Environment Minister Penny Simmonds and Resource Management Act Reform Minister Chris Bishop received advice in March that included five legislative options to prevent notification of freshwater plans.
Councillors were unaware of this and there was some shock when the government intervened on October 22 — the day before the Otago Regional Council was set to notify its plan — although several viewed the move as inevitable.
A majority of the council wanted to get wheels in motion for proposed stricter rules ahead of completion of the new national rule book.
In the end, decision-making was taken away from the council.
Several councillors suggested a March 5 ministerial briefing showed this might have long been the government’s plan.
Cr Elliot Weir said the contents of the briefing were both incredible and ultimately unsurprising.
"This information confirms the ministers lied to our faces about their intentions, and deliberately kept us in the dark," Cr Weir said.
Cr Alexa Forbes said she now thought her "trust in the good faith of the ministers was misplaced".
"I had previously understood that Minister Simmonds, while preferring we delayed the plan, would respect our decision to go ahead [if the council favoured this].
"Her preference for delay was presented as just that," Cr Forbes said.
It turned out "we never had the autonomy to make the decision to notify our own plan".
"This briefing indicates that ministers were considering taking that decision out of councils’ hands all along."
Ms Simmonds said the government had signalled clearly to councils early this year it was replacing a national policy statement on freshwater management and the deadline for notification of regional plans would be extended until the end of 2027.
"The government has acted in good faith, meeting on several occasions with the Otago Regional Council conveying our strong preference that they did not notify their plan," she said.
Ms Simmonds said the government had recently provided more certainty by pausing the ability for regional councils to notify their plans until either the national policy had been developed or the end of next year, whichever came sooner.
This would ensure councils did not notify plans that would quickly need to be amended, she said.
Messages from ministers had been clear, he said.
The ministerial briefing included what were described as "soft" actions, such as meeting councillors.
"The soft options were ignored, so they implemented a legislative hard option," Cr Kelliher said.
He knew ministers had powers to act and "of course the biggest concern is the risk to democracy by continuing to defy current [government] direction".
Cr Michael Laws said ministers had adopted a softly-softly approach and they hoped common sense would prevail.
They were faced with a "recalcitrant" council and so had to go down the legislative route, he said.
Council chairwoman Gretchen Robertson said Ms Simmonds had been quoted as recently as October 3 saying "when to progress or delay is ultimately the decision for each council to make" and councils would be "weighing the costs and benefits, as well as government direction of travel".
"Ultimately, for Otago’s people, the timing of plan notification matters less than making sure the end result is effective outcomes — sustaining healthy water and livelihoods," Cr Robertson said.
