O'Rourke Denis: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
O'Rourke Denis: Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 18 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5312. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First opposes the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Amendment Bill. First of all looking at the title it is not very temporary as far as these commissioners are concerned and I do not think it is really very much about improved water management either. The bill does two things. Firstly it extends the commissioners’ special water-management powers for a further 4 years and secondly it delays the date for an elected Environment Canterbury to 2016 therefore making the period without an elected council over 6 years. 
I want to say straight away that I supported the original move in 2010 to remove the elected council and to replace it with commissioners. I did so with very great sadness but there were longstanding political and management problems. I cannot do any better to sum it up than the statement in the supporting documentation which says: “ECan was clearly unable to perform and exercise its duties and powers most critically those under the Resource Management Act 1991... There were longstanding problems due to entrenched political divisions competing and adversarial approaches within ECan institutional and technical deficits and ingrained organisational culture issues.” I for one can testify to the fundamental truth of that. It is no help to Canterbury or to anyone else to deny—and Canterbury people knew at the time—that that was the truth of the situation. 
But we do need to move on. I was at that time and still am the chair of the Central Plains Water Trust so I was well aware of the water issues that took such an important position in the thinking of Cantabrians in 2010 and actually still do. But in 2010 there was great concern about some of the irrational behaviour of Environment Canterbury on irrigation issues and I personally believe they were mainly management deficits as stated in the regulatory impact statement. The council itself however was very hostile indeed to all irrigation development and that was driven by wound-up public and political perceptions about dairying rather than by a robust policy and planning process. 
The Central Plains Water Trust was and is about sustainable farming not just about dairying and that is the way that New Zealand agriculture must move in the future. The development of a sustainable farming protocol with contractual arrangements to back it up was what that particular project was about and still is. It established a trust to ensure a community scheme so that the water rights could never be alienated and so that it would always be a community scheme. Environment Canterbury I found and we on the trust found virtually impossible to deal with—firstly because of unreasonable political hostility. You simply could not talk to the people. Then there was the them-and-us mentality. We were treated as enemies when we wanted to collaborate and that was not good enough I think. This also extended to council management which sought to change plans for the Waimakariri River even while the Central Plains Water Trust Resource Management Act process was being finalised. Talk about pulling the rug out from under one’s feet. 
The best hope however was and is for a consensus under the Canterbury Water Management Strategy and that especially concerned and still concerns storage. Environment Canterbury wasted time on impossibly impractical proposals like in-ground storage and there was a need for a balanced approach by Environment Canterbury not a dictatorial one. The commissioners I think have done that and they need to be commended for the approach that they have taken which I think is a balanced one which achieves environmental protection while facilitating sustainable use of water for irrigation. 
 However although I did support the original decision to insert the commissioners that never meant that it was right to delay the elected council’s reinstatement beyond 2013. The decision to add another 3 years to elect a new regional council is firstly unnecessary. Everything that the commissioners needed to do has already been sufficiently done. Secondly it is unhelpful. The strategy of which I spoke now needs community buy-in and active support. It is unlikely I think that appointed commissioners can do that and I think that is best done by local people especially elected people. Thirdly it is of course as others have said an affront to democracy. In Canterbury along with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority the Christchurch Central Development Unit and the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team and so on there is altogether too much central government and not enough community governance. Community representation may be inconvenient for a National Government but it should understand that there is now a real sense of loss and grievance by Canterbury people concerning their lack of elected representation and lack of a say in how the city and the province should be governed. 
The perception now is of Government manipulation for its own ends. There is justified concern about commissioners with powers about the Rakaia River water conservation order. Although that order probably does need amendment in a way that balances the protection of the natural character of the river with sustainable use of water it does need public input as well because the decision has to be made about where that balance should be. The commissioners are perceived as tools of central government not of the community and the Government in particular is perceived as having commercial imperatives through shareholding in TrustPower with its Rakaia River and Lake Coleridge interests in power generation. 
So what should the Government now do? I would have to disagree with the statement in the regulatory impact statement that says: “there is a risk ECan will revert to its irreconcilable and long-standing political divisions that emerge from the representational split of urban and rural populations and Christchurch interests and those of the wider region. Political divisions could return and prevent ECan from acting as an effective decision-making body”. Well if that was true we would never get another Environment Canterbury elected in Canterbury and that is really just not good enough. So the Government should right now go ahead and carry out comprehensive consultation with the people of Canterbury about the future of regional governance there. 
There are many options that should be put before them. Should it be fully elected or part elected and part appointed? Should Environment Canterbury be reinstated as it once was? Or should we establish one or more unitary councils? We do not know what Cantabrians think about that. The National Government should find that out before it starts making decisions about this. That consultation should be carried out now and the new council whatever it may be should be elected normally in 2013. Those are the ways that the wishes of the people of Canterbury and the people of Christchurch City can be carried out. At the same time there needs to be a review of the Christchurch City Council itself. People in Christchurch City believe that to be necessary too and the same process should be applied to them. 
What form of local government there should be both at regional and city council levels in Canterbury is not really a choice for a particular party that happens to have power in a particular Parliament. It is for the people themselves to decide. We have got to stop using this issue as a political football. If we want Environment Canterbury as it will be in the future to have the confidence of the local people then there is only one option and that is to carry out that consultation and then to do the election as planned in 2013. That is what the Government promised. That is now what it should do—