This week the Otago Regional Council was run roughshod over/forced to see sense (delete depending on your preference) when the government pushed through the "Kick The ORC Where It Lives Act", otherwise known an amendment papers 127 and 128 to the Resource Management (Freshwater and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.
The ORC cannot say that it did not see this coming; readers may recall that a few weeks ago this column highlighted Resource Minister Shane Jones’ not at all veiled threat that if the ORC did not accede to the government’s will that trouble would be coming to a town near it.
And so it came to pass at 1.30pm on Tuesday, when the government issued a media statement under the seemingly innocuous headline "Government provides clarity to farmers and councils on freshwater plans".
While not mentioning the ORC at all, the government said that its aim was to "restrict councils’ ability to notify freshwater plans before the gazettal of the replacement National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management".
Not at all coincidentally, that was exactly what the ORC was scheduled to meet and do the very next day. For the avoidance of any doubt, the amendment paper specifically stated that the Resource Management Act would be amended so that any council "must not publicly notify the freshwater planning instrument" — that being what the meeting was likely to do.
This has been quite the saga, one which the Otago Daily Times has followed closely. It might seem technical, procedural and political — because it is — but it is also inherently about just how polluted Otago’s fresh water is allowed to be, an issue which affects everyone.
It is also an issue on which both sides actually have a fair point, not that either would concede that to the other.
As the law stood at the beginning of the week, councils such as the ORC were obliged to prepare a plan setting out how they were to meet the national standards for freshwater quality. Each council needs a statement because each has its own unique set of circumstances to manage: some are much more rural than others, and an area which is highly rural may not necessarily have the same mix of farming types as another.
But, in general terms, the government wants freshwater to be healthy water because, well, why wouldn’t you? But just how stringent those regulations should be is where the battle begins.
The existing rules are too tough, many critics allege, and the parties which now make up the government won many thousands of votes due to their promises to review them.
The government has yet to replace the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management; it is planning to carry out public consultation before it does. But replace it it will, a point which Environment Minister, National Invercargill MP Penny Simmonds, has been at pains to point out to the ORC in repeated correspondence aimed at stopping it from trying to notify its freshwater plan.
However, what was likely a majority of ORC councillors wanted to push ahead regardless: some for blatant political reasons, others because they felt that the ORC had no choice but to do so because that was what the law as written was telling it that it had to do.
But not any more it isn’t despite some spirited opposition from southern opposition MPs. Dunedin Labour MP Rachel Brooking, fresh off the plane from an Inter-Parliamentary Union assembly in Switzerland, was straight back in to the fray, saying that she wanted to try to work through the Bill in a methodical way — in seven calls during the committee stages and then in a final reading speech she certainly achieved that.
Ms Brooking also let rip in the general debate: "For the past, I don’t know, 25 years or so, I’ve spent a lot of time on the Resource Management Act, and I think I understand what is happening here. What is happening is a disgrace," she said.
"Retrospective clauses should only be used in really rare circumstances where there is a very strong justification for doing so, and all that I can see in terms of justification here is the government saying, ‘We don’t want you, democratically elected regional council, to notify your plan in accordance with the existing laws, because we’re going to change the rules at some point, and the only reason we wouldn’t want you to continue with it is because we want more pollution’."
Her Labour colleague Ingrid Leary called the whole process "shameful and shameless", while Taieri Green list MP Scott Willis claimed it was "a throwing out of localism and something that looks very chaotic and disruptive and actually will create incredible uncertainty for environmental outcomes for our rural communities".
Meanwhile, Ms Simmonds was calmly repeating "a short pause of a matter of months or possibly up to a year" like a mantra as she meditated on the Opposition’s displeasure.
"The degradation that has occurred for some of our waterways has happened over decades, and we simply cannot expect that this can be undone overnight," Ms Simmonds said.
"There is critical work that has to occur, but those changes will come about by the people on the front line that are doing the fencing, the planting, the innovation in their effluent disposal and the different practices in their farming. It happens because people on the ground do the work, not because a government writes something down."
Southern government MPs weighed in for the defence. Taieri New Zealand First MP Mark Patterson, who as an Otago farmer has first-hand experience of water regulation, said there was "a massive sigh of relief going around rural Otago today for this measure".
Meanwhile, Southland National MP Joseph Mooney — "To require regional councils to continue to work on implementing a national policy statement that is going to change is, frankly, not helpful to ratepayers and not helpful to residents of our regions" — and Waitaki National MP Miles Anderson (a farmer) — "this is a great piece of legislation and I welcome it" — also chipped in.
But in the end, to quote a former ORC councillor, the council fought the law and the law won.
