But as the workload for council staff increased, councillors needed to "give them the confidence and give them the support they need" — and leave past mistakes in the past, she said.
After the council’s deputy chairman, Michael Laws, at the weekend said water plan changes were "stuffed up" by the council and were an institutional failure on its part, Ms Hobbs spoke against "constantly criticising the ORC’s current staff with mistakes from the past".
"Constantly saying there are mistakes breaks down trust," she said.
"If we are to have a viable, robust staff, we must keep their respect and learn to argue with them and learn the science as fast as we can — because some of our councillors are a wee bit weak on the science as well."
At the weekend, the council notified its decision on plan change 6AA, a plan change needed to defer the problematic provisions of 6A.
Effectively, the council decided to postpone bringing into force some provisions in water quality rules for rural discharges until 2026.
The Otago Daily Times reported in September that councillors were debating the issue, which sparked an angry response from Fish & Game that implementation was being moved so far back as to be obsolete.
At the weekend, Otago Fish & Game Council environmental officer Nigel Paragreen said he was "not at all surprised" by the decision.
"There were issues with the original plan change which clearly needed to be addressed," he said.
"Fish & Game is disappointed that it took so long to get to this point. Had serious effort been put into engaging with the community to implement 6A, the issues may have been picked up and addressed earlier."
Fish & Game’s attention would now turn to the so-called "omnibus plan change" and the eventual development of a new land and water regional plan, "which I expect will supersede anything to do with plan change 6A or 6AA", he said.
Fish & Game wanted to work with the council to ensure future decisions had "tangible benefits for the environment and will restore the region’s degraded ecosystems".
