Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment)Amendment Bill

What we have here is a shonky, piecemeal approach to resource management law. The approach taken by the Minister, Marian Hobbs, is one that adds costs, uncertainty, and delays. I put it to this Parliament that Marian should be put on Helen Clark’s—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member will use the full name of the honourable Minister, or the name of her portfolio.

The Hon Marian Hobbs, the Minister for the Environment, should be put on Helen Clark’s ministerial death row alongside George Hawkins for the incompetent way in which she has managed resource management law. What we have here is quite dishonourable. The Minister came to the House with this bill and said it had nothing to do with Project Aqua. Then, the moment Meridian Energy pulled the plug on Project Aqua, the bill was completely rewritten. Now, I am not going to go so far as to say whether the Minister was telling a porky the first time or the second time, but she has not been consistent.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member will be seated. The member is a long-serving member of this House and has been for a number of years. He has held senior positions. He knows that he cannot use that word. The Speaker has ruled accordingly.

I am not sure whether the Minister for the Environment had it wrong the first time or the second time, but her positions have been so grossly inconsistent that she owes the people of North Otago and South Canterbury an explanation, because both things cannot be true.

I also have to say that it has been grossly unfair on Meridian Energy. It is a State-owned enterprise, but it is reasonable that people know what the rules are. What this Minister has been doing is continually changing the rules. One hundred million dollars has been put into Project Aqua, and because of this Minister’s shenanigans this has resulted in that money being lost to the public purse. She must bear the responsibility for that mess on her desk.

Then we come to the issue of the total lack of honour that this Government has shown to the community of the Mackenzie Basin. It was absolutely clear in the evidence heard by the select committee that commitments were given in good faith to the community at the time the upper Waitaki hydro development took place. It was absolutely clear that those commitments were given. This was an opportunity—the one honourable decent thing we could have done in this bill—to say to that small community: “Governments can be trusted.” Well, Labour Governments cannot. I am referring to the way in which Jim Sutton weasel-worded his way around his obligations to his constituents in respect of that 1969 Order in Council and the commitments that were made on an ongoing basis throughout that period.

I see in today’s newspaper that Rob Talbot has confirmed that he as a former local member remembers very well the commitments that were made to the community, and I want to know why it is that Labour administrations are not prepared to honour the word of previous Governments. Why are they not prepared to have put on to the statute book of New Zealand that when it comes to allocating the water from the Waitaki River, they should have to take into account commitments made by previous Ministers? What is it about Marian Hobbs and her colleagues that they want to disregard those sorts of commitments? I will tell members why. It is quite simply this: they are the shareholders of Meridian Energy. They have a complete conflict of interest. Marian Hobbs and her cronies are more interested in the balance sheet of Meridian Energy than they are in justice, or in any terms of honesty and integrity in dealings with the Mackenzie Country community. I say that her management of that issue will cost this Government the seat of Aoraki. [Interruption] “We will take it because of the honourable way in which we have taken that community.” says Mark Peck, who has walked away. He knows he is stuffed in Invercargill. He knows he is a goner. The seat of Aoraki will be like Invercargill and will come into National’s hands next year because of the Government’s mismanagement of this important issue.

Speaking to clause 1, I want first to go back to the issue that has been raised in this Chamber with regard to what is so special about the Waitaki. What is so special that in clause 1 it demands its own amendment bill? What is so special about its place in the Resource Management Act? The answer lies in the fact, for those members who were there in Oamaru and have spoken to people since then, that the farmers from the upper Mackenzie Country, from Mayor Stan Scorringe of the Mackenzie district to the people of Kurow and right down the river—all of those people—regard the Waitaki River as a very special place indeed. That is part of the reason why New Zealand First has given its support to the revised bill that is before the Committee at the present time. In the course of the earlier deliberations of the House and the select committee, firstly, we became aware of the tremendous knowledge of the Waitaki that Meridian Energy had garnered; secondly, alongside that, the work that was done by Environment Canterbury, belatedly perhaps, but it was there; and, thirdly, the work of the Ministry for the Environment.

We thought the opportunity should not be lost to address the issues that are paramount in regard to the Waitaki River and other rivers, and that is what really are, and what should be, the qualitative methods of water allocation for this day and into the future. In that regard, one needs just to speculate that if we go back to the Soil Conservation Act 1967, which talked about “promoting and controlling multiple uses of water”, and move to the 1991 Resource Management Act, which was concerned with “promoting the sustainable management of natural and physical resources”, one might pause, especially in view of the speeches already made in the House, and consider why Environment Canterbury or any other regional council may have delayed throughout the 1991-99 period.

Regional councils, along with district councils, were expecting more national guidance. Instead we know that we had one, the national coastal policy statement, and no other. Whilst we have heard an impassioned speech from the Hon Dr Nick Smith, his Government was in power throughout that time and there was only one national statement of guidance in regard to the coastal plan. That could be a very, very sound reason why Environment Canterbury has not until recent days picked up the ball and run with it, although it is doing so now in a very prominent manner. I say that because, as we have said in the House, we are now happy with its regional natural resources plan. It is a very, very extensive plan, and the Waitaki issue sits very well into that.

From the first we have preferred, and have stated throughout this whole debate, that the Canterbury Regional Council and the Otago Regional Council should be the groups that hear the matters relating to the Waitaki River. Therefore, we are very, very pleased indeed that we have come back to that situation today where their board is going to take up the matters that are before the Committee now.

That is particularly so because there are major matters of concern in regard to this river. The model that this board could develop for a modern water plan, not related to the 1980s or 1990s, could be one that looks ahead, particularly in view of the fact that it is acknowledged now that if the competing demands for the water in that river were to be satisfied, that would cause a quandary and a problem for years to come. To that degree we have been pleased to give support to this. We are pleased to support the work being done by the Canterbury Regional Council, and if members took the time to go into their website or talk to the council and see where it is in 2004, they could see why I have every confidence that it will come up with something that will be far faster under this process than one could envisage if it had waited until the end of the natural resources plan, which will probably be 2008-09, and then fitted the Waitaki catchment into that.

We are very pleased to support those people from Waitaki who have said to us over and over again: “Please do not let the matter go. Please make this a matter of concern, because we want a modern approach for this day and age to our water, our river, in which all users, but not least the instream values of the river, are acknowledged first and foremost.”

In addressing the title, which as we all know is a very narrow and confined debate, I must first rebut the comments made by Mr Jim Peters of the New Zealand First Party. Mr Peters is a very fine and diligent man who worked very hard on the Local Government and Environment Committee, but the reasons he just gave to the Committee for why New Zealand First is supporting this bill are absolute hogwash. He said a reason was that up and down the Waitaki River, people regard it as a very special place. People feel like that about every river in the country. People up the Clutha feel like that. People up the Aorere, the Motueka, the Rangitīkei, the Rangitata—

💬 Lindsay Tisch: Or the Waikato.

—or the Waikato feel like that. Rivers are wonderful things. I love rivers, and people who live up and down river valleys have huge respect for them. So to say that that is a reason why in the Waitaki they need special legislation is absolute hogwash.

The only other reason he gave was that it was because there is a tremendous depth of information on the Waitaki. That is true. We used to have the Ministry of Works doing all of the hydro design. It had 400 full-time people working in the water and soil division, gauging the rivers and measuring the flows. The New Zealand Electricity Department did a huge amount of work. All of that is true, but it is the same for the Waikato, which is also a controlled catchment, so just on that point the member’s argument is absolute hogwash and New Zealand First cannot explain away its position with those arguments.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

I am pleased that in debating the title we no longer have that somewhat farcical situation where we used to be strictly confined to the words in the title and we used to get all sorts of reinventions of what the bill should be called. With the new Standing Orders the title debate is much more broadly based than it used to be, and that helps the debate.

The ACT party is staunchly opposed to this bill. We say that it is unnecessary. We cannot understand why the Labour Government has brought it to this House. We know that it was all about Project Aqua, and now that that scheme has been put on the back-burner or abandoned, there is no need for this legislation, if, indeed, there ever was. I do not believe there ever was. The key thing is that this is an amendment to the Resource Management Act. The Resource Management Act has generic provisions that provided for regional councils to bring down water allocation plans. They were charged with that responsibility. The Resource Management Act was meant to be part of deregulation. It was meant to be part of empowering and enabling local communities. It was borne out of a rejection of the National Development Act and dictates from central government. But this bill that is before Parliament now, which this Labour Government is determined to ram through against better advice, is very akin to the former National Development Act and all the problems that that brought to our country.

There is no point for this bill whatsoever. The Minister in the chair, the Hon Marian Hobbs, has been totally unable to justify it to Parliament, but it seems that the Labour Government has just to churn on because it is in a particular mindset and feels it would lose too much face if it did the right thing and withdrew this bill even at this late stage.

The point has been made that there are any number of mechanisms for allocating water. Water allocation is important, and it will have a growing importance as the scarcity of that resource, which we have always taken for granted in this country, becomes more apparent. No one argues with that, but why the Waitaki catchment? Why not the Clutha River? Why not the Waikato River? The Waikato River is a managed catchment just like the Waitaki. Why not the other big rivers of the country? Or is that the Government’s intention? Will it systematically go round the country, one by one, and have the “Clutha River Empowering Water Allocation Bill” next month, and another one after that.

There is no justification for this. The ACT party will oppose it. We will vote against it, but I would like the Minister just to take one last call at this last stage and tell us how on earth it is required and why it is necessary, when all those other existing provisions are there in statute, and have been since 1967 with the Water and Soil Conservation Act that was subsumed into the Resource Management Act.

The Minister said that the Resource Management Act did not need changing and that, indeed, it was beautifully written and beautifully balanced. But then what happened? It got absolutely sidestepped for a favoured project. The Minister put all the water applications on hold because—what did she have up her sleeve? She had Project Aqua for the Waitaki River up her sleeve, and so the farmers waited. All their applications were put on hold, even those for farmers who had been taking water consistently for many years—and still they wait. They are waiting to this day, and by all accounts will wait at least another year or more.

In setting up that water allocation model, at the time when we worked through this bill at the select committee, it became quite clear that the model could set parameters around different categories of water take, which meant that some things could happen automatically. In actual fact, if the water allocation model were structured correctly, any water take for a hydro project could almost have been a permitted activity within that allocation model. That was one of the things that became clear during the select committee process but, as we know, there are a whole lot of exemptions to the Resource Management Act. As I have said before, there were to have been exemptions from section 32, but at least that was changed.

So what happened with the Resource Management Act under this particular bill? It was sidestepped. We had ministerial interference, and that Act was sidestepped to introduce another bill to create another Act—which sidestepped the Resource Management Act that was so beautifully written and so wonderfully balanced.

What did we have then? We had the continued interference of the Minister within this bill. It has only partially been removed. It is certainly still there with the establishment of the board and with the Minister setting up the chair and deputy chair and picking the members. As we all know, the Minister was advertising for applications for the board during the select committee process—at the very time we were hearing submissions to the original bill.

We all know, as well, that the original bill has 55 clauses, so with about 29 deleted we are now down to about 26 clauses. We have to ask ourselves why we did not just can the bill. Perhaps the Minister could support Environment Canterbury to do the allocation model and get that up and running pretty quickly, so that we could help to look after those farmers who are still waiting for their applications for a water take.

I agree with my colleagues wholeheartedly about the deplorable lack of support for the upper Waitaki catchment farmers. That has been an absolute disgrace. We had the opportunity through the Supplementary Order Paper from the Hon Dr Nick Smith, but that was ignored by none other than Jim Sutton—

💬 Brian Connell: Did Jim Sutton support it?

No, Jim Sutton did not support it. That is his area—the area he purports to represent—and he did not support protecting the interests of the upper Waitaki catchment farmers, and nor did United Future members. For all their grand phrases and time in the area spent talking to farmers, they did not support that Supplementary Order Paper, either. I believe that that is a disgrace.

💬 Hon Ken Shirley: They didn’t walk the talk.

No, they did not walk the talk. I believe that that is an absolute disgrace, but I take my hat off to my colleague for putting such a supreme effort into making sure we all made an effort to support and protect the interests of the upper Waitaki catchment farmers.

The Minister has interfered throughout this whole exercise. Her Supplementary Order Paper is really quite extraordinary. When we look at Part 4, we see that it has been totally gutted. It has come from 27 clauses down to 10 clauses, so we have to wonder. Under clause 50, the “Panel” now becomes the “local authority”.

This bill has always been about Project Aqua, and no amount of measly weasel words from this Minister in the chair, the Hon Marian Hobbs, will change that fact. This Government, through this Minister, was prepared to pervert the processes of the Resource Management Act for its own narrow purposes, and nothing will change that central fact, either. Rather than fix the Resource Management Act, the Government decided to go down this path.

In doing so, this Minister and the Government have had a terrible conflict of interest, because Project Aqua was the brainchild of Meridian Energy, a wholly owned company of this Government, which was going to make sure that Project Aqua got up come hell or high water, and to hell with the other consent holders down on the Waitaki. I tell members that that is something the National Party and the people of South Canterbury and North Otago will not forget or forgive.

I have to tell Jim Peters from New Zealand First—a member for whom I have a deep respect—that on this issue I think he has simply got it wrong. He stood up in this Committee and created a perception that he has the imprimatur in working for the best interests of the farmers of the Waitaki Valley—that he alone has been there and got their support for this issue. Well, I want to read to that member two lines of a letter that I received: “We are writing to express our serious concern about the Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill, as reported back from the select committee. It is ad hoc and a retrograde step.” The letter is signed by none other than Tom Lambie, president of Federated Farmers. So Mr Peters should not continue to stand up in this Committee and say that he, and he alone, is across this issue and representing the views of Waitaki farmers, because Federated Farmers are saying that that is not essentially the issue.

What was happening was that some farmers—with farms situated below what was to be the site of the last dam, where the economic use of the water had been expended—were going to be seduced or blackmailed by Meridian Energy, which was going to play godfather with irrigation. I cannot blame the people living below that dam site. But on working up the river, Mr Peters would have found, as I did, that many a person said: “No, Meridian cannot and shall not get all of this water. We want some of it, as well.”

That brings me to the next point, which is about the Order in Council of 1969. My colleague the Hon Nick Smith put forward an amendment, and it was a very sad day for the people of South Canterbury when the Minister of Agriculture, the member for Aoraki, got up and talked against that amendment, which was essentially saying: “Please honour the Order in Council—the undertaking that the Crown made back in 1969.”

Let us put that into some perspective. We are talking about a river that has a mean annual flow of about 340 cumecs. Those farmers were simply asking for an agreement to be honoured that would have allowed them to have 15 cumecs, which is about 1.7 percent of all the available water. Meridian Energy said it would play ball below the site of the last dam, but above that site it wanted even the snowflakes. That was its attitude, and to hell with everybody else.

So I tell the Minister in the chair, Marian Hobbs, Jim Sutton, and the people of South Canterbury to remember who put the amendment forward to say we would honour that agreement, and to remember who talked against it. That is something that goes to the heart of this issue.

It is a pleasure to follow on from my colleague, who does represent the farmers of that area and their views. Can I start by just running through a brief history of how we have got into this fiasco here tonight. I say, first of all, that the Resource Management Act was passed in 1991. It was described then around the world as being a fine piece of environmental legislation.

💬 Jill Pettis: Who was the Government then?

The member over there from Whanganui interjects. What she forgets, of course, is that it was the work of Geoffrey Palmer.

💬 Hon Ken Shirley: How many countries have copied it?

That is something I will have to wait for Mr Shirley to take a call on and answer, but it was described by world environmentalists as a fine piece of legislation. Then, of course, as time went on, it was discovered that perhaps it was not as pure as the driven snow and that amendments were needed. Owen McShane was employed by the then Government to carry out an extensive study of the Resource Management Act and the effects of it on both environmental management and the economy. He recommended 12 significant amendments to the Resource Management Act. That was sent to a select committee. The select committee came back. At that stage, unfortunately, there was an election and a change of Government. The then incoming Minister for the Environment, the Minister in the chair, the Hon Marian Hobbs, put a red pen through every single one of those recommendations.

Now, here we are tonight debating the Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill. Why was that introduced? Well, primarily because a State-owned energy producer, or power supply company, Meridian Energy, needed to do some expansion in its hydroelectricity development on the upper Waitaki scheme. So what happened then? The Labour Government, who had put the red pen through all Owen McShane’s recommendations and the recommendations of the previous National Government, introduced its own legislation that was very much like the Clyde Dam legislation—which the Labour members when in Opposition had entirely condemned up and down the country.

Then what happened? Project Aqua, the Meridian project, after $100 million worth of taxpayer funds, tipped over, could not go ahead, and would not proceed. So the Government had a look at its bill, which had by then been made redundant—because, make no mistake, that is entirely why this bill was introduced; there are no other reasons for it—and said: “Well, we don’t need this heavy-handed environmental amendment now, so we’ll put a red pen through it again.” That is where tonight’s debate becomes very interesting. My comments earlier during the debate on Part 4 were about Part 4. The Minister took a call afterwards—one of the only calls she has taken; and I invite her to take another call after I have finished my speech—and said I was wrong because the Government had a Supplementary Order Paper that guts Part 4. Well, Supplementary Order Paper 244 had not been voted on at that stage, so, clearly, the Minister was pre-empting what the Parliament was going to do in saying that the debate on Part 4 was out of order. I say to the Minister that while she has time she should have a look at Standing Order 176—and I know that the Chairperson will be very familiar with that Standing Order—and have a read up on it.

What happened then was an absolute abuse of the parliamentary process—if it had not been bad enough up to that stage. The Minister said I did not know what I was talking about and that Part 4 was not up for debate because there was a Supplementary Order Paper that effectively wiped out everything that was intended in Part 4, and every other part of the bill for that matter. All that this bill actually does is set up another Labour Party quango, which will have no teeth to achieve anything whatsoever, and it is only for the upper Waitaki River.

A substantial amendment was proposed to the Resource Management Act. The Minister kicked it out, and now we have this ad hoc legislation that will not achieve anything other than another Labour quango. It does not even honour a 1969 Order in Council that supported the farming folk of the upper Waitaki area in taking 1.7 percent of the water flow from that river for agricultural irrigation, and it gets worse.

I move, That the question be now put.

The legislation we are debating tonight will become known in the South Canterbury region not as the Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Act if and when it is finally passed, but as the “Act of Betrayal”. The people of that region had a legitimate expectation that the Government—whatever Government was in office—would ultimately honour the undertakings that were given, albeit 30-odd years ago. We stand in this Parliament with things like the Treaty of Waitangi and select committees that meet at all hours of the day and night, to honour promises supposedly given 160 years ago. Now we stand in this Chamber tonight debating whether—and this is the crux of the matter—the Government of the day, this Labour Government, should honour a guarantee or a promise. It was not a nod, nod, wink, wink type of promise; it was a promise given to the farming community in the region of South Canterbury. As a farmer myself who understands the value of water, I say there is no question that this legislation will be seen, as I said earlier, as an act of betrayal.

The Mackenzie Country farmers had their expectations raised to exalted levels by United Future. Mr Larry Baldock met with those people, and while I was not privy to that conversation, the clear inference was that he would ensure that an amendment went through. Dr Nick Smith had an amendment that even the Green Party accepted as being fair and reasonable. Even with some minor adjustments, Larry Baldock and the United Future party would not vote in favour of that amendment. Therefore, the cast iron opportunity to provide for water for irrigation in that region will now pass from the people there.

If anybody actually believes that the ministerially appointed committee will honour the agreement, or that promise, given all those years ago, he or she is dreaming. The Government will appoint its own people, just as Jim Sutton did with regard to his reference group on access. He knew exactly what the outcome would be when he appointed those people. The same thing will apply when the Minister appoints her people to ensure that her organisation—one would almost call it her subsidiary; it is, of course, Meridian Energy—gets whatever it wants in terms of a water right, and the private people in that region will have to apply for rights.

As I mentioned earlier, water is something that is of massive concern to all of us on the east of the Main Divide of the South Island. One of the reasons why security of water supply is so vital to those people is simply that without the water, the land in most cases is quite valueless. This Government is to turn the whole structure on its head in that region, by saying that it will reallocate water rights. It will rethink the whole process whereby the farms that Mr Brian Connell and so on come from have always had the security of a water right—until the Government came along, and said that it will turn that on its head.

Maybe I misheard this, but I am quite certain that I heard the member for that region, Mr Jim Sutton, talk about the people who came on the first four ships gaining the rights to water. He does not like the people who came on the first four ships, so he is to redistribute those rights to the people. I suggest that Minister Jim Sutton get out of it and bail out of the ship now, because he is history. The people of South Canterbury will not tolerate those water rights being redistributed to some johnny-come-lately who fancies being given that opportunity.

I move, That the question be now put.