Those happy few have been considering submissions on the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill, the legislative double act which the government hopes will supplant the long and unlamented Resource Management Act.
The committee, with various of our local MPs in virtual attendance, sat as a whole on Monday and Tuesday and split into two subcommittees on Wednesday to try to give many voices — including several southerners — their say on the Bills.
Making the most of his time early on Monday morning was Palmerston resident and retired water resources engineer Dugald MacTavish, a name well-known in southern environmental circles.
In his written submissions MacTavish had already called the suppositions behind the Bills "profoundly wrong" and said that he opposed them both outright, and he was not about to hold back in person.
He slammed the "flawed mind-set" that growth was always good, and decried the framing of the Bills, which he felt cast the decision to build or not build as being one which pitted the environment against the economy.
The "endless growth agenda" needed to be considered against the need for humanity to live within its limits. When it was, it was found wanting he said.
The New Zealand Conservation Authority was up that afternoon, its submission being fronted by its chairman — and Te Rūnaka o Ōtākou upoko — Edward Ellison.
Unsurprisingly, in an economy versus environment showdown, it too was on the side of the latter: its written submission called the Natural Environment Bill (NEB) "ill thought out, unclear and rushed".
Specifically, Ellison wished to take issue with section 128 of the NEB, which relates to wildlife approvals. This is the government’s attempts to deal with an issue which beset it last year, when it wanted to build an important road in the close vicinity of what the local critters no doubt considered was their important habitat.
Questions arose then as to whether the government’s chosen mechanism to address the issue passed muster, hence s128 specifies that a natural resource permit (the new name for a resource consent) may include a wildlife approval — the lawful authority for an act or omission that would otherwise be an offence . . . such as building a road over a nesting ground.
This, Ellison said, was a significant change which was not in the best interests of wildlife and a detriment to conservation values: "The NEB does not contain the same protective purpose as the Wildlife Act, or a similar Treaty provision."
Given the high number of endangered native species in New Zealand, and what Ellison called a "rushed" consultation period — particularly with iwi — there needed to be greater regard for the needs of taonga species he said.
The following day Dunedin water consultant Richard Allibone had his say as part of a submission on behalf of the New Zealand Freshwater Sciences Society, of which he is vice-president. Boiling a complicated issue down to a single phrase, he argued that if you reduce protections for fresh water that could spell its doom.
"If you put the limits high, then if you allow what you might think is a reasonable amount of contamination for economic gain, then when you want to reverse it not only do you have the technical issue of is it reversible and how much is it going to cost you, you have an economic cost to the people who have invested in say, irrigation or stock, and it is a very difficult community process to roll back things," he said.
‘If you start with relatively restrictive consent limits you can always raise the over time when you can see you have capacity to take more . . . that is what we experienced in places like the Manuherekia, rolling back limits when there are vested interests in keeping them there is incredibly difficult."
What he did not — but might have — added is that it is equally as difficult trying to maintain limits in the face of vested interests, as this committee process is likely to demonstrate.
