Resource Management (Prohibition on Extraction of Freshwater for On-selling) Amendment Bill

Tēnā koe e Te Pīka. I move, That the Resource Management (Prohibition on Extraction of Freshwater for On-selling) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Environment Committee to consider the bill.

What a privilege to be here tonight, and not particularly forecasted, so I would like to admit to all of those from Wanganui who were planning on coming to this first reading that got changed. So the member’s bill that I’ve put through is actually really simple. It’s a bill that’s looking to amend the Resource Management Act 1991 to do what I think we’re all committed to, which is to protect fresh water from commercial extraction and to uphold rangatiratanga of tangata whenua. From a real simple perspective, it’s looking to close the door to a loophole that continues to let water be taken for free, packaged for profit, and sold offshore, while our people in our communities are having to go through some real hassles and stress with respect to the quality of the water.

Just a little bit of context, this bill was actually born in Wanganui. It was lobbied and advocated for by some of our well-known leaders: Ken Mair, Sister Makareta, and obviously a lot of our iwi, Te Runanga o Tupoho. It was a real honour to be able to have the privilege to put a bill from those in the community that have come up with a solution.

The problem that it’s looking to solve is that they have a consent that’s been awarded by Horizons Regional Council to extract 750,000 litres of groundwater per week from an aquifer that they believe is extremely stressed. Now, the community are not just tangata whenua; 4,000, in fact, within that community have actively lobbied and supported that there be the halting of this particular activity. There was a submission process where 37 submitted; 33 were opposed and four were in favour, but it’s continued on.

This isn’t an isolated situation that we see around Whanganui; in fact, there are lots of marae that are having to ship in water. There are lots of towns—rural townships—that are having real water-quality issues, and their angst is actually just to work together as a community to make sure their own supply is OK before they start shipping things off. So they have appealed to use tangata whenua—which is really awesome to see that Te Tiriti and tangata whenua are being used to protect and help a community address their needs.

I just want to remind the House of the state of the water in Aotearoa—and I’m not pointing fingers at any particular party because I think it’s been an ongoing problem for consecutive Governments for years—we have about 178 local authorities; 67 councils who face significant challenges meeting drinking-water standards; 60 percent are under target for water supply; only 33 percent of targets for the safety of drinking water are being met at the moment, down from 48 percent the year before.

So while we’ve got this water degradation continuing, we’ve also got the over-extraction; we’ve also got commercial bottling; we’ve also got the use of plastics, which I think we can agree that all of our voters are opposed to that; and a whole lot of other run-off. I think the real issue—and when we’re talking about 2025 now, where there are, thankfully, a lot of our councils and regional councils who represent and recognise hapū and iwi as kaitiaki for the whole community—is article 2. I know that this House is really savvy with Te Tiriti because it gets talked about a lot. Article 2 recognises and protects iwi, hapū rights to their lands, forests, fisheries, and resources, like wai. There are much better experts than me to talk about te mana o te wai. We’ve heard it from Annette Sykes, we’ve heard it from Dr Mahina-a-rangi Baker, we’ve heard it from Tina Porou. But to put it into perspective, what we are seeing is an anxiety from those in the communities who are having decisions made about them without them, and we’re wanting to see the fact that te mana o te wai is something that we all are part of.

Te mana o te wai, in a really simple way, is to say that the first right of water goes to water, the second right of water goes to our ability to be healthy and to function well as humans, and the last right of water goes to our ability to sustain ourselves as long as our first right of water is protected—pretty simple—and what we’re worried about is that this has taken years and years of concluding that that is a great a framework to work by that we all worked together towards. This bill is upholding the kaupapa of te mana o te wai. It’s protecting fresh water for public good and it affirms our responsibility together under Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It’s a step forward. It’s actually not assuming or usurping the mana of those that are currently going through processes, as we know with Ngāi Tahu, as we know with Waikato, and as we know of the aspirations of the tino rangatiratanga of many of our iwi for the wellbeing of Aotearoa, of all New Zealanders. So I want to make it really clear that this is a step. It’s just to hold the ground while communities are trying to sit there and say, “This is how we want to live well.”

I guess one of the other things, as I sort of share and reflect, for many of those who couldn’t be here today, some of the stories that were shared, sister Margarita—and I don’t know if many of you here know her, but she’s one of those aunties that points a finger a lot, too. Her whole aspiration was to actually worry about the future generations of all our mokopuna.

So, in this instance, we’ve got communities that are feeling that they’re not able to make decisions. Even when they do participate in the process, their democracy is actually thrown out the window, and we’ve got people there who are taxpayers and ratepayers. Most of those 4,000 people are not my voters, and I want to be also really clear that they feel that they are being taken over by officials and corporations behind closed doors that are guided by legislation that’s still protects everyone else but them. They are going to be left there and will probably end up having to ship in water because it’s all going to be used up. So it’s a genuine fear, and I guess there’s also a genuine sense of urgency. These humble communities—some politicians have probably never been around them, but they are humble, humble communities that enjoy looking after each other, and I think that, while we see the Resource Management Act reforms, there is an angst that this Government is going to rewrite things in a way that’s actually going to remove te mana o te wai.

So this bill, I guess, is about recognising and validating the genuine fears that these communities have—again, they’re not all my voters—and also making sure that there is a significant opportunity to address and honour Te Tiriti; honour the fact that we should be putting a moratorium on these kaupapa that are going to affect them without having good legislation and protection, and honour the fact that there are values behind what it is that these community people do. There are many who are also elderly and who are really concerned that no one should be profiting from wai. While we’ve got Governments that are saying that no one owns it, we’ve still got a whole lot of people making profit from it.

Some of the things that we are really concerned about are that, because we have seen new systems coming and going, and our people in the communities are having to live with the changes that are being proposed, what they’re really wanting to see is an Aotearoa—a New Zealand—where everyone can have certainty on what is going to be provided and what is coming out of their tap, and some people in our communities—and a lot in Te Tai Hauāuru, Patea included—are not able to turn their taps on. So I think that this is about trying to make sure that we not only pay respects to the many communities, as we saw in Wanganui, but also pay respect to the fact that we still have ongoing battles of te mana o te wai and of Te Tiriti for many of our iwi who have great big plans to work with Governments in the future, not only on how to protect and sustain wai but on how we make sure that any businesses that we create around our natural resources are first and foremost planned around what’s best for all of New Zealand.

I think when we look at the opportunities before us with this bill, it is proposing a solution to a really obvious problem, and that is that many of the councils are making decisions that aren’t representing what these communities want, and they are relying on us in central government to bring about some legislation, some amendments, and some addressing of what it is that can make sure that they, as taxpayers, ratepayers, and voters, are going to have a final say on what and where is being extracted in their backyard. Obviously, the bottling and the plastic—this is not about anything else other than pure, raw water in its primary sector. It is not anything that’s had anything added to it—that was just getting too complicated. But I’m happy to answer any questions and I’m happy to also address any amendments, if we get the goodwill and the support to take it through to a select committee.

My hope is that either way, we continue to look at solutions for communities that are struggling, particularly these rural towns and cities. Kia ora rā.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Look, I’d, firstly, just like to congratulate the member Debbie Ngarewa-Packer on having her bill drawn from the ballot. I would like to also acknowledge water—and I think we all agree it is a very precious resource that we have here in New Zealand.

But we will oppose the Resource Management (Prohibition on Extraction of Freshwater for On-selling) Amendment Bill. The reason for this is that sending this bill to select committee right now would be a distraction from the very, very important job that we have at the moment of reforming the Resource Management Act (RMA), and, of course, this is a very large piece of work that we have committed to as a Government. Of course, if this bill did go through to select committee, it would involve reprioritising officials’ time, resources, and energy. We’ve got a real priority at the moment, as a Government, to reform the RMA. We’ve got phase three, which we have, obviously, gone through the process already of repealing the first bill and then, of course, are bringing through the fast-track legislation, and, of course, the resource management bill that we had before the Primary Production Committee at the end of last year, and then currently in the Environment Committee at the moment we’ve got RMA reform that we are navigating through.

This is because our Government is absolutely laser-focused on driving economic growth and opening up more development across New Zealand, and that is why we are undertaking such significant reform, because the current Resource Management Act is 900 pages of red tape, bureaucracy, and handbrakes, which is really restricting growth in New Zealand, and it’s really created a culture of no. But we are saying it is time to say yes. It is time to say yes to economic growth, yes to housing development, yes to building infrastructure, and yes to renewable energy. This is where we need to go. This is being progressive in New Zealand, and that is why we are committed to overhauling the resource management system.

Currently, our consenting landscape is incredibly, incredibly challenging. It’s a real handbrake to growth. New Zealand’s resource management system governs how we interact with the environment, of course. For many years, I think many of us across this House would agree, it has been broken. It achieves the worst of both worlds: stifling development and failing to protect the environment as well. So our current planning system is one that causes infrastructure deficit in this country.

So we’re taking action. We are enabling a system which will repeal the entire RMA system, which we plan to have introduced to Parliament later this year, that has been, obviously, acknowledged by our amazing Minister responsible for RMA Reform. The driving force behind these reforms is a practical enablement of development. It is absolutely possible to build the infrastructure that New Zealand needs but protect the environment at the same time. So to get things moving, we have introduced the fast-track approvals system, as I’ve already mentioned. Consenting is just taking far too long. It’s costly, it’s inefficient, and the fast-track regime allows infrastructure with significant regional and national benefit—

Steve Abel: What about the bill?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, I’m just going to bring the member back to the bill.

CATHERINE WEDD: Yeah, that’s right. The reason I am talking about the different processes within the RMA reform is because I am coming to the fact that this bill would hold a lot of that up, and it’s just not a priority at the moment. That’s why I’m actually just outlining where we’re going with RMA, because I think that we just need to understand that, to understand why we feel that this bill is not a bill that we would take to select committee at the moment.

Of course water security is very, very important, as the member has already mentioned. We absolutely agree with that. If we’re going to continue to grow what we’re growing in New Zealand and producing what we need to produce in New Zealand, we do need water, but not water in the context of the bill that the member has presented. We need to look at water security, absolutely, in New Zealand, and that is in the way of water storage. The reason we need to look at water storage is because, as the member has, rightly, pointed out, aquifers are overallocated, and so the reason we need to create more water—and obviously, it is logical to store water in the winter, when we have a lot of water, and use it in the summer, in areas like Hawke’s Bay, where we are prone to drought. But within the fast-track legislation that was brought through under the Resource Management Act, one of the projects in that piece of legislation was the Tukituki water storage scheme, which is in my own electorate, actually, in Hawke’s Bay. Of course, we want water security in Hawke’s Bay. As the member has pointed out, they need it in their own area, as well. That is why, on this side of the House, we recognise the importance of water security, and so we have invested $3 million in that water storage scheme to get it up and running.

Of course, water, it really does unleash the economic potential that we see in regions. It gives us water security, but it also enables diversification of land use and it, ultimately, creates jobs and opportunities, which is what we want to see. Of course, the fast-track legislation, which was part of the RMA reform, which is very, very important, also opens up more infrastructure development across New Zealand, which, of course, is very, very important as well.

Steve Abel: Point of order, Madam Speaker. You pointed out that the member has not been speaking to the bill, and I think that you’ve given a huge amount of leeway for her to return to the bill. But she keeps referring to other pieces of legislation that the Government is proposing and is not able, it seems, to speak to the actual bill before her, which is concerning, given it’s about protecting the environment and she is the chair of the Environment Committee.

Hon Willie Jackson: Would you kick her out, please, Madam Chair?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, I’m not going to kick her out. I’m not going to comply with that request, but to the member’s point of order, it is about fresh water. Water has been mentioned quite a bit, but, actually, it is about the extraction of fresh water.

CATHERINE WEDD: That is right, and absolutely. But it is also about RMA reform, because that is what this bill obviously would like to do. And, of course, as I’ve mentioned several times, we are very committed to reforming the RMA, which, within those reforms, includes water reform as well. But we don’t agree with the way that this member would like to reform water within the RMA, and so that is why—

Hon Member: Nearly there.

CATHERINE WEDD: I am absolutely coming back to the bill, in terms of water. It is about water security, because, of course, it is important that we do address freshwater management. That is really important. As part of our RMA reforms, we are addressing freshwater management allocation and, of course, Māori rights and interests in fresh water, which is what the member has also spoken about—all key parts of the new resource management system, which is being designed, obviously, to take into account all stakeholders when it comes to water. And, of course, that includes Māori rights, Treaty settlements, and iwi interests as well. We’re already working with iwi; farmers, of course, because our primary sector is very important when it comes to water. Of course, we cannot grow the produce that we want to export to the world when we do not have that very crucial water security.

So, in terms of the way we use water and the consents that we enable, and the allocation of this very precious and important resource, of course, it is very, very important when it comes to the RMA. As I’ve already mentioned, we are already looking at the way water consents are allocated, water is managed, and how our primary sector is managing water as well, with freshwater management plans on farms. Of course, this has already been discussed quite intensely on the Primary Production Committee, and we’re having many of those discussions at the moment in the Environment Committee. So the issue of water has certainly been well traversed at the moment across much of the RMA reform, which is already in front of the Environment Committee at the moment. Of course, I’m the chair of that select committee, so I’m navigating a lot of those reforms through, and we are looking forward to the two big RMA bills that will be coming to our committee later this year. So, with that, I do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. What two different speeches we’ve heard. I do want to touch on them, and I appreciate a little bit of concern about some of the speeches wandering off the topic of the bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Getting on the topic was a bit difficult at times, too.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: It is really important that we hear what the member who’s promoting this bill said, and I want to congratulate that member and acknowledge that she did want, I hear, a busload of people, at least, from Whanganui to come down to be here for this debate, because this is a very important issue for them—

Simon Court: We’ll have to close the public gallery. You know how they behave. You can’t trust them, and Whaea Deb invites a busload.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: —but with all the different timing issues that have beset Parliament this week, they are not. So I do want to acknowledge them and their care for their water. That is such an important thing.

But what we heard in the first speech is the importance of te mana o te wai. We heard that there is a real worry that an aquifer is drying up and that things need to change.

Simon Court: Well, give them a bottle of water! I mean, that’s the whole point.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: In the response from the Government member, what we heard is, “Well, don’t worry. We’re changing all the laws.” But what are they changing them to? They are moving in the total opposite direction to looking after our water, which is what this bill is about, Mr Court.

Now, it is important to know that the Acts that we’ve just heard about from the chair of Environment Committee—

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi: Point of order, Madam Speaker. If I may, I’ve been listening to this nattering here, but they’re insults really. So Simon Court refers to Debbie bringing her people from Whanganui when it was referred to and was saying, “Oh, yes, Debbie Packer, will have to close the gallery because she can’t be trusted.”

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s not good enough, Mr Court. I think it’s worth an apology, please. Stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Simon Court: I apologise.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. Carry on. And before the member speaks again, there’s a lot of barrages in the House. Interjection is fine, but I heard quite a lot of barrages, which is why I didn’t pick up on some of the comments.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Thank you, Madam Speaker. So I think what I was talking about was the importance of te mana o te wai and what this Government has done already in one of its pieces of legislation, and that was the Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Act. And what that was was an ability to change our water regulations, our essential freshwater package, the national policy statement for fresh water, to get rid of te mana o te wai. That is what we’ve heard that the Government’s position is. This bill said te mana o te wai doesn’t relate to consents, but this is a significant shift. We’ve had te mana o te wai in our legislation—well, in our secondary legislation—now for a long time, with National Governments as well as Labour Governments, but it’s this Government at the moment that is saying, “No, no. We don’t want te mana o te wai.”, for some reason.

Grant McCallum: It’s the order of priority. You know it. It’s a hierarchy.

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: Oh, we’re hearing, “We don’t like that hierarchy. We don’t think that the health of the water is the most important thing.”, from the other side of the House. If that water is not healthy, then how can humans drink that water? Of course there has to be healthy water for humans to be able to drink it. And then, of course, we think that the next stage is that then you can have your consumptive uses and make some money out of that water. How might you make money out of water? Well, we heard from the chair of the select committee that you might irrigate land. You might do a whole different range of things with how you use that water as the consumptive use, but that has to come after you’re protecting those water bodies. And that was one of the things that the first speaker spoke about. She also spoke about the importance of being able to turn your tap and for there to be drinkable water coming out of it.

Again, I go back to the things that this Government has done. They talk about infrastructure and how bringing back the Resource Management Act (RMA) and taking several years to then replace it with something else is somehow going to benefit this country’s infrastructure. We had three waters ready to go. All the legislation was through. What happened? It was repealed. What was that legislation about? That legislation was about pipes, and it was about treatment stations, and it was about all New Zealanders being able to turn their tap and have good, clean, fresh drinking water—

Grant McCallum: Why didn’t you pass it?

Hon RACHEL BROOKING: I’m hearing why didn’t we pass it? Those Acts were passed, and you, this Government, repealed those Acts, just as they repealed the Natural and Built Environment Act.

We heard from the member of the committee, “Oh, we’re going to repeal the RMA and do some things for Māori rights.” Well, the Natural and Built Environment Act did. It substantively changed where the RMA is at, where mana whenua were to be consulted with, and put them at the table, and what did this Government do? They repealed that. Is there any chance that any RMA replacement legislation will do anything like that? No, there is not.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Fresh water is life. Apparently we all agree on that, yet we take it for granted every day and we’re continuing to do that, it sounds like, in the House tonight. It is so refreshing to have a bill on the Table that actually prioritises water, that actually puts in place the fundamental concept of te mana o te wai that we so desperately need in this House. I do want to address, hearing from the Environment Committee chair, that we have all these things going on at the Environment Committee, of which I’m a part—fast-track, Resource Management Act reform, the likes—and that those are the priorities. But the priorities are simply wrong. All of those pieces of legislation are taking te taiao—our environment—backwards. It is hugely disappointing that they cannot see in this bill one small but very significant step in actually turning over a new leaf in this absurd and dangerous approach where we as humans have this extractive, depletive, destructive approach to our environment and it harms not only our environment but particularly ourselves.

I want to give a little bit of context around particularly the human health aspects of plastic pollution. In New Zealand, single-use plastic bottles sold here every year total 1 billion. All the medical evidence, if we paid any attention to it, shows us that plastic is throughout the entirety of our bodies, our kids’ bodies, and the entirety of our environment. Now, I think that’s disgusting, I think it’s really sad, and I think it shows how limited we humans are in terms of not actually addressing the very real serious problems and, in fact, filling our actions and agendas with things that actually continue to harm ourselves and our planet.

I want to acknowledge my colleague Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and thank her for bringing this bill to the House. I want to also acknowledge Ngā Hapū ō Tūpoho. Again, really sad that they couldn’t be part of this tonight. I want to shout out as well to the other hapū and iwi across the country who have been resisting commercial water bottling consents for many years, including Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngai Tūāhuriri, and Ngāi Tahu.

I feel like it needs to be stated that getting ourselves out of this mess that we’ve created is complex. This is one part of it, but let’s just get this to select committee. Let’s get this to select committee to work out these issues and its application, because what we consistently find ourselves in, in this country, are these perverse situations where, for example, with recent summers in Hawke’s Bay, residents in Napier and Hastings were asked to conserve water while water bottling operations continued undisrupted. We have situations in the likes of Canterbury, with nitrates, where pregnant and breastfeeding mums have to rely on bottled water because they can’t trust the water coming out of their taps. Again, when there are water restrictions in Canterbury, then the bottled-water companies do not face any restrictions.

So there’s a lot we could unpack. I would ask the House to really consider taking on these kinds of issues and actually resolving them, instead of this ridiculous, surface-level, back-on-track nonsense. Let’s confront the actual issues of the health of ourselves, our communities, our people, and our environment, and this is a really key part of that. Thank you.

This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.