Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. Ngā mihi ki te whānau whānui o te Mātaatua waka. Ngā mihi ki te whānau me te hapū o Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Rangitihi me Tūwharetoa.

[Greetings to the extended family of the Mātaatua canoe and to the families of the subtribes Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Rangitihi, and Tūwharetoa.]

To all the whānau, but especially to the Marr whānau and the Fox whānau, one day this Te Tiriti breach and injustice will end and your river will be healed from the lake to the ocean. I also mihi to Tūranga-nui-a-Kiwa hapū and whānau katoa, who have also been affected by this Resource Management Act section that I am seeking to change. I would like to acknowledge the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Prue Kapua, the Sawmill Workers Against Poisons, the FIRST Union, Greenpeace, Fish and Game, and the more than 1,000 people who sent in lobbying submissions in the last few weeks to MPs, who have the opportunity to right this wrong and to take a step towards something better than up to 35-year rights to pollute rivers. To my partner, Gordon Jackman, who led the Greenpeace campaign on the Tarawera River from the 1980s and 1990s and who took on the pulp and paper mills and the most technically complex chemistry of their pollutants, because it was necessary and he had the heart and the capacity to do the hardest things.

This bill, which I may farewell in this reading, is not just about one river; it is about a section of the Resource Management Act that needs to change. This section allows “exceptional circumstances” to have no legal time limit and thus has allowed the courts to give a series of up to 35-year consents to a small group of companies, who have used it to abuse waterways or to propose to abuse them because they cannot meet the normal standards of the Resource Management Act. My bill was drafted to limit section 107(2)(a) to 5 years of exceptional circumstances pollution, without stripping the current consent holders of their rights. How fair and reasonable is it that the arguments from the other parties at the Local Government and Environment Committee table and a small number of corporates were such that these decisions can be left to the courts, and that we cannot afford to upset unnamed future businesses and investors that might in future need to pollute rivers for more than 5 years? The argument that Contact Energy raised about deep-water aquifers was of a different order. I met with Contact Energy to negotiate a Supplementary Order Paper to address its aquifer needs.

Another example of the problem of section 107(2)(a) was its use in the many years of fighting to get basic sewage treatment in the Gisborne city. Exceptional circumstances were the convenient legal barrier used to allow a city of 40,000 people to have their waste pumped raw into the beach by the town. It took many years of campaigning and Treaty settlement money, which could have been better spent, to finally force the district council to invest in a treatment plant and to commit—theoretically, at least—to getting that sewage out of the bay. This is all because of section 107(2)(a) and the phrase “exceptional circumstances”, meaning “We don’t want to pay.” The community has not said that, but the Gisborne District Council tried to say it for them. Fifteen years later, after a long struggle, we won in court, but that is how section 107 has been used, and that is the price we paid in having to use it.

Interestingly, the union, with members from the Kawerau pulp and paper mill, supported my bill. It knows that jobs will not be lost and that the mills need to modernise. They can be modern biorefineries without dumping resin acids and pulp mill chemicals into a river. They can invest in new technologies and products. But, sadly, thanks to this Parliament, they do not have to and they will not. It is cheaper to pollute if you have no knowledge of, or concern for, the real price to be paid. I came to Parliament to try to do this very thing, because I am haunted by the testimonies I heard over many years on the marae and in the hearings in the Bay of Plenty. I honour those elders who have gone now who told us their terrible stories of a beautiful water source turning black overnight in 1955; of a Government that passed an Act to enable pollution from a large business whose profits were made by externalising the costs into a river that became the “black drain”. The contamination of water, tuna, and fish in the Bay of Plenty also became the contamination of the people whose whakapapa binds them to that river and whose health and well-being has been severely compromised for many years.

One action we shared with the river hapū was to take several busloads of people to the source of the river at Lake Tarawera. Into that shining, translucent water the three iwi laid mauri stones. My partner, Gordon, laid one for Greenpeace. We then travelled down that pristine waterway to the mills and witnessed the dreadful and, in part, invisible transformation of that river into an industrial drain. The pollution darkens the water and used to fill it with toxic foam. Now it is dark but less polluted, except for the unknown effects of mixing pulp and paper mill bleach chemicals with the resin acids from the pulped pine trees. No one has properly assessed what the synergistic effects of these chemicals and resin acids are, let alone when they are mixed with salt water. It is unknown but it is real. How do the river people prove it is an issue, with no money for experts and no modern precautionary-based research on the effects? They cannot, hence my bill.

The contamination of this river symbolises a historical willingness to compromise water quality, to the contamination of the people who might have gathered kai or made good use of the river. There has been no costing done of what opportunities were lost by the river people when the river became the “black drain” from 1955 to this day. The pulp mills have consents until at least the mid-2030s. All I am asking for in this bill is that they cannot rely on another 25 years, and that a line is drawn after their consents expire. My profound disappointment is not in the Government, which no one expects to stand up for the environment, but in the other parties, who might have shown some vision and courage and listened to the submitters, from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment through to the Matatā whānau.

Tonight was the opportunity we had to undo the harm done in 1955 by this Parliament, drafted into the Resource Management Act to protect Tasman Pulp and Paper’s profits. It was a chance to create certainty for industry and hope for the river people—for all river people—that gross pollution will not be tolerated without a fair time limit. People who have lost in court so many times because of an imbalance in resources look to Parliament to create a fair framework, and we have failed them.

But I would like to mihi to Mana and the Māori Party for their unwavering support, and I thank all those who voted for the first reading. I hope others will vote for my bill, but let us not pretend that Labour’s suggestion of amending the bill to 15 years would have been a worthy compromise or a fair solution; 5 years of pollution is enough. To those who have the courage of their convictions and tried to help this bill, I pay tribute. It is not finished until the rivers run clean to the sea. The Green Party has wholeheartedly supported this bill, as have the many citizens who have responded to our call to action. The concept of exceptional circumstances as a legal justification to pollute has been greeted with disgust and amazement, but not in these halls of insulated privilege and frequently spineless compromise. People who will vote this bill down as written tonight or any other night—

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The debate is now interrupted. The time has come for the House to rise.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Thursday)