Parliament was passed and the river did basically as it was called become a “black drain”. In 2004 the Bay of Plenty Regional Council actually came up with a catchment plan for the river because of the concerns. It was not just themill actually in this river; there was the Kawerau waste water which was all going into the Tarawera River at the time. There is geothermal on the river as well as natural geothermal vents in the river that do affect water quality. There were still broken pipes leaching into the river from the Edgecumbe earthquake. There was runoff obviously—nutrient runoff and also forestry. So all these things were impacting on the health of this particular river.In 2004 a catchment plan was developed. The health of the Tarawera River is very different today from when it was considered a “black drain”. Even the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said that it is no longer really valid to call it the “black drain” any more because there has been significant improvement in the river although as with all these things there is still a way to go. In 2004 the catchment plan was put in place. In 2010 the mill applied for its consent under section 107 of the Resource Management Act.Members have talked about—and I just want to put it on the table that I was very sorry that I could not get to the submission hearings inWhakatāne as were members of the Labour Party. We were not able to have any members there because that was of course the week of our colleague ParekuraHoromia’s tangi so all of the Labour members were inŪawa. That was actually very unfortunate because I think we would have benefited enormously. We acknowledge that we were not able to be there to hear the submissions and so that has made it more difficult for us to make a determination on the bill or to hear all the points of view particularly from those people who live around that particular river.Sorry I should have said at the outset that we will be supporting this bill at the second reading. I have tabled Supplementary Order Paper 422 in my name for the Committee stage around the time frame and I will come to that when I discuss the time frame a little bit further on.This bill is not about whether or not there should be an emergency discharge provision in the Resource Management Act because this bill does not get rid of the emergency discharge provision. This bill is about the maximum allowable time frame for that provision to be accessed. As we have said before it takes it from a maximum of 35 years down to 5 years.As environment spokesperson I have to say I get a little bit nervous around a piece of legislation as important as the Resource Management Act and about making wholesale changes to it from Opposition particularly when we were not able to hear submissions because there may well be unintended consequences. We went to the member in charge of the bill Catherine Delahunty and said to her that we are a bit nervous that 35 years to 5 years might be too strict but we would be prepared to go to 15 years as a maximum right now because that allays our concerns that there might be unintended consequences. It gives us that wiggle room when there is uncertainty. So Supplementary Order Paper 422 in my name is to change the maximum time frame in the legislation from a maximum of 5 years to a maximum of 15 years. We believe that going from a maximum of 35 years to 15 years actually is a significant improvement.The member in charge of the bill does not agree and that is absolutely her right. I completely respect her decision and I thank her for engaging with us and negotiating with us in really good faith. We were not able to come to an agreement but this is an issue. The health of our waterways is an issue so we did not want to just vote against the bill because we did not come to some agreement with the member in charge of the bill. We want to be able to support it at second reading and say that in the Committee stage we will test the House on my Supplementary Order Paper 422 which extends that time frame out and allows more time for those resource consent conditions to be met.I also want to point out that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment who supports this bill did make the point in her submission: “Clearly there can be cases where it will take time and a great deal of expenditure to treat discharges to an acceptable level. But if it is not practicable to meet a particular standard at the end of 5 years there is nothing to prevent an application for a second consent.” That is absolutely correct and that is really I think kind of the crux of where this bill is at. It is possible that there will be times when a 5-year consent period is too strict. Sure a company could come back and apply for another 5-year consent. Our concern with that is that it may actually be cheaper for it to up sticks and leave and leave a polluted river for ratepayers and taxpayers to clean up than to potentially go through the process of trying to access the capital that it needs often from overseas to remedy the problem.That was one of our concerns—that the 5-year time frame might actually result in us being left with rivers to clean up ourselves if it is easier and cheaper for a company to say: “Well you know we can go and invest this money in New Zealand on these environmental matters and then within 5 years we may have to apply for another consent which we may not get. Part-way through we may have spent money that ends up being stranded.” So from our perspective we thought that if you went to 15 years you do not have that issue as you do with a 5-year consent period.Again I would say we were also nervous about just plucking a time frame out of the air without being able to from Government actually look at all the reasons why you might pick a certain time frame. So we have gone from 35 years to 5 years. I note that when the Green Party made its submission on the resource consent it called for 10 years as a maximum for that particular consent. I get a bit nervous about just plucking figures out of the air and saying that this is the magic number particularly when it comes to a piece of legislation as important as the Resource Management Act. But as I have said I congratulate Catherine Delahunty on bringing this bill to the House and for her work on the Tarawera River.If this bill is to pass tonight through its second reading as I said my Supplementary Order Paper 422 is on the Table. It takes the maximum consent period from 35 years to 15 years which I think is very reasonable. It allays a number of the concerns the National Party was outlaying but it also would give far more certainty for the environment and so I urge members to support that Supplementary Order Paper.