Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Members, we now come to Part 2. Part 2 is the debate on clauses 28 to 30, “Other matters”, and Schedule 2. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d like to immediately speak to Schedule 2, the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. There’s an extraordinary proposal in this legislation that enables the intrusion into wetlands and removal of protection from wetlands to facilitate coalmining.

Now, to give some context for this, if the objective of the Resource Management Act is to protect the environment, then destroying one of the most valuable attributes of our environment and our ecosystem structure, which is wetlands, to facilitate coalmining, which is widely recognised as the dirtiest of the fossil fuels—though, it turns out liquid natural gas and other forms of gas, when you take into account future emissions, may actually be more polluting for the environment, but that’s what this Government’s going to do as well. When you’re facilitating the access to the densest, most polluting fossil fuel, coal, for the purpose of it being burned, whether locally or abroad—in fact, it would be probably burned abroad—you are undoubtedly doing significant harm to the environment.

To add more insult to injury in terms of this legislation facilitating the destruction of our wetlands, we have already lost 90 percent of our wetlands in this nation since human arrival, so we have this tiny fraction of those wetlands left. They are one of the most effective means of absorption of carbon dioxide. We are destroying the nature that is actually helping to absorb the emissions, and we’re doing it to access coal. It’s quite extraordinary that this is a credible policy position for an environmental legislation.

💬 Glen Bennett: It’s not credible. It’s not.

It is not credible at all. It’s outrageous. My question to the Minister, in the simplest terms, is: how can you possibly, as the environment Minister, with a straight face, seriously justify the destruction of native indigenous wetlands, which have an incredible value to us in terms of biodiversity, have an incredible value in terms of sources of species that breed and populate our rivers that come from wetland ecosystems, and are a rare ecological phenomenon in the landscape now, because they are so often the target of draining and of destruction for the purposes of farming and, in this instance, for the purposes of coalmining?

I have an amendment explicitly in regard to this clause, an amendment which would ensure that this particular part of the legislation was removed. That should be done because it is the most possibly—I mean, there’s many outrageous things in this legislation, but among one of the most outrageous things is the destruction of wetlands for coalmining. How does the Minister justify this with an environmental responsibility?

Thank you, Mr Chair. The member somehow implies that this gives consent. In fact, this aligns coalmining with other extractive industries. The same gateway tests would still apply. The management of significant adverse effects on wetlands and significant natural areas (SNAs) would apply. It is simply aligning coalmining with other mining activities. It is not giving consent to anything. It is aligning the consenting process, and there is nothing that prevents local rules and plans being established to provide additional protection—a prohibition status—for specific wetlands or SNAs identified at a local level. So it is simply aligning coalmining with all other mining.

Thank you, Mr Chair. On the coalmining topic, it’s good that we’ve made it to Schedule 2, given that we did not have a chance to discuss Schedule 1 before the debate was shut down and before we got into any detail on the inclusion of section 107 changes too.

Does the Minister understand that coalmining is different from other mining because coal is burnt and produces climate change emissions, and that is why there was an exclusion—or a specific “no more new coalmining”? I ask this question because many members in her party seem to say, if anybody ever questions a mine of any sort, they are a hypocrite if they have a cellphone. I am happy to say that I have a cellphone and that there is no coal in that cellphone, because, of course, coal is not a precious metal or anything of the sort. Coal is used to be burnt to produce heat, and it creates emissions.

I hear some heckling. I can’t hear it all, but if Government members want to explain how coal is in my cellphone, I’m very interested to hear about that. I appreciate that many minerals that are mined are in cellphones, but coal has been treated differently from other minerals for a very specific reason.

💬 Hon Member: The energy used to make it perhaps?

I’m glad Government members have so much to say about this, and I look forward to their insightful contributions.

Now, we are on Schedule 2, and, of course, this involves both changes to intensive winter grazing and also to the stock exclusion regulations. I’ve also heard many members.

💬 Hon Member: What about the clock?

Oh, I’ve got lots of time here.

💬 Hon Member: Shall we start the clock, Mr Chair?

I don’t see any need to start the clock! Now, we’ve heard from many people about intensive winter grazing, and the same sort of argument has been used as well for the stock exclusion regulations: that because there have been improvements—because of the regulations that this bill is going to get rid of—there is now no need for regulation. I see a flaw in that logic. And that, of course, is because the improvements have been made because of the incentives created by those regulations, and by removing these regulations, the incentives won’t be there any more.

What advice has the Minister received to say that this won’t be the case—that the removing of the regulations and the incentives will not lead to the behaviour that happened prior to these regulations? What is the Minister going to do to monitor the situation? And will the Minister make a commitment to this House that, if there are any backward steps in either intensive winter grazing or the stock exclusion regulations, she will jump with the urgency that we’ve seen today to stop the Otago Regional Council from meeting tomorrow to implement these incentives for environmental protections?

We are talking here about regulations that are to protect our environment—and also there are some animal welfare issues with the winter grazing—that is, to stop mud going into rivers. Sedimentation is a huge pollutant, and the stock exclusion regulations are, obviously, to stop stock both being around water bodies and also doing other things that stock do which might get into those waterways and increase pollution. I’ve asked the Minister some very direct questions that I’d like the answers to. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Thank you, Mr Chair. The questions from the member the Hon Rachel Brooking regarding intensive winter grazing—and she mentioned slope land, but I don’t know that there was a question in that—yes, there have been significant improvements made, and I think that the member does an incredible disservice to farmers to suggest that this was brought about only because of the regulations that were brought in, I think, in 2022. Farmers have been working on this for many years, fencing waterways, planting riparian planting, new and improved effluent systems, winter pads.

These matters have been at the heart of changes in management practice by farmers, and so I am disappointed but not surprised that a Labour member would somehow try and take all the credit and do such a disservice to farmers, who have been doing this hard work for many, many years. Intensive winter grazing, as we know, is primarily in the South Island, and so it is well known to both the member and myself. Those improvements have been incredibly obvious for a number of years, and this Government backs farmers to continue with those improvements, because farmers will always be trying to do the best for their land.

Thank you, Mr Chairman. I want to talk about the stock exclusion rules, the fencing rules. Now, the last National Government tried to land fencing exclusion rules, and they’re quite hard to land properly. They got very close. Nick Smith wanted to do it, but in the end they didn’t quite get it across the line and there was a change of Government in 2017. We took that up, and I want to explain why it was that we got to the point where we thought they were necessary. Mark Cameron would be well aware of this.

The Kaipara is one of the biggest harbours in the world—magnificent harbour. It’s the spawning ground for most of the snapper on the West Coast of the North Island. It’s also the place for the juvenile white pointers—you know, quite a rare species these days. There is so much sediment now in the Kaipara that I was speaking to an underwater photographer who photographs white pointers, and he’s got to be a metre away from them before he can see them. I found that quite a scary thought, that he was brave enough to do that.

Now, the recent mudbanks—and I’m not criticising the vast majority of farmers here, but the recent mudbanks in the Kaipara are two—

💬 Mark Cameron: They’ve been there for decades, David.

No, the recent ones, Mark—the recent ones are two metres deep. I’ve been taken there as the relevant Minister with the local councillors and shown recent mudbanks close to where the Hōteo River comes in and where the Wairoa rivers come in, and every tide you see an extra film of sediment that’s settled on all of the boat ramps. These recent mudbanks are literally two metres deep.

What’s necessary to do that? Well, it’s a complex problem to fix, and, as a Government, we committed $100 million of taxpayers’ money to help with that clean-up, matched money from the councils, particularly Auckland Council—it’s a wealthier council than the Northland Regional Council, Auckland Council being a regional unitary authority covering the regional council functions as well—and really good input from farmers.

I went up there with the Prime Minister at the time, Jacinda Ardern, and met with a dairy farmer, a dairy farmer very proud of the clean streams accord in 2003, which led to the dairy industry largely and very effectively—in a way that I think reflects very well on the dairy industry—fencing most of its waterways. The dairy farmer took Jacinda Ardern and myself out the back and said, “Look, this is our side of the river that leads down into the Kaipara. It’s fenced. Look at the other side of the river there, which is unfenced, which is a beef farmer.” The difference from one side of the river to the other was that on the dairy farm the bank wasn’t collapsing into the river. The bank on the other side, which was exposed to heavy cattle—I think it was cattle in that case, but pigs and deer can do the same thing; not sheep—was collapsing into the river and was a major contribution of silt load into the Kaipara.

Now, this problem that we’ve got in the Kaipara will not be fixed without the likes of those things being fenced, so we came out with some proposals for fencing. They only ever applied to cows—you know, beef cattle, deer, and pigs; not sheep, which are lighter animals. The first iteration of it, I can remember the Hon Damien O’Connor coming up to me and saying, “How the hell did you get that so wrong?” The areas to be fenced were chosen on the basis of an average within a certificate of title, and I can remember sort of discussing with my officials and shamefacedly admitting to the Hon Damien O’Connor, “Well, we didn’t get that right, so we’ll have to do it again.”, and we did it again. The second iteration was a lot, lot better, and from memory there was more than 90 percent accuracy of the mats that were produced.

The one residual problem was that we still weren’t giving a proper exemption for low-impact, low-density farming where there are low stocking rates, in some high-country areas predominantly, where it’s a nonsense that we try and fence them. I agree that it’s a nonsense to fix them, but the answer to that is to improve the fencing regulations, not to abandon them. The problem that we have in New Zealand is more than 20 years after the clean streams accord, we’ve still got recalcitrant farmers, including that one that I referred to up north near where Mark Cameron lives—and this is no criticism of Mark, but it is the criticism of the people that are on the other side of that area there. The regional councils, they don’t want to have to develop their own rules around this.

Now, I know we’ll hear from the other side and they’ll say it should all be left to farm plans. Well, what’s the regulatory underpinning for a farm plan? What’s going to cause the farm plan to properly address that? What rule is going to be effectively implemented by a farm plan in the absence of any rule? Once again, what we have from the Government is “Trust us; we know what we’re doing.” when, in actual fact, we know that 20 years after the clean streams accord we actually had some pretty serious problems, and not just in Northland. It is a particular problem in Northland where it’s erosion-prone—and I’m not blaming the current farmers. The land was cleared 100 years ago. Then, you know, 50 years ago under Muldoon, there were incentives to clear land that should not have been cleared. I understand all of that.

That’s why we’re not sort of going around waving a big stick saying, “Fix it tomorrow.”, but fix it sometime we must, otherwise the Kaipara will never be fixed and the $100 million that central government’s putting in will be a complete waste of money, as will the matching money from the Auckland Council—that’ll be a waste of money. Some of the farmers up there who are doing the right thing will look across at their neighbours, like that farmer that took me and Jacinda Ardern and had a look over the background, and they’ll say, “Well, why the hell should I do it if that guy over there is not doing it?”

That’s what these fencing regulations are trying to achieve. They’re not trying to be punitive, and if there is a case to improve them, improve them—don’t ditch them. So, Minister, please justify and explain to the committee what efforts you made to improve the regulations before you thought you’d just throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I would remind the honourable member that the requirements that apply to dairying and intensive raised beef cattle will remain, so the fencing requirements there will remain. The member will also be very pleased to hear that the $100 million that he started has continued under this Government, the $10 million a year for 10 years. Yes, this Government will say that farm plans are the best way to manage on a risk basis, but, again, I will remind everyone that is listening that requirements that apply to dairy or intensive grazed beef cattle for fencing will remain.

I would just note—and the ACT member may be able to correct me on this, but I understand there’s about 60 percent less dairying going on in Northland now, so some of these matters are going to be taken out of our hands, but, certainly, this Government has recognised the need to continue with the work being done in the Kaipara catchment and also to ensure that freshwater farm plans, when they are implemented, will be addressing these matters, and, again, that the requirements that apply to dairying and intensive grazed beef remain.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you, Minister Simmonds, for finally bringing some common sense. Thank you to David Parker for bringing up stock exclusion—I find it a fascinating subject. I’m interested, former Minister Parker: you brought up the Kaipara. You’re also a Minister that spoke ad nauseam, at length, about sedimentation in the Kaipara, and then increased its snapper fishery because the health of the snapper fishery was so good up there, so I find your remarks at odds with what is actually going on.

Let’s employ some common sense, sir. Let’s actually employ some common sense. Talking about fencing setbacks, now, former Minister Damien O’Connor and I have spoken about this as part of the freshwater accord.

💬 Hon Rachel Brooking: Let’s talk about what submitters you let be heard.

The freshwater accord—let’s talk about that. Fencing setbacks, five metres—five metres. Practically, I ask this committee: if you’re a farmer with a tributary, drain, stream, canal that drains into—the Kaipara was forementioned, so let’s talk about the Kaipara. How do you, practically, clean that? What does—

💬 Hon David Parker: With a digger.

What boom size do you have, sir? Because there isn’t a boom long enough to reach it. So, sir, you are talking about a nonsense.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Through the Chair, please, Mr Cameron.

Absolutely, Mr Chair. The former Minister for the Environment is not practically employing any common sense. There isn’t a boom long enough to clean a canal that borders a buffer zone or a fencing setback area—that’s why former Minister David Parker got it wrong and Damien O’Connor got it right. Practically, it was a nonsense. We had a flooding event, sir, because of your earlier assertions. Practically, it didn’t work.

Another point: roundwood. I was formerly a fencing contractor. I find it comedic, this gentleman just saying, “Move all this fencing.” Roundwood, per post: 12, 14 bucks each. To do anything in real time—not sort of offer sermons, Minister Parker; actual, practical change—costs us tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sir, you come into this House and you offer priestly sermons about what we should do in rural New Zealand. We’re doing it because we don’t want our livestock falling in canals or rivers or drains and drowning. They’re exceedingly expensive. Why on earth—and maybe the Minister for the Environment can elucidate and illuminate this a little bit better for you, sir—would we not want to do that, anyway? We want to ameliorate the concerns about losing our livestock, so that’s why we fence the waterways off and, by virtue, improve environmental outcomes. Everything you said, sir, is something of a factoid—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Through the Chair, please, Mr Cameron.

—nonsense. Coming back to fencing setback: practically, I believe, Damien O’Connor got it right when he suggested you make some adjustments to that. We’re already investing an inordinate amount of money to improve our environment and to protect our animals. We don’t need to be lectured when it doesn’t work, because it didn’t work, sir.

One final remark: I heard you talk, in the second reading speech, sir, about how we should plough a field to alleviate sediment loss. I said this in my speech—and maybe the Minister can enlighten you further—we spend millions of dollars, often on mortgages. Why on earth would we cultivate in such a way that we would inherently see sediment loss, intentionally? We didn’t need to be scolded by a Minister that didn’t do it. We try not to do it. Can you not see the correlation between causality, sir? That’s why I think this Minister’s got it right. I would celebrate anything that she can do to harness some practical common sense, and I thank her for it.

Thank you, Mr Chair, I appreciate it. I may have got just the solution for the member here and the member here [Gestures to Hon David Parker and Mark Cameron]—I’ve got this, guys. I have an amendment specifically regarding winter grazing. Winter grazing is a real challenge for us. We have had a grizzly winter in Southland this season—an absolute shocker. Vast volumes of water falling in the spring. There’s been a terrible death toll on the animals. We’ve heard terrible stories from both sheep and dairy farmers of things going very wrong and animals needing to be euthanised. There’s a slink factory in Southland—a slinky factory, as you like to call it—where 70,000 lambs were accumulated in the space of one month at one factory, 25,000 in one week. So, likely, the death toll—and this is terrible. No farmer wants to be dealing with a vast number of animals dying on their watch.

It is important to have a context of where you have a very high density of stocking in a region that frequently rains in the winter and where grass doesn’t grow, you have this serious problem, as my colleague to the left also points out, of how do you feed these animals? You get this intensive winter grazing, and when it goes wrong it goes very badly wrong. You get animals up to their udders in mud, you get animals stuck, animals dying, you get calves born into mud in the wicked winter weather, and you get sheep dying in mud.

💬 Suze Redmayne: This is misinformation, Steve. You’re better than this, Steve.

Pardon? What did you say, Suze?

💬 Suze Redmayne: Misinformation—you’re better than this.

Come on. This is reported in the Otago Daily Times—the 70,000 lambs. You don’t say that that many lambs have died? Well, you better talk to the Otago Daily Times about it. I can check on those statistics if you’d like, on the number of animals that have suffered in this miserable weather down South.

The point is that it is not good for the animals. It is also not good for the fresh water. That density, that volume of excrement and waste, that muddying of the soil means the flow of nutrients and the flow of waste goes down into the freshwater systems and the siltation. All of those things are bad for the environment. I do not know how the Minister—and this is the question for the Minister—justifies not having stronger intensive winter grazing rules.

I have an amendment that proposes the minimum setback for land used for intensive winter grazing of 10 metres. We had agreement on the committee—I’m on the Primary Production Committee with the very noisy member opposite, Suze Redmayne, and we had an agreement on that committee that there must be permanent vegetation on the five-metre setback; the committee agreed on that. I’m proposing here with this amendment that we have a minimum setback for land use for intensive winter grazing of 10 metres: “An area of land that is used on a farm must be located at least 10 m away from the bed of any river, lake, wetland, or drain (regardless of whether there is any water in it at the time).” That would replace clause 26, page 17, after line 3 with that proposal.

Schedule 2, the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020: this proposed amendment is that we delete the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 Schedule 2 on page 18, line 10. Now, the purpose of that is that the national policy statement is a very important part of how we get clarity on how we look after fresh water, and how it is that we are going to deal with the challenges we face in our freshwater environment. The proposal of this amendment is to do with the coalmining, which I mentioned earlier. We must not have wetlands destroyed for the sake of coalmining. Thank you.

I am struggling to see how some of the members’ comments have anything to do with this bill that we’re debating, but I do want to make something absolutely clear: the 70,000 slink skins and 25,000 in one week that he talked about—70,000 over a month—were absolutely nothing to do with intensive winter grazing. They were because of a bitterly cold and wet spring. The winter was not wet; it was the spring that was bitterly cold and wet, and lambs died as newborns in the spring. Absolutely nothing to do with intensive winter grazing. Again, the Opposition seems intent on doing a disservice to our hard-working farmers that got out in that bitterly cold and wet spring every day to try and save as many lambs as they could.

The House is suspended. This debate is suspended. The House will resume at 7.30 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 5.57 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Members, the committee is resumed on the Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. When we suspended for the dinner break, we were debating Part 2, clauses 28 to 30, “Other matters” and Schedule 2. Once again, the question is that Part 2 stand part.

Mr Chairman, look, thank you very much. It’s the first opportunity I’ve had to speak on this bill. This is the Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. It actually goes beyond fresh water, but I’ll summarise it this way: be careful what you ask for.

There have been a number of so-called farmers’ champions over the other side of the House there, going on about how this is going to be nirvana and remove all—in fact, remove Government actors. They’ve got a petition: get Wellington out of farming. Well, in terms of fresh water, some might think there are some changes that can be made. In fact, we made some changes. We could take Wellington out of farming, biosecurity, food safety. Where would that leave the biggest export-generating sector of our country?

When it comes to fresh water, some will appreciate that, actually, water is the source of life. It’s certainly been the source of growth across agriculture through irrigation but also the ongoing reliable supply of water for farming systems and horticultural systems up and down the country. We’ve taken it for granted, and for a number of years now we’ve invested in irrigation. That’s the input side of it, knowing that water is really important and so get more, store it, and put it into the farming systems and generate more revenue. That’s great. Then we’ve also learnt that there’s an output side of it as well.

This issue is about the output side of it, for the most part, although some of the consents that will be affected or the operations that will be affected by the recent amendment that the Minister has brought in are both around inputs and outputs. But be careful what you ask for. The people on that side of the House, the bill itself, and the amendments trying to pave the way for easy farming will lead to a bigger challenge in the future as the reality of our farming systems bites home.

There’s been talk about the wonderful things that farmers do. In fact, it’s incredible, the things that we have learnt. As a farmer, I put effluent straight into the local stream. Thankfully, that doesn’t occur any more. We’ve learnt a lot. People used to chop the tails off cows to stop manure being flicked in their face in a herringbone shed. We don’t do that any more. We have a better level of understanding around animal welfare and of the environmental impacts of our farming systems.

Of course, this Government set out to have one quick win. In fact, previous Cabinet decisions have influenced this proposal, including an invitation to the Minister of Agriculture to provide papers on a quick win. If you read the regulatory impact statement (RIS) here, it is indeed very, very revealing. This coalition Government is good at quick fixes, quick wins, at trying to appease the people who were barking for—

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): If I could just help the member to link it to Part 2.

It’s fresh water and other matters, and it goes to—

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): But specifically to Part 2.

—stock exclusion and other things. I’m referring to the RIS, if I can. Mr Chairman, I appreciate your guidance on this, but the RIS has not been referred to and it’s a critical part of every part of this bill.

What I’m saying is that the proposals to take away some of these regulations—and the previous Minister sitting in the chair said, “Oh, you know, we’ve got some reassurances around some of the basic components of this.”, even though we’re taking away guidance for councils on what they should do, leaving the time lines way out into the never-never, if some of the members on the other side get their way. That is clear guidance for councils as to how we can better manage the output side of fresh water.

In Government, we had some proposals, and in spite of all the best intentions of the vast majority of farmers, there are some who will not abide by clear guidance or, indeed, just doing the right thing. Most of the laws and the regulations in this House are designed to protect us from the minority of people who want to do the wrong thing or who don’t want to do the right thing, to protect us from them or the environment from them. It is really important that we understand. Take the issue of bobby calves. I’ve heard a lot of—

💬 Hon Member: Relevance.

Well, yeah, a lot of things have been said about, as I say, the great work the vast majority of farmers do. There was—

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): The member’s time has expired.

Mr Chairman, before the break, I had a response from Mark Cameron addressed to the Minister in the chair about what he said was the obvious case for no need for fencing, which is the fencing regulations repealed by this provision in Part 2. At the moment, we’ve got regulations that say, in some situations, farmers have to fence off their waterways.

He talked about the Kaipara and said there’s no problem with the Kaipara because the fish limit for snapper on the western side of the North Island has been increased. Well, that’s true, but it’s not because of the Kaipara. It’s true because the fishing pressure had been reduced on those fish by a cut to quota because they were being over-fished and they bounced back, so it’s a red herring, to mix my fish. But he also—

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Well done.

—didn’t address the issue. I saw some members of the National Party nodding about the problem that they’ve got in the North for some sheep and beef farmers who really do have unacceptable practices close to waterways, that are collapsing the banks of these very silt-laden landscapes into the river, which is ending up in the estuary.

Then we heard from that same member saying, “Well, we ought to be just enabling all of the existing farm plans produced by the likes of Beef + Lamb New Zealand to be used, rather than having some other form of farm plan.” Now, the last Government actually agreed that we should be facilitating the transition of those plans into the farm planning system so that farmers didn’t have to do it more than once, but it did become evident that there are some farm plans that were inadequate. They’d have to be, if they were going to be a substitute for regulation, because if a farm plan is going to substitute for an environmental regulation which maintains a baseline, they do have to be robust and they have to cover off the right matters and they’ve got to cover all of the required farmers and there has to be some conditionality around using them. Otherwise, they can buy those same farmers who have ignored the need to fence those waterways that have evidently needed fencing for more than a decade, probably two decades—there has to be something in the system to give them teeth.

I found the answers that Mark Cameron, who chaired the Primary Production Committee—he didn’t address also the issue of the undertaking that he’d given submitters that a certain provision wasn’t going to be in the bill, but that is in the bill. Sadly, we haven’t heard from either the Minister of Agriculture or from him in respect of that promise that he made at select committee to submitters that has now been broken. Having not heard from the Minister to explain how it is that we can be assured about the likes of those farms that myself and the former Prime Minister visited in Northland, where the banks are crumbling into the river, which are adding to these enormous sediment loads in the Kaipara Harbour, how can we be sure that once these fencing regulations disappear, after two decades of inaction since the Dairying and Clean Streams Accord was adopted by the dairy industry so well—and I compliment them on it—the beef industry is not going to continue what they’ve been doing for the last 20 years, which is ignoring, in some cases, their environmental responsibilities?

As the Hon Damien O’Connor said, it’s not all farmers. We’re not saying this is all farmers, but there does seem to be a reaction that whenever there’s an environmental bottom line proposed for the rural sector, the sector clubs together. It’s almost like they’re insulted that one of their kind will be picked out and criticised for poor performance, but, sadly, the truth is some performance has been inadequate. There are some historical reasons for that that are forgivable, but there does need to be an improvement in practice, and without a push along, some of these people, the recalcitrants—and that’s the term that has been used by leaders from both Beef + Lamb New Zealand and the dairy sector at times, so they want the recalcitrants pushed along. How can we be sure, in the absence of any enforceable rule, that they will be pushed along? My understanding is that if this legislation goes through, we don’t have farm plans, and we won’t have fencing regulations.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I will leave it to my colleagues who understand the matters set out in Schedule 2 to discuss Schedule 2 in more detail. One of the clauses that hasn’t been discussed yet when it comes to Part 2 is clauses 29 and 30, specifically when it comes to the amendment to the Ngā Rohe Moana o Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Porou Act 2019.

When it comes to clause 30, this clause replaces section 31(3) with what is following. One of the things that we see in this bill is the removal of the board of inquiry, and the issue we have here is in the existing version of this particular Act. It specifies that “a proposed national policy statement that directly affects ngā rohe moana must treat the environmental covenant as a relevant matter for the purposes of section 51(1)(e) of that Act.”, which is the Resource Management Act. Of course, section 51(1)(e) that is being referred to here is referring to the board of inquiry.

The question I have for the Minister, first and foremost, is: when we’re looking at the board of inquiry, it’s made-up of a collective of people and a panel of people, but with that being removed, what mannerism and what accountability would that person, as specified in new subsection (3), have to do in order to reach that benchmark of what is considered an environmental covenant when it is no longer there? That is my first question.

The second question I have—and this is sort of more and more curious if we’re looking at the broader context of section 31 of the Ngā Rohe Moana o Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Porou Act 2019—is that section 31(2) refers to a board of inquiry appointed under section 14 of the Resource Management Act 1991. As we see in this proposed bill, that board will now be repealed. However, despite the fact that there is a replacement of section 31(3) with the removal of the reference to the board of inquiry, section 31(2), which specified the board of inquiry being appointed, has not been removed, as far as I know, as part of this Act.

My second question to the Minister is: does it mean that, in the context of the Ngā Rohe Moana o Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Porou Act, that board of inquiry still remains, or is there another section—possibly in section 1, which I may not be aware of—where that particular area has been removed? It doesn’t look like it’s anywhere adjacent to clause 13 where sections 41 and 51 were repealed. So, yeah, that was more a point of clarification from the Minister. Under that particular Act, is section 31(3), pertaining to the board of inquiry, going to remain in that Act? Also, in terms of the newly introduced replacement section 31(3), with a person without that board of inquiry, what sort of benchmark or what sort of threshold would that person need to fulfil when it talks about how they “must consider the environmental covenant.”, when that board no longer exists and has been repealed by this Act?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I thank the members for their considered questions. I listened very carefully to the member Damien O’Connor, though I couldn’t actually hear a question in there, but I think he wanted to talk a little about stock exclusion. Likewise, I think the Hon David Parker wanted to talk about stock exclusion as well. He was talking about unacceptable practices near waterways, collapsing of banks, and farmers who have ignored the need to fence, and farmers are clubbing together, and they were recalcitrant, and they needed a push along, which I felt was very typical language coming from that Labour Party when it comes to the attitude towards the agricultural sector.

I just want to assure those concerned members that the stock-exclusion regulations do regulate the access of livestock to waterways. We’ve felt very strongly that a map of low-sloped land currently acts as a land-based trigger for requirements to exclude non-intensively grazed beef cattle and deer from water bodies. Those requirements will come into force in July next year for existing farms, but we’ve always been concerned that the map and associated requirements were such that the one-size-fits-all approach that we saw in so much legislation that was passed by the previous Government would impose significant costs on those non-intensive farms.

Our view is that to address the concerns, the bill repeals those requirements, meaning the exclusion of affected stock types will instead be managed by farmers and by regional plan rules where they exist and, of course, freshwater farm plans when they are rolled out, acknowledging that the freshwater farm plans are not yet widely available, but they are intended to come very soon. The National Environment Standards for Freshwater allow for intensive winter grazing too, to occur as a permitted activity.

Just turning to the questions from the Green Party member Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan about the removal of the board of inquiry, we’ve been very clear that removing the board of inquiry processes is to provide one clear default process for making and amending national directions. I think it’s already been acknowledged by the previous Minister that sat here that that board of inquiry process hasn’t been used in over 10 years. The member asked specifically about covenants as agreed by Ngāti Porou. The bill amends the Resource Management Act sections referenced in the Ngā Rohe Moana o Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Porou Act. Clause 30 is a consequential amendment to uphold the Ngā Rohe Moana o Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Porou Act. In fact, Ngā Hapū agreed to this amendment, and this change will ensure that their covenant is still considered in that national direction process.

Thank you, Mr Chair—just a very short question for the Minister in the chair, the Hon Nicola Grigg. In the bill commentary, regarding the Ngā Rohe Moana o Ngā Hapū o Ngāti Porou Act 2019, it talks about how “department advisers consider that alternative process is not needed because, despite the removal”, but the clarification I’m looking for is: was there a reason why, then, section 31(2) of the Act isn’t repealed? Does that just naturally get removed?

Thank you, Mr Chair—sorry, there was a lot of noise there. Before the dinner break, I asked the Minister in the chair, the Hon Penny Simmonds, two questions that have not been addressed. The first one was about coal and whether the Minister appreciated the difference between coal, which is not a mineral found in our cellphones but instead is burned and produces climate change emissions—not answered.

The second question was in regards to both the stock exclusion regulations and the intensive winter grazing. The comments that we’ve heard since my contribution, about how farmers may do all the good things without any regulations—if that is the case, and I very much like it to be the case, I ask the Minister if she would confirm to the committee that there will be monitoring and review of what happens to the environment without these regulations. And I ask if the Minister would make an undertaking to come to this House with the urgency that we’ve seen today with the Amendment Paper around the Otago Regional Council, in bringing back these, or appropriate, regulations.

I note the Minister was just talking about the slope rules and the stock exclusion regulations—of course, they also are relevant in the intensive winter grazing—and I note the advice in the departmental report that “further degradation of freshwater quality due to stock entering water bodies could continue until plans are implemented. Smaller farms are also currently not required to have a freshwater farm plan, meaning stock may not be required to be excluded, even if there are environmental risks.” The advice is that there is uncertainty and definitely the potential for more pollution.

We’ve just also seen today a new amendment that pauses the farm plans. A lot of the evidence and the submissions that went to the Primary Production Committee, regarding changing these regulations and the intensive winter grazing, was based around farm plans. They are being paused and there are no transitional arrangements. Has the Minister considered, now with the amendment around the farm plans being paused, whether or not there should be transitional arrangements around these stock exclusion regulations that relied—the logic was that they were relying on these new farm plans, but now those farm plans have been paused. What work has gone into working out whether that change to farm plans requires changes to the stock exclusion regulations and some transitional arrangements?

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I really appreciate you granting the time to really, properly, go through especially the amendments that are on the Table but just the existing clauses in the bill that we are yet to get an answer from the Minister on.

I want to pick up on the biodiversity aspect of this bill, particularly around the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity and the amendments that this bill proposes to that. Now, what I’m interested in hearing from the Minister—because one of the key aspects of it is this delay in the requirement for local authorities to actually notify any policy statement or plan changes by 31 December in 2030—is the proposed date. Now, I have an amendment on the Table that would amend Schedule 2—and so this is page 18, line 26 of the existing bill—and it would simply replace the date 2030 with 2027. The reason I want to do this and why I would like to hear from the Minister is about whether the Minister has actually sought advice about what the actual impact on biodiversity this delay would actually have.

This is across Aotearoa, but also I’d like to hear from the Minister what evidence has she actually seen to justify this delay when it comes to biodiversity outcomes; when it comes to a coherent framework and logical framework that landowners can actually use? What I’m really unclear about with this is that the Government keeps purportedly offering up certainty and clarity to landowners with this delay, but what isn’t clear is there are so many aspects of existing policy statements, of existing regional plans and district plans, that actually have biodiversity requirements in them that do implement the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity. How exactly is this providing clarity?

I wanted to pick up particularly the area of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity that this amendment is going to add to—where it adds this delay of the date—and just below that talks about the timing for regional biodiversity strategies. Now, a lot of councils’ regional biodiversity strategies actually rely on the identification and then protection of significant natural areas (SNAs) to be able to effectively implement these strategies and actually ensure that they are making biodiversity gains on the ground. What are the implications and how will that work for these regional biodiversity strategies?

Now, I’m anticipating the Minister’s response—because, again, we’ve heard it a lot from comments tonight—and this is about the sort of onerous nature of the fact that you would identify an SNA on a property. I just want to make it clear that throughout the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity and throughout all the messaging and actual information about it, it’s that existing activities can continue provided they don’t threaten the loss of native plants and animals. That is a baseline in the Resource Management Act that exists regardless.

The fact that we were going to identify these significant natural areas would have provided certainty, would have provided clarity to landowners in order to actually manage them to the rules. That’s what they were actually after. Going back on this in this very ad hoc, piecemeal way is not going to offer that certainty and clarity. I would really appreciate some enlightenment from the Minister of what’s intended there. Thank you.

Thank you, members, for your questions. Yes, we can. As was announced today, the Government has announced that we will pause the roll-out of freshwater farm plans until work to improve the system is actually finalised. We see freshwater farm plans as a really important tool to support farmers to manage freshwater risks, but I think it’s been widely acknowledged around the industry that the current system has been too costly and it’s inarguably been not fit for purpose. We are going to continue to work with farmers and councils and other key stakeholders.

Indeed, I’d encourage any members who come from regions around New Zealand to get involved and ensure that they’re advocating strongly on behalf of their local farmers. You might learn a lot. But, look, we have always maintained that we believe that planning requirements need to enable more catchment-level solutions. If we don’t pause the roll-out, it’s patently clear that farmers in regions where the system is already live—for example, Waikato—would be required to submit freshwater farm plans for certification by early 2025.

I just want to address some of the questions raised by the Hon Rachel Brooking around the stop exclusion rules and whether or not there will be monitoring and the review of impacts on the environment. They’re very pertinent questions, but I want to assure her that this bill does not affect any monitoring required under the Resource Management Act (RMA) and that the state of environmental monitoring will continue as it always has. I’m sure the member will be very pleased and relieved to hear that.

The questions from the Green Party member around the National Policy Statement on Indigenous Biodiversity (NPSIB): let me just find my notes that I just wrote down very quickly, and I can’t even read my own handwriting here—I beg your pardon. Actually, I might take a moment—oh no, beg your pardon, Mr Chair. Here we go.

Look, it’s been again widely acknowledged, not dissimilar to the farm plan roll-out, that there’s been a real concern about the approach to identifying new significant natural areas (SNAs) and we’ve always felt—and, indeed, a lot of councils have fed back—that the definition was far too broad and it captured areas with less significant native biodiversity and we felt would overly restrict land use. We’ve all heard stories about farmers that would be adversely affected, and there was very little definition between what was actually in a wetland that must be preserved and what was, frankly, just a bog.

The bill suspends the requirements within the NPSIB for councils to identify those new SNAs for three years and it’s going to extend the implementation time frames out to the end of December 2030. That’s going to give time for review of all those relevant policy settings for protecting and maintaining indigenous biodiversity. I think despite what some members of Opposition parties feel, this Government is very determined to protect our native environment, so that work is actually already under way.

Other provisions within the NPSIB, like the consent pathways, will continue to apply. That’s the really important point here: we’re not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In addition, the existing RMA requirements to maintain and protect indigenous biodiversity remain. I cannot emphasise enough: the existing protections remain to ensure that councils can continue to protect those significant natural areas.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Very quickly, if I may, I just want to touch on some remarks by the former Minister for the Environment Rachel Brooking and pose the question, Minister, and I can present it to you because I’m sure you know the answer: what do stock units look like per bovine?

Now, I’m pretty sure that Damien O’Connor would be the only member of this House outside a few National members who will know that it’s 5.5 stock units per bovine. Minister, the question I have for you—and maybe you can litigate it for the committee’s illumination—is: if the silence is an indictment from the left that they didn’t actually know what a stock unit was, then how on earth, Minister, was a slope map requirement ever going to work as a prerequisite or a precondition for farming practices?

Sorry, but the people on the left don’t know what a stock unit is; I do. I know that it’s a stocking density, and it’s different per animal species. Without over-litigating the point, Rachel Brooking, if you don’t know that, how on earth can you assert that we need to have slope map requirements, because every animal farmed has a different practice—

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): If the member can direct his comments to the Chair.

Can the Minister please enlighten the committee as to what stock units would look like in terms of slope maps—i.e., their removal?

I’m very happy to take a question from that member at any time, and I distinctly remember the informative education I had as a child from my own father about what exactly a stock unit was. Look, to illustrate to the committee, the approach that we’re taking is based in pragmatism. It’s based in practical reality. Therefore, our view has always been that regarding low-slope areas that are less intensively farmed, there should be a different approach applied than for more intensive farming practices, and I don’t think I can elucidate any more clearly than that.

Mr Chairman, thank you very much, and I appreciate you gave me some latitude in my first speech. I’ll stick to some questions for the Minister—keeping in mind the fact that, actually, most of the things that we’re trying to do here were laid down in 1992 by the National Government under the Resource Management Act. That was protection of the environment, protection of biodiversity—making sure that we didn’t degrade the water quality. All those things were laid out in 1992, and we failed to deliver in many measures.

There has been lots of speculation about the previous Government’s attempts to move us forward in this area. The reality is that, without regulations, we can’t protect the vast majority of farmers, good farmers, from those who don’t want to do the right thing.

💬 Hon Member: Rubbish.

Oh, “Rubbish.”, he says. That man lives with his head in the sand. I have spoken to many farmers who say we need regulations to make sure that the person who, in intensive winter grazing, has cows with mud up to their bellies, who has water running off steep areas and soil running down into the waterways—they say we need regulations and clear guidance from councils.

When we introduced the requirement for resource consents for land over 10 degrees—because anything above 10 degrees erodes soil at exponential levels, relative to flat land; that is, it leaps up in the coming off. There were claims that 10,000 consents were needed and, in fact, 278 were issued. The question to the Minister, in terms of analysing that—because the regulatory impact statement (RIS) says, “No recent engagement has occurred on these proposals.” Can I ask the Minister: what was the analysis of that? Were they not needed, or did the vast majority of people flout the requirement to do so, to get a resource consent? That’s quite a valuable piece of information. Given the fact that we’ve limited information on current stakeholder and Treaty partner views—in the RIS—does the Minister have concerns that iwi and hapū may challenge councils when they do the monitoring and fail to take action, because the regulations are not in place to ensure protection of the environment? Has the Minister or has the Government done some analysis in that area?

The Minister referred to the fact that monitoring will continue. Well, what happens if there’s an identified failure to protect either indigenous biodiversity or water quality? Kicking the can down the road, as is being proposed by this Government, leaves councils ill-equipped to intervene. In fact, on intensive winter grazing, we had a taskforce, sparked by horrific images that went around the world of New Zealand pastoral farming systems—horrific images. In fact, North Island farmers who go South sometimes have had no idea of what is normal practice in Southland. Those images went out around the world. The inability of the councils to intervene gave rise to the Government’s intervention and attempt—it wasn’t perfect, as my colleague David Parker said—to bring in clear guidance and regulations for all councils.

Now, it’s not one-size-fits-all—and there were adjustments necessary—but, ultimately, kicking this can down the road, as is being proposed here, in both intensive winter grazing and in discharge into waterways, will mean that there’s likely to be a greater challenge when those standards are finally brought into place. Now, we will have national environmental standards for freshwater, but if they’re not being imposed, if they’re not being put in place, the degradation will just make it harder for future generations. The questions I have for the Ministers are the ones I’ve asked. Has the Government considered this? What will happen? What will councils be able to do when they clearly identify failure? And what is normal good practice that the vast majority of farmers will implement but a few or maybe more will not?

I move, That debate on this question now close.

I would like to respond to some comments directed at me by both the Minister and the chair of the select committee. I think the Minister misunderstands my question, and I think the chair of the select committee did as well, because when I was asking about monitoring in review and transitional provisions, I was not arguing the ins and outs of carrying capacity; I was not arguing the ins and outs of slope angles. What I was saying is we have some regulations in place at the moment; they are going to be taken away. What work is being undertaken, what work will the Minister agree to and tell this House about, to determine, once those regulations are taken away, the effect that taking those regulations away has on the environment? I’m not asking about general monitoring in review provisions in the Resource Management Act. The Resource Management Act is very poor at monitoring and review and enforcement and prosecution, which is why we changed it with the Natural and Built Environment Act, which, of course, this Government has repealed.

My question is—there’s a whole lot of regulation being removed—what work will this Government undertake to see the effects, to measure the effects, to analyse the effects of the removal of those regulations? If that work is undertaken and if it demonstrates that there are worse environmental impacts, will the Government then undertake to put back the appropriate regulations with the appropriate carrying capacity and the appropriate slope angles to ensure that the environment does not suffer any further degradation?

Now, I’m also interested in the Minister’s response to questions from my colleagues about indigenous biodiversity, where the Minister referred to a bog. I’m wondering what a bog is and if by using the term “bog” she means that there is no indigenous biodiversity in there. If she could clarify that point, that would be useful, because over the years many people have called wetlands full of indigenous biodiversity “swamps”, and I’m sure some people have referred to them as bogs as well. The point of this National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity and the identification of areas of indigenous biodiversity is to do just that: to look in the bog or the swamp or the wetland and to see what’s there, because often our indigenous biodiversity is small, and people who are not ecologists might not recognise the life that is within them.

If she could clarify what she means by a bog—if she doesn’t mean it as a wholly pejorative statement but was just referring to the fact that there are some areas that may have no indigenous biodiversity or very low indigenous biodiversity values, and that’s what she meant by bog—that would be helpful. Thank you.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Point of order. I’m informed that the member who gave the closing motion has already taken a call in this debate.

He can take more than one call in committee.

For a closing motion, Mr Chair?

That’s the advice I’ve received.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Schedule 1 set out on Amendment Papers 127 and 128 be agreed to.

The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to Schedule 1 be agreed to.

The tabled amendments to Schedule 1 in the name of the Hon Rachel Brooking are out of order as being in the same substance as an amendment previously not agreed to—that is Steve Abel’s amendment.

The question is that the Minister’s amendment to Schedule 2 set out on Amendment Paper 127 be agreed to.

The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to Schedule 2 Resource Management (National Environment Standards for Freshwater) Regulations 2020 be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Rachel Brooking’s tabled amendment to Schedule 2 Resource Management (National Environment Standards for Freshwater) Regulations 2020 be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Rachel Brooking’s tabled amendment to Schedule 2 Resource Management (Stock Exclusion) Regulations be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Rachel Brooking’s tabled amendment to Schedule 2 Resource Management (Infringement Offences) Regulations 1999 be agreed to.

The question is that Steve Abel’s tabled amendment to Schedule 2 National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 be agreed to.

The tabled amendment to Schedule 2 National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020 in the name of the Hon Rachel Brooking is out of order as being the same in substance as an amendment previously not agreed to.

The question is that Lan Pham’s tabled amendment to Schedule 2 be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Rachel Brooking’s tabled amendment to Schedule 2 National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity 2023 be agreed to.