Resource Management (Regional Responsibility for Certain Agricultural Matters) Amendment Bill

Well, thank you, Madam Speaker, for this wonderful opportunity to speak to this bill in my name. This bill has the principal purpose to provide for better regulations for on-farm practices—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I apologise to the member. The member should have some words, which he must say.

I apologise, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Resource Management (Regional Responsibility for Certain Agricultural Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. And I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. For the last 18 months, the rural sector has been treated as a metaphorical soft target, a tirade of forced change. All the while, as the Deputy Prime Minister says, the primary sector has continued to perform strongly. We have continually been targeted by regulatory overreach. Well, of course we have performed strongly: we’re Kiwi farmers, arguably the best in the world. Yet all too often we are faced with runaway regulation that often fails the logic or practical sniff test. It was never going to be hard to imagine the likes of Groundswell NZ getting much support from the rural sector and the urban sector alike.

What the rural sector has been asked to deal with never ends: the Labour and Greens’ continued song sheet that perpetuates a feeling that the Government has an animus to the rural sector, all the while praising us, whilst at the very same time impugning us. They’re constantly finding ways to further entrench central government over regional practices and people’s lives, all too often affecting the wellbeing of communities and economic on-farm models, ultimately affecting farmer morale and rural folks’ mental wellbeing.

Farmers are totally fed up, frustrated, and are being left with a sense of entrenched confusion of how to proceed and how to operate. Well, the ACT Party has come here to fix it and offer better solutions than the centrist mantra out of the Labour and Green caucuses. My member’s bill has a principal purpose to provide for better regulations for on-farm practices that will ultimately benefit all New Zealanders and regional environments. The bill targets the on-farm regulations that are most regionally specific and therefore are better regulated at a regional level, not out of the bureaucratic machinery of Wellington.

I have spoken to DairyNZ, New Zealand Federated Farmers, and Beef + Lamb New Zealand. They support this bill in principle. They said they agree that a one-size-fits-all regulatory approach across the country is not always best for the desired outcome for farmers and the wellbeing of the environment. In discussions, DairyNZ noted regulations need to be well designed and fit for purpose to support farmers and rural communities to succeed environmentally and economically. This means that regulations need to be practical, to be based on science and evidence, and to allow for the complex nature of individual farms and their regional environmental variability.

We all know that politicians like to play their political hand at central planning, but in this instance, as farmers and rural communities, we simply know, when it comes to regulating localised activity from the Beehive, as often as not, it simply doesn’t work. The centrist methodology being asserted on farmers has often left communities with untenable direction or the needed tools on how to operate. OVERSEER and its failure was a classic example of the Government, sadly, getting it wrong: not enough science, not enough localised understanding. Much of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and how it affects localised communities and activities proves this.

This bill speaks specifically to excluding and managing the effects of winter grazing, the application of synthetic fertilisers, sedimentation control, and the exclusion of animals and livestock from various water bodies, and, importantly, from central government planning, and gives that oversight back to respective councils who have the capacity to set localised standards. The rationale is very simple. Localised activity and, more importantly, the effects on the environment are best understood by those that undertake it and the local councils that regulate it. After all, what works in Gore doesn’t necessarily work in Northland and/or Auckland. Comparatively, they couldn’t be any more different from each other, both in terms of their environmental impacts, but also the types of regional activity and needed environmental protection and mitigations. They are very regionally specific. This bill will prove better for farmers, for local communities, and for their overall environment. This, given that specific regulations will be better understood and set at a local level.

Just for a bit of banter, if I could, at the moment, my dear friend and fellow farmer, the Minister for Rural Communities, said that “We, the Government, are always prepared to make changes where there are faults and adjust when things are not practical.” He said this when talking about the national statement on fresh water. Well, on that basis, I welcome the support of the Minister, regardless of how the Labour Party votes.

💬 Hon Member: Don’t hold your breath.

Ha, ha! As an active farmer myself, and knowing there are, essentially, no practical operating farmers in the Labour caucus beyond the aforementioned, I’m intimately versed in how my own farming practices affect my own local environment, as does my council. Equally, this could be said of Auckland, Wellington when they’re setting standards for local rivers or beaches and the understandings of the effects on their environment. One could offer several examples. My own farm management is seasonally indicative, acknowledging the 1,300 to 1,400 millimetres of rainfall I get per annum. This is taking into consideration the month-by-month variations; the varying soil types, some of which are alluvial and other that are podzol clays; also, the limestone substructure—this is all on my own property, let alone 10 kilometres down the road, and in my local council they understand this. As farmers, we change our practices with seasonal, constant changes, giving consideration to the nuances of on farm and on-farm activities. All the decisions we make are premised on a myriad of localised variations.

If I may one offer one further example: in Whangārei, which is one hour of driving away from where I live, there is 300 millilitres greater average rainfall there compared to my home, with very different soil structures, substructures, topography, and types of soil erosion. Their environmental footprint and needed mitigations are different and the considerations different because of it. Regionally, Northland crop sowing dates to methods or environmental mitigations are principally better understood by those in respective regions. It’s a no-brainer. We are significantly different from Southland, comparative to them, as they are to us. Clearly, a centralised slate of national standards totally fails to accommodate the plethora of variations, the type of environmental protection methodologies and on-farm practices we should use.

To further encapsulate this narrative, I could offer other examples about nitrogen and the effects on the environment. One that the Green members often frequently reference, DIN, or dissolved inorganic nitrogen, levels, and the respective leaching, is highly respective of the volumes used, the farming conditions they’re used in, permeable soil aggregate to non-permeable soil aggregate and the differences between the two, what is needed in terms of mitigation therein, and also how to preserve the environment. Putting a one-size-fits-all set of regulations on such use fails to acknowledge retention levels. That’s why the ACT Party and thousands of regional members, farmers, and rural communities that support us see the logic behind this bill that we deliver: environmental protection and mitigation giving consideration to councils and their respective catchments, most of which are already employing environmental planning and implementing better regulatory standards in their regions. They are regionally specific, in most instances having considered better environmental outcomes.

This bill is a better step to a more practical, workable law that puts effect to better farming practices and gives consideration to local environmental impacts. It allows communities and councils and local industry the ability to work collaboratively, ensuring better environmental outcomes and, equally, better fiscal outcomes for communities. Farmers want tenable solutions that offer better community outcomes across the board, a better understanding of where their future in farming is going, and practices that go with tenable outcomes forward: a robust set of local environmental standards that are set locally. The premise of this bill has the principled support, as I previously iterated, of the bodies such as DairyNZ, Federated Farmers, Beef + Lamb New Zealand, and, equally, most regional councils. Therefore, I and the ACT Party commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I begin by saying that I think Mark Cameron and all the members of this place are good people, but I fundamentally disagree with what is proposed in this legislation, and I’m going to try in the 10 minutes that I have available to explain how we’ve got to the position that we’ve got to in New Zealand and why I think what’s being proposed is not the solution.

When you go back to the early 1990s, just about all of New Zealand’s waterways were clean. We had the occasional municipal discharge into our waterways and we had the occasional factory discharge—what we call point-source discharges—that were causing local pollution. But by far the great length of our rivers, and we’re blessed with some of the most beautiful rivers, in New Zealand—they were clean. We live in a country that’s a steep country, that is a young country, and that has a lot of rain. Therefore, we have great, flushing flows that bring gravels down from our Alps and we have these sparkling rivers that are cleaned every minute of every day by the rejuvenating flows that come from the mountains, and yet, somehow, in the three decades since the early 1990s, we’ve gone from that position to a point where the majority of the places that we monitor in New Zealand for swimming are not safe to put your head under in summer because the risk of microbial infection puts you beyond safe swimming levels, according to the World Health Organization, and also our turbidity levels have grown to be high. What’s—

💬 Hon Member: Nor are beaches in Auckland.

And there are problems with beaches in Auckland—that’s a fair point. They need to be cleaned up, too. In fairness to the council, they’ve brought through close to $3 billion of expenditure to largely remedy that problem south of the bridge through the Central Interceptor project and other works that are going on in Auckland as we speak, and they should be congratulated for doing their part, even though they’ve got further to go.

In respect of what’s happened since, in 1993, the Uruguay round of the GATT concluded. That capped agricultural countries in their domestic settings. That had an effect on how much subsidy could be given by those countries to their agricultural producers, and what that, effectively, did was cap the amount of subsidised dairy products that was being sold into Asia, because there were rules that prohibited increases in those subsidies, and indeed they wound those subsidies back. In the decades that followed, New Zealand was the lower-cost producer of increased dairy output.

There were also increased improvements in farming technology. Much better electrical pumps were invented and became affordable; spray irrigation, or K-Line, was invented; irrigation trucks—fertiliser trucks, rather that airplanes, that were more expensive—became economic, and this rapid changing in technology meant that there was a rapid economic push towards New Zealand taking the economic opportunity of filling those growing demands for protein that came out of Asia, and, sadly, despite the fact that the Resource Management Act (RMA) said that we should be managing the environmental effects of the increased intensity of farming that flowed from those economic drivers, we dropped the ball as a country.

Not only have we got to the point that most swimming spots aren’t safe to swim in in summer; our estuaries—and this is a recent picture of the Ōreti estuary. It’s just out of Invercargill. It’s called the New River Estuary. That picture, if you can see it, has about a foot deep of recent sediments. I’ve got other photos here that show that the cockles are all dead. The cockles have gone. These are recent sediments.

Now, we’ve always had a lot of sediment in New Zealand since deforestation following colonisation, and that’s been a problem. But we have reached tipping points in New Zealand because of this recent intensification of land use, and we’ve all seen photos of intensive winter grazing carried out inappropriately.

Mr Cameron said the point that things are different in different parts of the country, and that’s quite so. The problems in the Kaipara are different. But central government and local government are, between themselves, with some help from landowners, spending over the next 10 years $200 million to stop the build-up of sediments in the Kaipara, which is the nursery of snapper for the West Coast of the North Island. It’s a juvenile white pointer - raising area, and there are recent mudbanks in the Kaipara that are 2 metres deep—2-metre deep recent mudbanks—and I’ve seen them. It’s terribly sad. Every tide, there’s another film of additional sediment. Some of it’s coming from inappropriate management of fill coming from subdivisions into the north of Auckland. Some of it’s coming from agricultural sectors, and that needs to be improved too.

So we set as an objective, basically, that we think that rivers should be clean enough to swim in. That’s a proxy for environmental health—you know, pop down to your local river, put your head under in summer without the risk of getting crook—and most New Zealanders believe that that’s an appropriate ambition, and they know that in order to get there, we’ve actually got to change the status quo, because the status quo is that you can’t.

Even the latest data that came out a year or two ago from the data sets that are collected nationally showed that just about twice as many—a lot more rivers—are still degrading compared with improving, according to the macroinvertebrate index. These are little critters that live under rocks, and if the water’s too polluted from sediment or from excessive nutrient, they die. We’ve got rivers in New Zealand that have lost more than 90 percent of their macroinvertebrates. They’re just about functionally dead in respect of those ecosystems, and that affects not just the macroinvertebrates but the eels—the tuna—which are the fish that feed on them, and, again, it’s another indicator of problems.

So what we’ve done to remedy this is we’ve actually said that, look, it’s no individual’s fault. Responsibility for getting it this bad is shared between regional councils, who should have done better to stop it getting this bad—they’ve had full delegated authority to do this ever since the RMA was passed. But it’s not all their fault, because it’s very hard and some of it is technical, and they needed help from central government that they didn’t get enough of. Farmers are partly responsible—you know, the “polluter pays” principle should apply here. These rivers don’t pollute themselves, and it is the increased intensity of farming that is actually the largest cause of these problems.

So how do you wind it back and how do you work with the local communities to do it? Well, you actually do need a combination of local regulation, national guidance for that regulation, farmer input, and investment by farmers but also investment by central government, and we’re investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the clean-up from taxpayers’ money, and those taxpayers weren’t the people who caused the mess. So we’re coming to the party and we’re planting out riparian strips, we’re subsidising catchment management groups, and we’re employing facilitators so that groups of farmers can come together and share best practice and put a bit of peer pressure on the ones that are the laggards. We’re doing all of that, but you do need some national direction.

You need to have some standards about what are appropriate microbial levels. E. coli is the thing that’s monitored as a proxy for other pathogens that cause illness, so you need limits on E.coli.

You need limits as to sediment and turbidity. How fast you get to those limits is for locals to decide, and under the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, it is regional councils that decide on those time frames. We set some objectives to get back to healthy river states that are driven by science, but we leave it to communities as to how they get back there over a generation. There are some interim steps in the national environment standard that kick in straight away, but that’s to stop things getting worse.

We know that if you have an increase in intensive winter grazing, you increase pressure—you increase the degradation of your waterways—and so we’ve said that it’s no longer a permitted activity to do that. If you want to increase substantially your intensive winter grazing area, you’ve got to get a resource consent to do it. That’s the purpose of the RMA, and if environmentally damaging practices like that are not controlled by the RMA, they’re not controlled, as evidenced by the degradation that we’ve already suffered in our waterways.

So I reject the idea that we don’t need national direction. I do think that this is a very radical bill, given the experience that we have had in New Zealand that I have explained, because it would, effectively, say that, notwithstanding the problems that are three decades old that haven’t fixed themselves and that haven’t been properly managed by regional councils or by farmers themselves, we should just stand back and say, “It’s somebody else’s problem.”

We don’t have that viewpoint in the Labour Party. We think that this is appropriate use of these tools. We are working with local communities and with local councils. We’ve got overwhelming support within society for that. I think this is an illustration of the sort of radicalism that the National Party would be driven to if they were in a coalition with the ACT Party, because I suspect that they’re going to vote for this bill as well, flawed though it is.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Congratulations, Mark Cameron, on having this member’s bill drawn—and, yes, the National Party is supporting Mr Cameron. Look, I would like to commend Minister Parker for setting out some of the issues that we are currently facing, and I don’t think Mr Cameron or anyone in the National Party denies that there are problems to be solved. But Minister Parker said himself that over the last 30 years, things haven’t got as good as they could have been, despite the Resource Management Act. So, therefore, we have a Resource Management Act, and I know there are—[Bell rung]—new ideas coming forward, and I—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, just sorting out the clock. Sorry for interrupting.

Oh, OK. We know that we’re looking for improvements to that legislation. Farmers are actually number eight wire people. They know they’ve got a lot of stuff to solve. We are not actually hiding behind that, and I count myself in that because I am a farmer as well, just like Mr Cameron is. Farmers want to get out of bed in the morning and they want to put one Red Band in front of the other and they want to do something practical. They are very good at doing the practical things that will help solve their problem. The issue that they’ve had lately is that there are so many regulations and so much red tape coming at them, and so many things to sort out, that they are spending all of their time stressing about where to go, what to do first, and they actually need to be able to work by region, by community, and help—I understand that there’s got to be some underpinning things that go on.

But I use an example here: there was a press release (PR) that went out last week, where the Hon Damien O’Connor has put out a PR saying the “Government investment in farmer-led catchment groups sweeps past [the] 150 mark”. Now, this is a real example about how one catchment is different to the other catchment—Taranaki is different to what it is in Northland, to what it is in Southland. People want to get out of bed in the morning and they want to get out, put their gumboots on, and go and do something to fix this.

Now, just recently I was in the Wairarapa with a catchment group, and what is really difficult about some of those things when you get centralisation is that you’ve got a group here that wants to plant trees, they want to improve waterways, they want to do the right thing, and they’ve got six different entities that they’ve now had to form because of bureaucracy and red tape. They have to report back to the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment quarterly, and they don’t mind the accountability but they are reporting back on two different quarterly dates, right? So that is what happens here when we end up having too much centralisation—sometimes it’s the administration. They’ve had to employ somebody’s sister who could help them deal with the administration.

Look, there are ways of doing this. Look at the Pomahaka Catchment Group—and there’s a whole lot of other catchment groups I could name around the country that have been doing some good work. I used the example just recently about the winter grazing issue. I want to commend Bernadette Hunt for her stance in explaining exactly how winter grazing works. I commend you, Minister, for listening and taking in some more submissions around how this might work.

What I would urge the Minister and the Labour Party to do is to, perhaps, support this bill through the first reading, come into the Primary Production Committee, come and listen to some of the submissions where people are offering ways of fixing problems, not in a one-size-fits-all way but in a regional way where people can actually get out of bed and look at each—what actually happens is they get out of bed in the morning, they can see their neighbours, they look each other in the eye, and they are just willing to work together. They are not form-fillers. They are not people that are really good at the administrative type of work that they are being asked to do.

I wouldn’t think it would be too much to ask for an industry that has seen this country through all of our COVID lockdowns—thankfully, trade prices have kept up; thankfully, Fonterra and Silver Fern Farms and others have found ways through the shipping constraints to still get our trade out of the country. We do actually appreciate what farmers do when they get out of bed every day to help keep this country going. I think it would be really good if the Minister and others would let this go through to select committee and see if there are some things that we could solve regionally. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. I’m happy to take a call on this, and can I firstly congratulate the member Mark Cameron on having the bill drawn from the ballot—quite a feat to achieve as a new member, I know. I have to say that the member who’s just resumed her seat, Barbara Kuriger, I’ve worked closely with in select committee, and I appreciate her efforts for sure, but, on this, it may come as no surprise that we will have a divergent view than the one that she has expressed. I want to just note that my parliamentary colleague Rachel Brooking, who otherwise would be making comments on this particular bill—and I’ll try and perhaps channel some of her thinking in this particular space, shall we say.

But what I would say is that the Resource Management Act (RMA) has always actually provided for a nationally formed set of rules that, effectively, will provide some environmental standard. This bill as it currently stands doesn’t try to change any of the fundamentals of the RMA. Members opposite, I know, have, alongside me and others, just completed the first phase of a number of days’ worth of submissions, and that’s because the Environment Committee is currently considering an exposure draft which is part of a longer-term form of RMA reform. I think it’s really important that that is considered in the context of what is currently before this Parliament, because it has actually been a really insightful and interesting opportunity to hear from folk right around New Zealand, whether they be from the regions or whether from metro areas or elsewhere. They are certainly feeling free to share with the committee what their views are around that, but what I would say is that this bill as it currently is presented would actually permit a variation in standards across the region, where we’re hearing a desire for regional collaboration in that space. I think there is more thinking to be done in that particular space as well.

In terms of the role of regional councils, the assumption is, I guess, that there is a need for resource consent unless particular activities are largely permitted, either in a plan or, indeed, actually in an environmental standard. Nothing in this bill fundamentally will change that. Actually, instead, what the bill will seek to do is limit what a national environmental standard (NES) actually would do in terms of where it would apply. In fact, it goes further, in that it would, essentially, repeal part of a current NES. So if the rationale actually is to have decision making at a regional level—and I agree that, you know, regionalism and the importance of regional councils and others working together—this bill doesn’t actually provide for that, because there is, as my colleague the Hon David Parker has already indicated, actually a role for national direction.

It’s actually well accepted that there is that role in the Randerson report, which is forming part of this process around RMA reform as well. In this particular case, actually, the NES in question is important to actually go on and address the degradation of waterways, because we all want to have waterways where we can swim, where we can gather, where we can collect kai and have a wonderful time as well. So it will come as no surprise that that’s actually something that the Labour Party has held quite firm to over many years and is on a path to do something about. It is obviously part of the essential freshwater programme as well, and that’s an important piece of work, but so also is that sense of national direction. Whether it is, as Minister Parker has said, in the national policy statement space, in the NES space, or potentially at a localised level through regulations, they are very important.

What I would say is that this bill will allow for an exception to what, I guess, the NES could apply to. It would go on, potentially, to revoke regulations, particularly stock exclusion regulations of 2020, and parts of the NES that would relate to intensive winter grazing but also the application of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser to what would be pastoral land. So in conclusion, I think it is important to acknowledge that farming activity is important, but it can also, at times, have adverse consequences, and therefore appropriate mechanisms, instruments and regulations, need to be put in place, but that they are considered to be fair, that they are considered to be consistent, and that they, at the end of the day, meet a need that is obviously there. So on that basis, I will not be supporting this bill.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. The Green Party is opposing the Resource Management (Regional Responsibility for Certain Agricultural Matters) Amendment Bill. I’m really puzzled by the contributions I’ve heard from both the ACT member and the National Party, because there is a widespread recognition that the failure to develop national policy and national standards under the Resource Management Act has been a problem. It has resulted in huge costs as regional councils and district councils around the motu seek to develop their own rules that are often challenged; that goes to the Environment Court. So there has been a huge amount of cost and unnecessary bureaucratic enterprise in each council attempting to develop its own rules and regulations and having those contested.

Then what that has led to, with the major intensification in agriculture and the incredible subdivision development on the edge of towns with earthworks and sediment loss from those, is quite significant degradation of our rivers and lakes. And it has been this Government in the last term under Minister Parker which led the work to put in place some certainty, some national regulations to prevent stock getting into waterways, to ensure that there are standards through the National Environmental Standards for Freshwater for sediment, for nitrogen, and the use of synthetic fertiliser.

What this bill will do will put it back to regional councils, to each work on their own, and not to have that efficiency of working nationally to have some consistent and clear standards. This is a very dangerous bill because it really highlights ACT’s attitude to the future of farming—[Interruption]—and the future of the environment, and you can hear the members getting quite excited. ACT goes round the country seeking to present a fresh face, but it does not care about a healthy environment. It does not recognise that a healthy economy and social wellbeing are based on healthy nature. It wants to scrap critical regulation that it has taken 30 years to get through a board of inquiry process, through public consultation, through working closely with the primary sector councils, primary industry organisations like Beef + Lamb, Federated Farmers—and instead it’s tossing that all out.

ACT doesn’t like regulation; we know that. But this is making it very clear that it’s quite happy to have dirty rivers and continued degradation rather than working on a path to clean up those rivers and ensure that our farmers who are working to replant their riparian margins, to protect gullies, to recognise what they can do in catchment groups to restore waterways and are getting on with it, as Minister Parker noted, with a substantial investment of funds from this Government, from this generation, to repair the damage that was done in the past. And as Tangi Utikere noted, on the Environment Committee we have been listening to dozens of submitters who want te taiao properly cared for, who recognise that Papatūānuku is essential to our wellbeing and that we need a new approach.

What does this bill do? It goes backwards. It’s giving the nod to continued degradation and to continued pollution because it will put it back on the regional councils and undermine all of this work that has been done in the national policy statement and the national environmental standards for freshwater to put in place some bottom lines while allowing councils to work with their communities.

So the funding support that this Government is providing to ensure that our rivers are swimmable is work that has been called for by the public for a long time. Yet National and ACT are going backwards. They are showing their contempt for nature, for water quality, for clean rivers, and just putting the load back on regional councils again. So it would be a very dangerous combination of National and ACT in the 2023 election if they got elected that would seek to roll back the regulation that we’ve finally got in place in order to protect water quality.

So this bill is a bad bill because it is a bill for dirty rivers, for increased sediment pollution, increased nitrogen pollution, increased degradation of our aquifers, and it’s not about protecting farming’s long-term future, because farming’s healthy future relies on a healthy environment. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to take a call today. I’d just like to acknowledge Mark Cameron for having his bill pulled from the ballot, and, as a first-term MP, it must feel very good. That’s probably all the compliments I can say in relation to this bill, but congratulations to you.

We have just spent 14 days, or approximately 68 hours, looking at the Natural and Built Environments Act. The Randerson report, which was written last year, has, in fact, outlined a whole series of needs and improvements that we can make. Essentially, what we’re looking at here is a system that recognises and acknowledges that our environment needs to be taken care of.

Now, I looked at this legislation, and I have to be quite honest: I was quite shocked when I read the wording of the section. So I’m just going to read it out for those who are listening at home, in regards to what the bill actually says, because, actually, I don’t believe that New Zealanders want what is in this bill. I think that we, as citizens of this country, all hold very dear the right to swim in our rivers and our lakes, and I think that all of us think that that’s really important. So, as a consequence, I’d just like to read out what this bill actually says, or is asking for. So it’s section 43 of the Resource Management Act that it’s seeking to amend, and it says, “(2A) Despite subsections (1) and (2), regulations made under this section must not prescribe”—must not prescribe—“technical standards, methods, or requirements in respect of the following matters: (a) excluding stock”—so you must not exclude stock—“from water bodies, estuaries, coastal lakes, and lagoons, and the margins of those water bodies, estuaries, coastal lakes, and lagoons”. So to all of that riparian planting that all of our farmers have been doing—all of that good work—this says, “No, don’t do it.” The next thing is “(b) managing the environmental effects of intensive winter grazing”. So it talks about these things and that they need to be regionalised, and that’s the effects of winter grazing. The next is “(c) the application of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser to pastoral land” and “(d) sediment control measures.” And it also just talks about the intensive winter grazing, and the definition of that means “grazing livestock on an annual forage crop during winter.”

I guess the reality is that, fundamentally, we believe in protecting the environment, and I want to really acknowledge our Minister for the Environment, the Hon David Parker, who today spoke very passionately and very clearly about—and, I think, articulated really well—the history of the Resource Management Act and the failure; that we, as a country, have managed basically to degrade our waterways and create an horrific response. I remember, as many of us here, as a child swimming in rivers, drinking from those rivers, and not getting sick. However, that has changed very much now, and it is really unfortunate that we have this wholesale degradation of our environment. I think it is so important that we continue to support the environment, and I think it is incredibly important that we continue to go on this path, with many, many experts and hundreds and hundreds of submitters talking to us in regards to the legislation and saying that, actually, we as a collective need to manage the environment in a better way. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to join with others from across the Chamber who have congratulated Mark Cameron on the bill that he has had drawn from the ballot. That is an achievement, even if it is a lottery achievement. It’s something worth debating. The whole purpose of members’ bills is that an opportunity should be given for members who are not part of the Government executive to bring to this Chamber, bring to the Parliament, their thoughts, ideas, and policy initiatives to change, make better, enhance, and improve the legislative environment within which we all live. That’s what Mark Cameron is attempting to do with this piece of legislation.

I reject utterly the Government’s point of view, backed and supported by their loyal sidekicks the Greens, that they should instantly reject whatever is in this bill simply on the basis that they don’t like it. Now, one of the fundamental principles of our parliamentary democracy is that we should be able to debate and discuss and engage with each other about ideas and principles and philosophies. None, I think, are more important than those that are impacting on our environment, on our beautiful natural environment, because as New Zealanders we are all connected with it and it means so much to us all. I’m one that thinks that issues relating to the environment shouldn’t be relegated to one side or the other of the political spectrum. I think that’s far too important. So I reject utterly the Government’s point of view that they know best and that they are not prepared to engage or listen or interact with anyone who may have the temerity to have an even marginally different, slightly different, view to their own.

One of the things that I found interesting from the speech from the Minister and the speech from the Green member who has now resumed her seat is that one would think that that they have held these positions, particularly around water and water quality, for ever. Actually, no. Labour and the Greens have been late starters, latecomers, to the debate about improving the water quality of New Zealand. I remember, during the nine long years of the Helen Clark Government, not one thing was done—not one initiative, no legislation, no regulation, no improvement at all. Yet the Minister stands in the House today and says these are problems that have emerged over generations, over decades. He was in that Government. He was in that Labour Government of Helen Clark, and he had an opportunity then to do something and he did nothing—he did nothing. Listening to him in the House today, you would think that it had been a lifelong, cherished ambition for him to improve the water quality of New Zealand’s fresh waterways. Sadly, that’s not been the case of history or the record of this Parliament.

It was actually my colleague Dr Nick Smith who introduced the first initiatives, opposed by the Labour Opposition at that stage, opposed by the Greens, who used every possible stunt that they could achieve to block and stop what he was trying to do. They thought that was all wrong, and then suddenly there’s a change of Government and oh, yes, a road to Damascus, a recovery and an aberration, and suddenly it’s all their idea. Well, that’s not what history tells us, because we know on this side of the House that the tradition of Labour parties, not just in New Zealand but around the world—it’s a socialist tradition, actually—is that there are only three policy initiatives that they have when it comes to any matter, whether it’s the environment, fresh water, or anything. Those three policy initiatives are either to ban it, make it compulsory, or tax it—often, a combination of all three.

We think on this side of the House that this is a bill that is not perfect. It has got some issues, it has got some faults. We, for instance, on this side of the House, we do support national direction. We do think that’s important, but we also understand and accept that water quality issues deserve attention catchment by catchment. We accept that. So we think on this side of the House that rather than just simply arrogantly rejecting out of hand this piece of legislation, it should go to a select committee. It should be the subject of submissions presented from people around the countryside, and it should be part of our democracy and it should be something that the Government should at least have the decency to listen to an alternative point of view and hear another thing on. If there’s one thing that this Government has to do, they really must begin to learn that when it comes to things agriculture, when it comes to things farming, they’ve got to learn to deal with farmers rather than dealing to them.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to stand and contribute to this bill, the Resource Management (Regional Responsibility for Certain Agricultural Matters) Amendment Bill, which is getting people a little bit heated tonight, I’ve got to say.

Look, first of all, congratulations to Mark Cameron, from ACT, for bringing this bill before the House—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: That must be the first talking point!

💬 David Seymour: It’s bullet point No. 1!

TĀMATI COFFEY: I’ll take a moment of gratitude—that’s for you—and I won’t be distracted by catty little calls from across the Chamber. Thank you for that, Mark.

Can I just, first of all, respond to something that the Opposition person who just sat down before me, Scott Simpson, said. He said Labour were late—late—to improving our waterways, and, you see, some people might buy that because they don’t quite understand the investment that previous Labour Governments have gone and made, and I would say that that member is probably being quite selective about the history of being able to improve our waterways. And I want to take the opportunity to just talk about the commitment that was made under the last Labour Government to clean up the waterways around Rotorua. An announcement was made by the Rt Hon Helen Clark back in 2008 for a restoration plan around the lakes—$144 million was made to improve the water quality of four priority lakes: Lake Rotorua, Lake Rotoiti, Lake Ōkareka, and Lake Rotoehu.

So just that actually completely disproves what the person who sat down just before me, Scott Simpson, said, which was that this side of the House know nothing about the environment, we’re late to the party, we’ve been asleep at the wheel. I absolutely negate that, because actually we’ve been very careful about the environment for a very long time, and long have Labour also had the confidence of Māori too, and I would say that Māori, for a very long time, have wanted to have kaitiakitanga over our waterways and over our water bodies, and, unfortunately, this bill doesn’t quite cut the mustard when it comes to making sure that, especially from my point of view, the rights of Māori are looked after in this as well.

We have had many submissions to the Environment Committee talking about reform of the resource management system. There are a lot of people that want to be involved in the planning and the organisation—at a local level, granted; at a local level—of our environment. And, to those people who put in their submissions over the 15 days that we were sitting, I thank them for it. But what they said was, especially our Māori communities, “We want a say. We want a local say. We’re OK with setting national direction. We’re OK with also regional plans as well.” And I get what this is trying to achieve, but, as far as I’m concerned, this doesn’t quite get there. There is a lot of reform going on. I heard the previous member when he said that actually we should be still sending it to select committee, but I would say to that that there is a large body of work going on across all of our select committees across Parliament. In fact, we’ve been criticised by the Opposition for having too much on, and here he goes wanting to lump some more work on us. But, actually, this is a piece of work that I again thank the member for bringing forward but it’s not going to get support from me, from this side of the House.

What I look forward to is actually a continuation of the really, really good work that we are doing in the Environment Committee, specifically around looking after our environment. Te mana o te Wai, Te Oranga o te Taiao—these are all concepts that we are grappling with in our committee, and this is a lightly once over, this bill here. What I want is a good and robust debate, a good robust piece of legislation, where we can actually talk about all of those issues that have been brought forward by the various submissions, in terms of looking forward to the next 25, 30 years of New Zealand’s planning system. This doesn’t do it for me. The reform that we’re currently embarking on—that we will see to fruition—will be a large part of that, and the legislation that we eventually put through will be informed by all of those people who have come forward and raised their concerns, not just about one little slice of the pie but actually about how the whole of the environment works together, how Māori can participate in co-governance structures—as we should, as defined by Te Tiriti; as the Crown should be a good Crown Treaty partner—and that’s what I’m looking forward to. Unfortunately, I won’t be supporting this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. And, again, congratulations to Mark Cameron—so early in your political career to get a member’s bill drawn out, well done. This is an easy bill for us to support to select committee stage, and what a wonderful opportunity it would be for the other side of the House to hear from some farmers and to try and work in partnership with those farmers. And on a cold, wet, miserable day in Wellington, I’d like to acknowledge our farmers and people right across the land that are working on the land. We’ve had a cold, wet spring in Southland. I want to acknowledge all our farmers and farm workers that have been out calving and lambing and worrying about how much feed they have, and I acknowledge how stressful that is for them—pity we couldn’t take some of the hot air from this Chamber down there sometimes!

New Zealand farmers are among the most efficient and capable farmers in the world. There are 350,000 people in this country employed in the primary sector. We feed 40 million people across the world, and 80 percent of New Zealand’s total export revenue comes from our primary sector. This is a big deal and, when the Government starts messing with it, they better think of the consequences.

If you took a world view, you would say the more food that New Zealand grows the better for the world. Our farmers are more efficient and create less carbon emissions than anywhere else in the world. But this Government has developed an astonishingly negative narrative around farming. We heard it from one of the members from across the House before; about a wholesale degradation of the environment in New Zealand. Do you honestly think, when people fly into New Zealand—and, granted, they haven’t been able to for a long time—they look out the plane window and say, “Oh my goodness, what a wholesale degradation of that environment in New Zealand.”? What a load of rubbish. Do you honestly think that having campaigned all through an election campaign on dirty dairying, farmers are going to want to rush out in partnership with you when you try and bring in regulations? Do you think that when you put up the most ridiculous slope maps or winter crop sowing dates that just don’t make sense, farmers are going to want to work in collaboration? The fundamentals of the change process is you take people with you.

Now, we heard that somehow everything had been going wrong until this Government and the previous Government came in and started to save the world, or save New Zealand, anyway. Well, I hate to break it to you, but people like Bryce McKenzie and Laurie Paterson in Groundswell were looking after the Pomahaka catchment group before you even knew there was such a river.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m going to interrupt the member and just—less use of the word “you” in the wrong—

Quite right, Mr Speaker, I take that absolutely on board.

Farmers were fencing waterways long before this Government thought that it was a great idea to do, and that’s because, first and foremost, farmers are conservationists. They know they want the land to be kept in a good condition. They know they want their stock looked after well. The reason why a group like Groundswell has come about is because this Government has been putting in place an avalanche of regulations that the farming community cannot deal with all at once and that doesn’t even make sense for them to deal with. So it would make much more sense to allow this bill to go to the select committee and work collaboratively with the rural sector to come up with solutions that will genuinely make a difference, because farmers know those solutions much, much better than people in Wellington do. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. First of all, like most people in this House, I congratulate the member for his bill being drawn. Again, it is the luck of the draw, but as a first-term MP, I acknowledge that, and that’s probably where I’m going to stop my acknowledgments.

Now, I’m not going to stand here as a previous tax lawyer and proclaim to be a farming expert. I’m not going to proclaim to be a grazing expert or an expert on the Resource Management Act (RMA). That’s not my style, as some would yell out across from the hall. But the thing is, though, probably an area which I have some sort of grasp of is children. My children hail from Northland, not far from where the member is domiciled and resident, I understand, for about 30 years. It is the winterless north; I absolutely agree with that claim. But one of my children’s favourite activities to do is in an area, a valley called Kāretu Valley. It’s about 15 minutes away from Kawakawa; it is right next to Waikare. From the Russell Forest there, the water flows into Kāretu River. It is one of my children’s absolute favourite pastimes to be able to go up in the summer and to be able to be where their family is from, their tangata whenua, and to be able to swim in that river. The problem has been, though, that children across the country can’t do that in their local rivers. We look at Kaitoke Regional Park, which is not far from here in Wellington. You’ve got to be able to check every time before you go for a swim there what the levels are, and that’s why there’s been a lot of investment in monitoring of our local waterways.

As a Government, we’re already working to ensure New Zealand’s resource management system is fit for the future and performing properly for our natural and urban environments. This is not just about farming; this is about all our environment right across the country. As part of that, in our first term, we undertook a review by Justice Randerson, and that report recommended that the RMA be replaced and be replaced by two particular bills. I just want to quote something from that report, because it’s incredibly important and because that review took through a number of submissions. So that was quite early on, that was in our first term. In that report it quoted: “New Zealand’s natural environment is under significant pressure: the way we use land and water has proved to be unsustainable for the natural environment. The quality of our freshwater, coastal and marine environments is in serious decline, and biodiversity is under significant threat.”

Now, the Minister earlier today talked about how since the 1990s, waterways—

💬 Mark Cameron: When are you going to address the bill?

—were much more cleaner. But now we’ve got to a position of 30 years later and the majority of the places we monitor are no longer swimmable. And to address the member’s question: have I actually read the bill? Yes, I have read the bill, and my problem with the bill as it sits on the Table is that it’s piecemeal. The fundamental issues that you are trying to resolve with it are not done with this bill, which is why this Government committed to a review of the RMA. That’s why this side of the House committed to an exposure draft that has sought thousands of submissions. I acknowledge the comments by my colleague Tangi Utikere, the member for Palmerston North, who said they’ve had hundreds of submissions at the Environment Committee for it. So, again, I go back to the bill being piecemeal. If you fundamentally want to be able to give regional councils greater authority to be able to make those decisions around the standards—

💬 Mark Cameron: You centrally plan and take it away from them. That’s right.

Well, first of all, have you read the RMA? Because, actually, the RMA allows all that currently. Section 44 means that the Minister, in order to recommend to the Governor-General to make these national environmental standards, has to actually have an evaluation report around those standards. What does that include? That includes advice—advice from regional councils, advice from local councils, advice from the community, but it also includes advice from iwi. So I have read the RMA. I have read that particular section, which your proposed bill tries to change. And again, it’s piecemeal. It makes it totally inconsistent with the current framework that we have, which is why this side of the House has gone for a much more significant, fundamental change of changing the RMA, and that’s why we’ve gone through the exposure draft process.

So I want to go back to my initial comments: I want my children to be able to go back up to Northland to swim. We might even come by your farm if you can show us what exactly you are talking about around this riparian planting, etc., but as a Government, we’re already working to ensure that New Zealand’s resource management system is fit for the future. This bill is piecemeal. It’s inconsistent, and that’s why we’re making bigger reforms.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I just want to thank the various members for their concerns and various contributions. I noted that the Minister, the Hon David Parker, that spoke directly after me didn’t seem to actually address the bill at all and actually just spoke about the history of the quality of New Zealand water, the fresh water that we’re all concerned about and totally support.

This bill speaks quite specifically to regional nuances that have totally been overlooked by the centrist sort of Government overlay. I think, more sadly, I note that the Green member has this perpetual animus to the rural sector, and basically said farmers are the reason that environments across New Zealand have degraded to the level they have. Well, I totally repudiate that statement.

Firstly, the ACT Party, along with rural communities and aforementioned stakeholders, request that the Government give this bill the consideration and opportunity for scrutiny at select committee that the process deserves. All across regional New Zealand it has been widely acknowledged that the often well-intentioned central government planning model frequently fails. We see it time and again—the desired outcomes routinely failing. So many regions have established regionally indicative farm water fresh plans, environmental plans, put in place mitigations to protect against sediment loss. In many instances these farms’ plans have been developed over decades, taking all considerations into account, and are continually being improved and upgraded.

All regional specificity is given to consideration to mitigate the environmental impacts whilst undertaking respective local farming practices. Such undertakings taken by the likes of Pomahaka Water Care and Environment Canterbury, affectionately known as ECan, along with the likes of Hurunui trust, all the wonderful work they’re doing is totally obfuscated. They preserve both the environment and the area in which they live and farm. These endeavours are locally undertaken, they acknowledge regional nuances, giving consideration to such things as native plantings, freshwater preservation, understanding sedimentation loss and methodologies for certain things, as the member from the National Party mentioned, winter cropping and how to mitigate those environmental effects. These are regional endeavours that are mirrored up and down rural New Zealand. That’s why this bill is a better way to proceed.

It will put pause on national planning standards over regional specificity and give that oversight back to councils. It will give farmers and industry certainty as it is they who best understand how to effect the changes and create the desired outcomes, to preserve the environment whilst equally supporting the productive primary sector that routinely we hear the Minister of Finance laud and applaud. Most importantly, it will give some sense of direction to those that live in their rural communities on how to operate in their rural communities, and some sense of fairness in what seems to be an ever increasing unfair world. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Members, it’s come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. I will return at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6.01 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.