Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill

I shall talk about the title of the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill. It is an oxymoron at the very least, because it is not “temporary”; commissioners are being put in place for the next 3½ years. That is a very, very long stretch of time. It is longer than the term of a Parliament. It is longer than the term of a local body in office. It is not temporary at all; the bill is totally misnamed in referring to temporary commissioners.

The second thing relates to the improved water management. I ask how it will deliver that promise when it bases itself on, and includes in schedule 1, the excellent visions and principles of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy. That strategy was patiently negotiated in a roundtable consensus by good people in Canterbury giving every commitment to a sustainable management outcome. That, in fact, is the primary principle enshrined in that schedule. It talks about water being a public resource, not one there for private gain without recourse to environmental outcomes. It enshrines as its first priority the environment. Only in second order does it come to uses such as irrigation and electricity. I note from that that schedule 2 refers to a cautious approach.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I remind the member that we are not debating the schedules; we have voted on those. We are on the title.

The title includes reference to the water management strategy. The document is embodied within the title.

The point I want to particularly make is that this bill is entitled the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioner and Improved Water Management) Bill. There is no legal body entitled Environment Canterbury. Environment Canterbury is actually the trading name of the Canterbury Regional Council. It is the name that the public knows it by, but it is not the name of the organisation. In fact, the name of the regional council is the Canterbury Regional Council. That is its legal status, that is its legal name, and I suggest that, at the very least, this bill has been shoddily drafted. I ask the Minister in the chair, the Hon Nathan Guy, to tell me how we can have a bill named after a trading name when, in fact, it is not the legal name of the entity involved. Environment Canterbury is not the entity involved; it is simply the name the public knows the Canterbury Regional Council by. It is not its legal name, so how can we, as this bill does, do away with the functions of elected councillors of Environment Canterbury, as it is named in the title of this bill, when, in fact, the name of the entity is the Canterbury Regional Council? The Minister needs to address this issue urgently because—

💬 Paul Quinn: Why?

I am raising the question. I am no lawyer but I think this is a very relevant question for the Minister to urgently address.

💬 Paul Quinn: He’s allowed to rename it.

He can rename it if he wants to. It will be another indication of the shoddy and rushed nature of this bill if the Minister is forced to do that, at the 11th hour and 59th minute under urgency, because he is not competent enough to see through a bill using the proper name and title. If that is the case, it is a further black mark for this Minister. It is absolutely a further black mark because it is reprehensible legislation, whatever its title is; it does away with the right of people in Canterbury to elect their regional councillors for the Canterbury Regional Council.

The bill is now named as the Environment Canterbury bill. It is inappropriately named, because that is the trading name of the organisation; it is not the legal name of the organisation. It is another example of the Government’s shoddy, rapid-fire approach, signalling its desire simply to get in place rapid new water management. It does not care what it does, it does not care what democratic principle it steps over; it will do anything it can to deliver fast new water so that it can have quick runs on the board in the run-up to the next election. The architect of that strategy is entering the Chamber. There will be quick runs, except when it comes to superannuation card changes, then there is quick reverse—but that is another issue. This bill is inappropriately titled. Environment Canterbury is not the organisation that should be in the title of this bill; it is the Canterbury Regional Council.

Here we have it. The big king-hit from the Labour Opposition is that the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill should actually be called the “Canterbury Regional Council (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill”. That is what the previous speaker, Brendon Burns, is arguing. I refer the member to the definition in clause 4, which has a very bold statement that will come as an enormous surprise to members of the Chamber. It states: “Environment Canterbury or ECan means the Canterbury Regional Council constituted by the Local Government (Canterbury Regional) Reorganisations Order 1989”. Is it not extraordinary that the one big objection that Labour has to this bill is its name?

I simply say that we are a common-sense Government. What do people in Canterbury refer to this agency as? They refer to it as Environment Canterbury.

💬 Brendon Burns: They refer to you as a lot of things.

I say to Mr Burns that we have other legislation, in respect of accident compensation. Do members know what Labour members called that? They called it the Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation, and Compensation Act, even though during Labour’s time in Government injury prevention and rehabilitation got worse. But we have a very common sense approach and we give bills names that our constituents know. Environment Canterbury is what this agency is known as, and it is perfectly proper and absolutely sensible that this bill refers to the name that the vast majority of the people of Canterbury would recognise as what we are dealing with in this bill.

I appreciate the Minister for the Environment’s attempt to give an explanation of the title of the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill. I know that this is not a massive issue, but it should not be underrated, because it has to do with normal drafting principles. Given that we have been strong on logic and illogicality today, I do think there is a problem, because the definition in the interpretation clause that the Minister has read out does not come into effect until the moment that the legislation is adopted. So we have a catch 22 in logic; we have a problem. We cannot disband Environment Canterbury until we have renamed it. We have to change the name first to Canterbury Regional Council—[Interruption] Let us just clear this up, then we can move on to more important things. In fact, there have been more than a few king-hits on other issues today, but let us just clear this one up. We actually need to pass two separate pieces of legislation. We have to have one piece in which the interpretation clause states that henceforth Canterbury Regional Council is to be called Environment Canterbury for the purposes of future legislation before we can adopt the legislation with that name in its title.

I apologise for my late call; I had not realised that the previous speaker, Dr Kennedy Graham, was going resume his seat so quickly. I want to make a preliminary comment on the title of the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill because when I referred earlier in the Committee stage to the regulatory impact statement—which is relevant to all aspects of this bill, including the title clause and commencement provisions—I said that statement had not been tabled in the House. I apologise to members for saying that, because, of course, it was tabled in the House as a result of a new procedure that has been in place only this year. I have discovered that although the Government made the very stupid decision to take regulatory impact statements out of bills, it has decided that when a bill is being debated under urgency, the regulatory impact statement will be tabled in the House. But the Government did not tell anyone about that; nobody was informed that this was a new process. So I apologise for saying the regulatory impact statement had not been tabled, but I do not apologise for my reference to the utter stupidity of the Government’s saying it is interested in regulatory reform, when a regulatory impact statement is now no longer published with the bill itself.

It is absolutely vital that people acknowledge—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The debate is on the title.

The regulatory impact statement is entirely relevant to both the title and the commencement date, which is—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Clause 1—the title.

We are only up to clause 1.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Clause 1 only.

Clause 1 is the title. What I have a problem with—and this is mentioned in the regulatory impact statement—is that the title “Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Act 2010” has a problem in it. It says “Temporary Commissioners”. That may be a misnomer or it may not be—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): My apologies. I said we are on clause 1; we are actually on clauses 1 and 2.

That is what I had thought.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): My apologies.

I was referring to the commencement date as well as to the title.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I will take that into account.

I am sorry. I was referring to the regulatory impact statement having an impact on both the title and the commencement of the bill, which is what I said earlier on. I withdraw my apologies for getting that wrong, but the point I want to make is that the title refers to “Temporary Commissioners”, so there is the whole question of what this legislation is intended to lead to. The use of the words “Temporary Commissioners” makes it sound as though the only purpose of the legislation is to fill a temporary period of time between the sacking of Environment Canterbury as we know it today and the appointment of these commissioners on a temporary basis in order to improve water management. That is the way I read the title of the legislation.

But when we read the regulatory impact analysis—and the Minister in the chair, the Hon Dr Nick Smith, still has not addressed this issue—we discover that, in fact, a bit of an experiment is going on in Canterbury. The analysis states: “However … because any national level decisions … have the potential to undermine the government’s New Start for Freshwater policy programme and the work of the Land and Water Forum, it is considered preferable for any intervention to have a narrow Canterbury-specific focus”—which it does in the title of this bill; it refers to Environment Canterbury—“in the first instance.” The language “in the first instance” suggests that this measure is not temporary in the sense that we would normally take into account. This is temporary in the sense that it is the forerunner of something else that is to come, and that is not a return to Environment Canterbury. I bet anything one likes that when we get all of the background documentation behind this set of decisions, we will find out that there is more to this than meets the eye.

Here is the big whammy as far as the regulator impact statement goes: this report states that “The results of any intervention”—that is, here in Canterbury—“could provide useful information for decision-makers on the outcomes of the New Start for Freshwater policy programme and potentially an opportunity to trial alternative policy settings in a confined context.” We are being trialled here; we are trialling alternative policy settings. We have called this bill the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill, but we do not know what that will mean in the long term, because it is quite clear that we are trialling alternative policy settings in the confined context of Canterbury. I ask what that will mean for the rest of the country. What will it mean for other regions? What will it mean in terms of all the other issues that were raised in the report of Wyatt Creech but that we have not had the opportunity to fully debate in this Chamber as we have gone through this part by part debate?

I think these are extremely serious issues that the Minister ought to address even in the context, at this late stage, of the debate on the title and the commencement date of this legislation.

I am grateful for the opportunity to add to the great speeches from this side of the Chamber, and to isolate yet another egregious example of the errors that riddle the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill. I draw members’ attention to the misnamed proposed bill in front of us. It unwisely uses the word “Improved”. I wonder whether it is a spelling mistake or whether we ought to be dealing with improvidence. The notion that the bill will ameliorate, minimise, or reduce the negative externalities surrounding the wholesale slaughter of that valuable water resource by the friends of the National Government shows that the word “Improved” cannot stand—

💬 Paul Quinn: Shane, I can’t understand you. One syllable words, mate.

I know that self-improvement is needed by that member over there, but for fear of inviting an unnecessary level of criticism by the Chair I will overlook his many failings in other places.

I will come back to why the Minister is so insistent on selling a series of broken dreams to the people who will suffer the burden and pay the costs for this misnamed legislation. When we think of an improvement, we are dwelling upon the way in which society can derive maximum benefit in terms of the water resource, through this legislation with its ill-fitting name. It cannot stand that the bill ought to be seen as an example of improvement, because there will be no improvement in the standards of local democracy. There will be no improvement in relation to the efficiency or the transparency of how a valuable resource will be used in that area, so the word “Improved” cannot be applied to that part of the agenda. It will not remind the people from that part of the country how valuable the multi-faceted nature of the rivers—

💬 Paul Quinn: Oh, what does that mean?

I cannot be held responsible for the absence of an education for the rowdiest member on the Government side of the Chamber; that lies with Anne Tolley. If she could apply her standards to Paul Quinn, a few of us might start to take her a bit more seriously.

However, I come back to the name of this legislation. I warn the Minister, and in the gentlest of terms I remind the backers of the current Government—who have driven Ministers to take this very dangerous step so that the backers can maximise the exploitation of water for their narrow, self-centred purposes—that improvement relates to better stewardship of water. Management is too narrow a term; we are talking about stewardship. I will come to management shortly, because there are outstanding issues on which the Committee is required to give due consideration. Unless the values associated with aesthetic, ecological, and cultural interests are considered, and not just the narrow, commercial, bank-driven pressures that so many of our folk in the farming sector are facing in that part of the country, the word “Improved” cannot be allowed to stand. Through this legislation it represents absolutely no positive impact in terms of those other types of interests and values, which cannot be monetised. In that sense, this legislation is grossly ill-named.

Let me come to commencement. The Minister needs to acknowledge that the commencement of this legislation, foul though the legislation is—we will hold the architects responsible next year; we will ensure that the voters who have been completely stripped of any opportunity to participate unless they are well-heeled supporters of the current Government will have participation opportunities—will not come to pass until the Minister uses his regulatory power. When the Minister starts to use that level of regulatory power, there will be only the flimsiest of opportunities for full democratic oversight to be visited upon the Minister’s decisions. So it is not correct for us to allow this commencement section to stand as it is, because there is no way of assuaging the deep anxieties there in Canterbury, in Te Wai Pounamu, as to when this ill-conceived and mean-spirited strike at the heart of our citizens’ rights in that part of the country will commence. There is no way whereby people can be informed, through either the mass media or this House, about when they will feel the fangs of the friends of the National Government sucking as much water as possible for their narrow, dangerous, and exclusive purposes.

This commencement section needs to isolate the time when the Minister imagines himself or herself enacting the necessary regulations to bring these odious provisions into law. I ask when the provisions will be operationalised, because the point at which they are operationalised is the time when there will be a call to step up to the plate and protect the resources of this area. We will not know when that regulatory power will be exercised. The families, communities, and all varieties of stakeholders in that part of the country will not be given, as they are in this Chamber, an opportunity through their proxies to debate the issue of commencement. It will happen in a very surreptitious and sneaky way in some concealed room near the offices of the current Minister, so the commencement provision for these new rules to be imposed on the community is a very sad example of what should have been a transparent and candid display in this Committee. It might be said that that is a very trivial matter, and it might be said that that is a minute part of the legislation, but people need the certainty to know when they will see their water handed over to the very narrow, ill-defined, shadowy group of supporters of the current Government that has forced it to overthrow democracy. As a standard of parliamentary democracy it is important that this piece of information is inserted into the legislation; although the addition of the Royal assent in the legislative route is very important, the most important thing is actually the time when the Minister, through the Order in Council, will enact the regulations.

Although it does not bring any great honour to us as parliamentarians, it falls upon us to point out yet another error in this legislation. That lies in the fact that once we focus on the legislation as being hopelessly misnamed, we also focus on the fact that the point at which it will become operational is now hidden from the public. This is all about hiding things. This is all about concealing an allocation debate, and concealing private property rights away from the democratic glare. Anyone using water ought to be required to face the full glare of a transparent resource management process. Given that improvement will not take place when water is at stake, the management will be furtive. The process will be undertaken by clandestine forces that fear democracy. These new commissioners—we do not entirely know who they are, other than knowing about Dame Margaret Bazley—will be asked to undertake something in this legislation that will not lead to broad environmental improvement.

Adding the notion of environment and improvement together, I say that we will not get the right result through this piece of legislation. This bill is designed to manage an improvement for a very narrow range of specific stakeholders. It concerns a very narrow range of interest, not the common interest. For those reasons, I tell members that both of these provisions should not stand. Kia ora tātou.

I wanted to take the opportunity for a further call on the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill, due to Rodney Hide now being the Minister in the chair. As he is the other Minister responsible for this area of the legislation I felt it was important that I ask him to take the opportunity to respond to whether he now thinks it is a good idea to have the regulatory impact statement separate from the bill itself. This regulatory impact statement is totally relevant to both the title and the commencement date—both of these issues are touched on in the regulatory impact statement—and this is a very, very clear example of why we need to have the regulatory impact statement included with the bill itself.

On this particular occasion, as I discovered subsequently, regulatory impact statements are required to be tabled by the Bills Office, essentially because we are in urgency and some MPs will not have time to go back to their offices and download them from the Treasury website before a bill is debated in the House. This is entirely unsatisfactory and would not have arisen as an issue if the Minister had not demanded to have the regulatory impact statements removed from the bills themselves. I have never heard the Minister explain why he took this decision to Cabinet. It is such a detrimental approach. I do not know whether the Minister has read the regulatory impact statement for this bill, but the following statements, “proposals to replace the elected Councillors for all of ECan’s functions”, which is what the title of the bill is about, and “suspend local body elections or remove the right of appeal on the NRRP or Water conservation orders, except on points of law” really concerned me, and I thought would have concerned him too. The departments themselves said: “These proposals appear to present a prima facie access to justice issue, and some departments were concerned that this may not be consistent with the Government’s statement on regulation: ‘better regulation, less regulation’ which requires a particularly strong case [to be] made for any regulatory proposals that are likely to override fundamental common law principles.” This bill overrides fundamental common law principles. The Minister is silent on that point, and the title, Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill, does not indicate that many people had concerns that there was an overriding of fundamental common law principles. I raise a point of order, Mr Chairman. The Minister whose name the bill is in is back in the Chamber, and I thought it was a requirement that he sit in the chair when he is in the Chamber.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): The Minister can decide who sits in the chair at the time, but I understand the Minister has come back to retrieve some papers. If he intends to stay, then he needs to be sitting in the chair.

I wanted the Minister in the chair to respond to this question of the impact of the kind of decision making that has led to this bill being called the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill, and, of course, its commencement date. The commencement date bothers me a lot. The bill states: “The Act comes into force on the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.” But we heard from the Minister yesterday that this bill is expected to be done and dusted by 1 May.

Do members know what the implementation date was in the regulatory impact statement? It was 1 April—April Fool’s Day. That was the original date on which the Government had planned to have this bill come into effect, not 1 May. So we are an entire month out from the original plan. In fact, this bill was supposed to have been passed on 15 March. What is the date today? It is 30 March. No, it is actually 31 March everywhere else in New Zealand, except here in Parliament, because of the irony, or—

💬 Colin King: Process.

The process of urgency somehow makes the parliamentary clock stop, and it has stopped on 30 March. But, according to the regulatory impact statement, 15 March was the date on which the Government was supposed to progress this legislation through Parliament. This is what bothers me. The regulatory impact statement should be an integral part of the debate on this legislation; it is absolutely fundamental. None of the stuff that we have discovered by reading the regulatory impact statement was mentioned in either of the Ministers’ speeches or any of the Government members’ speeches on this bill. We have not had a proper debate on the elements of the bill that actually matter.

The other point, perhaps, the Hon Rodney Hide might like to hear from the regulatory impact statement is this: “Options that rely on introducing legislation in a very short timeframe increase the risk of poor or misdirected intervention resulting in unintended consequences and the need for subsequent intervention to remedy these consequences.” That is exactly what is wrong with this process. It is not a robust process, and there will be a price to pay.

I am very happy to reply to the points made by the Hon Lianne Dalziel on the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill, particularly about the regulatory impact statement process. I am sorry, I had thought I had explained that to the member, but I will explain it for the Committee. I have huge respect for Lianne Dalziel and the regulatory impact work that she did as the previous Minister of Commerce. Indeed, the bill that I have later on under the urgency motion is virtually entirely her work, which I am carrying on.

Let me explain to members the separation of the regulatory impact statement process from the bill. This was not done lightly or for capricious reasons. It was because we have a harder hitting regulatory impact statement process as a result, which is able to be commented on, and actually gets what the departments think. The difficulty that I discovered when I became the Minister for Regulatory Reform was that because regulatory impact statements are attached to the bill, they were seen by the department as belonging to the Minister. The view was that the regulatory impact statement was the Minister’s, and the department would write a regulatory impact statement reflecting what the Minister wanted. I was very keen that we have a regulatory impact statement process that is a step removed away from the Minister, so that Ministers have to get up and explain their reasoning for their bill, and the regulatory impact statement is a technical analysis of the impacts of the bill.

I wanted the departments to sign off on the regulatory impact statements. They were quite resistant to doing that, and I discovered that it was because they felt a divided loyalty. On the one hand they were working for the Minister to promote what the Minister wanted, then on the other hand I wanted them to write an independent report about what they thought of the bill. The matter was resolved with the chief executives and the policy advisers by separating the two out so that the regulatory impact statement would belong to the department and the bill itself would belong to the Minister. Then the departments could write an independent impact statement, which the Ministers would have to get up to defend. I fully accept the Hon Lianne Dalziel’s point that the difficulty, then, is the availability to members of Parliament. I think we need to figure out a way around that. But I ask members to bear with me and consider the importance of having a harder hitting impact statement that Ministers have to get up to defend, and an impact statement that, clearly, Ministers cannot direct on. So that was the logic of it; I hope it makes sense.

We are debating the name of this bill, the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill. The Hon Shane Jones said that we are talking about water, and about how valuable water is. He went on to say that the people of Canterbury will not be aware of just how valuable this resource is. I will suggest some alternative names for this bill that might reinforce to the people of Canterbury and, indeed, reinforce to the people of New Zealand, just how valuable water is. We know that water is absolutely valuable for our agricultural industries. It is absolutely valuable for creating wealth for New Zealand. If we are to improve living conditions in New Zealand, we need to take every opportunity to allow our industry to grow and develop.

So let us look at alternative names for this bill. Rather than the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill, let us call it the “Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Valuable, Valuable Water Management) Bill.” Why not call it the “Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Windfall Profits from Water Management) Bill”? The reason I ask that is that water is a very integral part of electricity generation. We have water passing through the Waitaki River scheme through a number of dams generating renewable energy.

From 1 July this year the emissions trading scheme comes into force. That will create windfall profits for Meridian Energy and a number of other generators. It will create windfall profits, and the value of the water that flows through the Waitaki River scheme will be so much more. It will be very valuable. We saw evidence of that today when Meridian Energy announced that it was paying a $98.5 million dividend to the Government. That is right, just this very day Meridian Energy announced a $98.5 million dividend, substantially from the water that flows through the Waitaki River scheme. From 1 July both sides of this House are very happy for all New Zealanders to have to pay an extra 5 percent for their electricity.

💬 Brendon Burns: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am struggling to connect the relevance of the issues of the Waitaki and Meridian Energy’s power price rise or profit announcement to the short title of this bill.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I am going to uphold the point of order. The member should return to the subject material: clauses 1 and 2.

I would be very happy to do that, but I thought I was speaking on the subject of this bill, because this bill is called the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill. We heard earlier from Mr Shane Jones that it did not highlight to the people just how valuable this resource was. I was suggesting an alternative name for this bill: the “Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Windfall Profits from Water Management) Bill”. I say that simply because from 1 July companies such as Genesis will add a 5 percent increase to their power prices because they produce power from coal and gas. They will have to pay an emissions trading scheme tax. As a consequence of that, Meridian Energy will also get the benefit of that extra 5 percent increase without paying the tax, and it will have windfall profits. We saw evidence of that in the dividend announcement today. Those dividends will no doubt grow even greater as years go on.

So I suggest that this bill should be renamed the “Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Windfall Profits from Water Management) Bill”.

Quite often in debates in the Chamber when we are talking about a bill’s title, a number of innovative members get to their feet and give well-considered or poorly-considered alternative names. I commend the previous speaker, John Boscawen—although, frankly, I think he spoke entire nonsense. He said some alternative names very eloquently, but I did not agree with a single word of his speech.

💬 John Boscawen: I learnt a lot from Labour.

That is excellent, and, to be honest, Labour learns a lot from Mr Boscawen.

The title of a bill is meant to represent the purpose of the bill so that members of the public can read it and say: “Now I know what that is about.” I think they would have quite a lot of confusion if they read the title of the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill. The first problem with it is the one that was identified briefly in the contribution of my colleague Brendon Burns, the member of Parliament for Christchurch Central, which is where the head office of Environment Canterbury is based. He alerted the Chamber to the fact that Environment Canterbury, which is the name that is in the bill, is actually the trading name of the organisation, rather than the legal title.

I will diverse momentarily from the strict debate on the title, having been given that leadership from Mr Boscawen. The bill explains later on in Part 1, clause 4, “Interpretation”, that “Environment Canterbury or ECan means the Canterbury Regional Council …”. However, if we look strictly at the title, we see that it looks quite sloppy. I think that of all Ministers, Mr Hide is probably not very tolerant of sloppiness. I am sure not all Ministers are as lacking in tolerance of sloppiness as he may be. I think that had he been responsible for this legislation rather than the Hon Dr Nick Smith, he would have preferred to say that we are talking about a legal entity. We are talking about taking away the elected representatives of the legal entity that is responsible for the statutory management of air, natural resources, water quality, water management, passenger transport, and biodiversity in Canterbury. That is a huge range of statutory functions that the Canterbury Regional Council has, so why do we not use its proper name in the title?

It seems to be such a basic point that if we talk about gutting an organisation, taking away the democratic right to vote of every single citizen of Canterbury, and taking away our democratic right to vote for our regional councillors, the least the Minister could have done was to give that organisation the respect of referring to it in the title of this legislation by its proper legal name. It is not Environment Canterbury; it is the Canterbury Regional Council. We all call it “ECan”. The Minister could just have sloppily referred to it as “ECan.” That is the first message that I would like to give to the Chamber. I think it is disrespectful, I think it shows a sign of sloppiness in the preparation of the legislation, and I think it shows a lack of attention to detail and rigour on the part of the Minister, none of which are attributes that I think this Committee would want to commend.

The second point that I want to make refers to the words that are in brackets. I want to refer to just the first two words to start with, and those are “Temporary Commissioners”. It has been very clear during this debate that there is nothing temporary about the commissioners taking up the responsibility of an alternative to our elected representatives. My colleague Lianne Dalziel referred to the regulatory impact statement, which gave a strong indication that this is just the first step. It is the first step towards the total abolition of Environment Canterbury and the total abolition of our regional council. The council will be replaced by either the maintenance of commissioners performing those statutory roles, which would be a total disaster for us, or—and for the Minister who is in the chair, Rodney Hide, this is his dream come true—the abolition of the regional council and the amalgamation of its functions into the city councils and district councils in the area. I think that it is quite misrepresentative of the actual facts behind this debate to use the term “Temporary Commissioners”.

The legislation states that the commissioners will go until the job is finished. It is really hard to work out from the rest of the legislation what one would define as “the job”. They are temporary because there is a provision in the law that states that we should have elections by 2013, but there is nothing at all to stop the Minister coming into this House after those elections, in the same way he did yesterday, and saying: “I have had enough. I will get rid of all the elected councillors. I will appoint seven commissioners, one of whom I will give the House the courtesy of naming.” We know the name of only one of the seven temporary commissioners of the controlling body of our new organisation. We know the name of only one of them, yet this bill is about to pass into law. Then Nick Smith said that in 3½ years time he will be generous enough to let Cantabrians have a vote again. “Thanks for nothing.”, I say to Minister Smith. We want our vote this year. We want the right to vote for our regional authority this year. Implying that the commissioners are temporary positions gives us no confidence, because we do not have any faith or trust in the Minister that this is not the start of the demise of the regional council. We have no that the assurances that are alluded to in this legislation—that we will get a vote in 3 years’ time—will come true. Even if they do, there is no justification at all for this law being put into place.

My final point is in relation to the last part of the words in brackets in the title, which is “Improved Water Management”. Dr Smith and I had an interchange earlier in this debate about whether we had a water management strategy. To make it technically correct, we could go as far as to say that we have two because there is a plan that was notified in 2005 and the fact that it has not yet been endorsed under all the Resource Management Act procedures does not make any difference to the way that water is managed in Canterbury. If the Minister had bothered to get any advice from his officials on that particular point, rather than trying to find an excuse for his ideological push on this issue, then he would have known that. But we also have the particular strategy that is alluded to in the title, and that is the Canterbury Water Management Strategy.

I would be interested in hearing from the Minister at some stage of the debate about how this bill was designed, because it has quite an unusual layout and structure. In a very unusual move, schedule 1 of the two schedules in the bill is the vision and principle of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy: Strategic Framework in its entirety. Page 31 through to page 35 is concerned with just the Canterbury Water Management Strategy. The legislation outlines the principles of the Canterbury Water Management Strategy. The Minister said that it is so terrible that we do not have a water management strategy, he has to sack all the democratically elected regional councillors and appoint seven commissioners. The Minister then went on to say they would be paid $2,000 a day. I am really interested to know what Minister Hide thinks of the value of commissioners who are replacing elected regional councillors, who will be paid $2,000 a day, and who will only perform the statutory functions of the Canterbury Regional Council. There will be no connection with the city and no connection with the community. The commissioners will do the minimum amount of work that is possible and they will receive $2,000 a day, compared with the $50,000 a year that the elected councillors currently receive.

The worst part of all this is not only that the Minister said he was sacking our councillors but also that he was appointing commissioners to do the job and putting in place a whole lot of avoidance of natural scrutiny and public input. He is doing it all under urgency, with no select committee process, no scrutiny at select committee, and no right for the public to have their say. At the end, the Minister said that on top of all this, the ratepayers of Canterbury will pay the bill. We get to pay the $2,000 a day consultancy fee for Dame Margaret Bazley, et al, when we did not even ask for them. We asked for our elected representatives to be maintained in those positions. We said there were many options for an extension of the work. We could have a commissioner coming in and working alongside them if that was the Minister’s desire. This is expensive, undemocratic, and wrong.

I move, That the question be now put.

I move, That the report be adopted.