Drawn

A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn:

• Resource Management (Prohibition on Extraction of Freshwater for On-selling) Amendment Bill (Debbie Ngarewa-Packer)

The bill does exactly what it says on the label, and would effectively end the rapacious water-bottling industry which is sucking us dry and robbing us blind.

It was another full ballot, with 75 bills this week.

Reported back

The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee has rubberstamped that, so Aucklanders should prepare to have their water stolen and privatised out from under them (and so should the rest of us).

But there are more disquieting aspects to National's drumhead rubberstamp process. I'd submitted on the bill specifically about its secrecy provisions, which appeared to inadvertently override the OIA and LGOIMA and allow water entities to charge for information they would currently have to make public for free. The Ombudsman seemed to share my concerns on charging, and in their submission recommended an amendment to say that it did not override the LGOIMA and OIA. Of course, this was ignored. In their departmental report, DIA says that it is "not the intention" to override the OIA/LGOIMA, that "[w]e consider that it could not do so without express wording to that effect", and so no amendment is necessary. Unfortunately, that explicit wording already exists in the LGOIMA / OIA savings clauses, and the Ombudsman explicitly pointed this out - but weirdly their views are not even mentioned.

(DIA takes a similar line on section 41, which forbids agencies from using shared information other than specific purposes, but the Ombudsman is more hopeful here. Where previously they would have seen this as an over-ride, now they're talking about it as merely suggesting a presumption of confidentiality and the possibility of withholding under existing grounds - a position which is quite hopeful for other clauses).

But the real problem for the committee is the Henry VIII clause, which allows certain parts of the law to be repealed by Order in Council. The Regulations Review Committee quite rightly got very shitty about this, pointing out that it is improper to allow Ministers to amend or repeal statute by royal diktat. Naturally, they were ignored by National. Their excuse?

Further, we note that an Order in Council made under this provision would be secondary legislation subject to Parliamentary presentation and disallowance processes, in accordance with the Legislation Act 2019.

Which sounds fine. Until you read down to the schedule, and see the committee has snuck in a consequential amendment which specifically exempts the Henry VIII clause from the very presentation and disallowance processes they are hiding behind (you can see here what they are amending). Its not clear why they have done this - there is no rationale in the select committee report, or the departmental report - but it gives the impression that the committee are either two-faced liars operating in complete bad faith, or incompetent morons who have no idea what they are doing. And neither is a very comforting explanation.

More democratic abuse from National

"Abuse of democracy" seems to be the emerging theme of this government, with bills rammed through under urgency or given pathetically short select committee submission times seemingly designed to limit and undermine public engagement. And today we have another case, with the public given just nine days to submit on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill.

The bill makes significant changes to water regulation. It would force councils to amalgamate their water services and prepare them for privatisation while undermining public consultation rights over such decisions (and allowing the Minister to just appoint someone to impose their preferred outcome by diktat). It would steal Watercare from Auckland. And an amendment paper also being considered would gut water quality standards for wastewater - basically, allowing councils to dump shit in rivers. These are big changes, and they deserve proper consideration and input from the public. But National doesn't want that, so its strapped the chicken and given the bill an arbitrarily short report-back date, precisely to prevent it.

This is how National governs. Over us and without us. They think this country belongs to them, not us; that decisions should be made by a narrow elite of bribed former businessmen, without any input from the people who are affected. Basically, a return to the pre-MMP "elected dictatorship". Luxon is used to that style of government, because he's a corporate manager, and corporations are essentially dictatorships. But a country is not a corporation, any more than it is a household. This is not the style of government kiwis are used to, and its not a style we will accept. And we need to throw Luxon and his gang of dictators out of office at the first opportunity.

Queenstown was keeping rates low

On Monday, we learned that Queenstown, one of the country's largest tourist destinations, suddenly had to boil its water to avoid cryptosporidium. Now, it looks like it will last for months. Why? The usual reason: they'd been keeping rates low:

Queenstown could face months of having to boil water until treatment plants are upgraded with barriers against cryptosporidium, the mayor says.

[...]

National water regulator Taumata Arowai has served a compliance order on Queenstown Lakes District Council for its Two Mile water treatment plant, which does not have a protozoa barrier to stop cryptosporidium entering the water supply.

A boil water notice must stay in place until it is upgraded or switched to another supply.

The area's other treatment plant, Kelvin Heights, had a protozoa barrier but there were doubts it was working, the regulator said. Once it was satisfied it was operating the boil water notice for the plant could be lifted.

Clean drinking water is an absolute basic for any town, and a legal requirement. But Queenstown has decided not to comply with that requirement, in order to cut costs. And now they're paying the price.

On the plus side, if this makes Queenstown a less desirable tourist destination (because who wants to go to a place that makes you sick?), it will reduce emissions. So maybe some good will come of the council's short-sighted Boomer-pandering penny-pinching after all.

Entrenching entrenchment

Last week, Parliament passed a rare entrenchment clause, protecting water assets from being sold by future governments without a referendum. As a supporter of anti-privatisation as a constitutional principle, I don't really have a problem with this - the supermajority which passed it represents a broad consensus across Aotearoa, and such supermajorities should be able to do things. But some people do, and as a result Labour is chickenshitting out, claiming (falsely) that they had no idea what they were voting for (which isn't the excuse they seem to think it is), and sending the issue back to Parliament's Business Committee to be "resolved" (which means repealed).

(I recognise that there are issues with passing such provisions under urgency, and that's on Labour for choosing to do their bill that way. As for the opposition being unaware of it until after it happened, that reflects as badly on them as the government's false claims of not being aware of what they voted for. Or are we really expected to accept that we pay MP's the big bucks to pay no attention whatsoever to the legislation they are voting on?)

Meanwhile, in all of the excuses and whining, the actual issue of how to protect public assets from being looted by the government of the day is being lost. But writing on Public Address, Graeme Edgeler has a suggestion there: a referendum on asset protection:

If you are someone who thinks public ownership of water infrastructure is so important that the government should act to entrench it, you do not need to convince National to agree with you. You need to convince the public (that shouldn’t be difficult: public ownership of water infrastructure is very popular!). Because there are two ways to entrench a law in New Zealand, and both have been used: the entrenched parts of the Electoral Act 1956 were entrenched by Parliament a supermajority of MPs (in fact, all of them) voted for it. But the Electoral Act 1993 isn’t law because Parliament voted for it, it’s law because the public voted for it: the entrenched bits of that are actually entrenched because there was a binding referendum.

If you are a Gordon or a Max, or a Eugenie, that’s your solution. Don’t settle for 60% protection. Go into the next election with the policy: if we cannot get 75% support in the House of Representatives to protect the continued public ownership of water infrastructure, we will hold a binding referendum on it, requiring a future Parliament to either agree by a 75% majority to sell water assets, or to come back to the public in a further binding referendum.

Which is good, but invites the question: why wait? Why not have the referendum at the next election instead? Because an easy fix for this is to amend the commencement clause so that entrenched protection for water assets only takes effect when backed by a referendum held under the Referenda (Postal Voting) Act 2000.

It is however an excellent suggestion for the broader issue. Because water assets aren't the only public assets in danger of being looted by future governments and sold off corruptly to their cronies. There are also state-owned enterprises, mixed-ownership model companies, crown-owned companies, and assorted other entities. All of these should be protected. And the way to do it is by an anti-privatisation law, backed by a referendum, which protects and entrenches public ownership and limits the ability to divest without a similar referendum or supermajority. And obviously, I think the Greens should offer such a bill among their policies at the next election, and demand it as part of the price for any coalition (I'd like to see it from Labour too, but that would require them to deliver on their public rhetoric, and my expectations on that front are low).

Constitutional scholars say "parliament can't bind its successors". But there's a power in Aotearoa which can bind future parliaments: us. And we should do it.

Entrenching anti-privatisation

Last week, Labour put the House into urgency to push on with its legislative agenda. Part of this included the committee stage of the three waters bill, and something unusual happened: they passed an entrenchment clause protecting the bill's anti-privatisation clause - meaning that a future government would need the support of a 60% majority in the House, or a referendum, in order to privatise water assets.

Constitutional scholars were outraged as this eroded our constitutional norm of entrenchment. And Labour being Labour, it looks like they're doing their usual chickenshit thing and reversing course because someone criticised them, rather than standing up for what they voted for. And I think they should stand up for it, because this is an important battle and there's no better chance than this to establish a constitutional norm against privatisation.

In case anyone has forgotten, successive hard-right governments in the 1980's and 1990's betrayed Aotearoa and sold off state assets to their mates at bargain basement prices, looting the state to enrich a clique of connected businessmen. The privatisations were corrupt, many of the former state assets were then asset stripped and run into the ground, and several had to be bailed out (some multiple times), or bought back so that we would have functioning infrastructure. This exercise in right-wing looting established privatisation as a dirty word in New Zealand politics. Many New Zealanders regard it as a crime, and something that should not be allowed to happen ever again. That's difficult in our constitutional system, and our way of doing it is effectively a constitutional warning sign: an entrenchment clause. While on the face of it an entrenchment clause says "you can't repeal this without a supermajority", the clause can itself simply be repealed (or in some cases bypassed by altering things elsewhere). So its actual force lies in the respect politicians have for it.

(Arguably, we don't do this often enough. The BORA is not entrenched, and has already been altered by a government to gut the right to a jury trial simply to save money. MMP (as opposed to its FPP bits) is not entrenched either. Or the list of prohibited means of discrimination in the Human Rights Act. Governments can, have, and are going to fuck with these for piss-poor reasons, and we should make it more difficult for them to do so. But that's another post...)

Those constitutional scholars are worried that using entrenchment for a mere "policy" issue will erode that respect. Which misses the point: the question of whether public assets belong to the public or to the government of the day to be corruptly distributed to its cronies is a constitutional one. The entrenchment clause simply makes that clear and answers "never again". And in terms of respect, that gets established by doing the thing and making it stick. Norms become norms by becoming normal.

Those constitutional scholars are also trying to scare people with the prospect of future governments doing this for other issues. What about if National and ACT entrench a three strikes law? What about if they entrench low taxes? Whatabout? Whatabout? Whatbaout?

Well, what about it? Under Parliament's standing orders, entrenchment clauses must be supported by at least the level of support needed to overturn them (so if something would require a 60% supermajority to overturn, it needs a 60% supermajority to pass). Under MMP, governments have tended to be weak, with coalition majorities of 5 votes or less. Gaining anything beyond a bare majority almost always requires gaining the support of parties outside the governing coalition. The current government is unusual in that respect, with a single-majority party and an extra 10 or 12 votes likely to support its agenda. The only other example is Helen Clark in 2002, where a collection of centrist parties in the House potentially allowed large majorities to be assembled (and resulted in much more consensus policy than usual). Otherwise, it would mean working with the opposition. And I honestly don't have a problem with that. Under MMP, party strength in the House reflects voter strength at elections. If a government can build a coalition behind an issue to entrench it to require a 60% majority to overturn, then all power to them. We live in a democracy, we get the governments we vote for, and we live with the results. If we don't like them, then we vote differently next time, throw the bums out, and don't let them back in until they've changed their ways.

Yes, doing this by an SOP under urgency is not ideal (and that's on Labour for how they chose to do this stage of the bill). Ideally, the government would have introduced an anti-privatisation bill at the beginning of its term, with anti-privatisation and entrenchment clauses for all classes of public assets. But they didn't, so its left to the Greens to do this piecemeal as things come up. Anti-privatisation is supposed to be a core principle for Labour. If they chickenshit out now, they'll be confirming their weakness and lack of principle. But then, that seems to be Labour in a nutshell now, doesn't it?

A failed state

People being told to drink sewage sounds like a headline from the early nineteenth century, before the public health revolution, or from a failed state, where it has collapsed. But its actually from modern England:

British people need to be “less squeamish” about drinking water derived from sewage, the boss of the Environment Agency has said.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Sir James Bevan outlined measures the government, water companies and ordinary people should be taking to avoid severe droughts.

He said: “Part of the solution will be to reprocess the water that results from sewage treatment and turn it back into drinking water – perfectly safe and healthy, but not something many people fancy.”

Bevan admitted the move would be “unpopular” and reactions on social media have been mixed but he said there was a need to “change how we think about water”.

The reason they're being told to do this is that decades of failed privatisation has seen a quarter of England's drinking water leak away, while privatised water companies dump untreated sewage into lakes, rivers, and the ocean. But rather than order the polluters to fix these entirely avoidable problems, the government is protecting their profits by telling people to just drink shit. Its a perfect example of how privatisation and deregulation erode the state, and ultimately lead to collapse.

Farmers are killing us

A society is offered a choice: they can have prosperity (for some), but 40 people a year will be sacrificed to please the cow-god. No, its not a bad fantasy story - its what farmers are actually doing to us:

Up to 100 cases of bowel cancer, and 41 deaths, may be caused by nitrate-contaminated drinking water each year - with around 800,000 Kiwis exposed to levels that international studies deem a risk, new research finds.

The risk of nitrate contamination in the country's drinking water supplies has come under the spotlight over recent years, with some researchers suggesting the current maximum level of 11.3 milligrams of nitrate-nitrogen per litre (mg/l) is set far too high.

Nitrate leaching – much of which stems from urine patches in dairy farms - has increased substantially since 1990 and many groundwater sites continue to degrade.

This is a significant public health hazard, and one we were never offered a choice on. Its also easy to eliminate, by limiting stock numbers and banning the application of nitrogen-based fertilisers. Doing so would save up to 40 lives a year, as well as millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions. So, are we going to keep killing people to please the cow-god, or finally say "no"?

Too many cows in the Netherlands

The Netherlands has a water quality problem. Too many cows, producing too much shit and piss, which flows into the rivers and poisons them. But they also have a solution: forcing farmers to destock or sell up:

Dutch politicians are considering plans to force hundreds of farmers to sell up and cut livestock numbers, to reduce damaging ammonia pollution.

After the highest Dutch administrative court found in 2019 that the government was breaking EU law by not doing enough to reduce excess nitrogen in vulnerable natural areas, the country has been battling what it is calling a “nitrogen crisis”.

[...]

Now civil servants at the finance and agriculture ministry have drawn up proposals which include slashing livestock numbers [pdf] by 30%, one of the most radical plans of its kind in Europe. Two proposed scenarios include forcing some farmers to sell emissions rights and even their land to the state, if necessary.

Aotearoa also has a water quality problem, driven by the same cause: too many cows. And its time we pursued the same solution as the Netherlands. We cannot let farmers continue to destroy our environment and poison our drinking water supplies for private profit. We need to make them stop, and make them pay for the damage they have caused.

Too many cows in Canterbury

More than a decade ago, the then-National government overthrew the elected Canterbury Regional Council (ECan) and imposed a Wellington-appointed dictatorship to steal Canterbury's water for farmers. As part of the PR for this, they promised "ambitious" goals to improve water quality. A decade on, have they met those goals? Of course not:

Canterbury’s future water health is murky as a new report reveals that a region-wide conservation plan has met just two of more than 30 goals it set itself a decade ago.

The Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) was created in 2010 in a partnership between Environment Canterbury (ECan), local councils and iwi. It established ten target areas with more than 30 goals to improve water health and management.

A progress report released this week revealed that, 11 years on, just two of those goals had been achieved.

[...]

Most of the goals related to freshwater health and biodiversity targets. By last year, just one had been achieved – understanding the risk posed by potential contaminants, which ECan managed through monitoring programmes.

The only other fully met goal was in recreational water quality. Of Canterbury’s lakes and rivers used for swimming, more now met recreational water quality guidelines.

Meeting recreational water guidelines is important, but "understanding risks" is a very soft target. As for the rest, they're failing to meet even basic drinking water standards, while nitrate contamination is increasing.

The fundamental problem for all of this failure is simple: there are too many cows in Canterbury. Those cows pump out shit and piss, which ends up in the rivers and the groundwater, contaminating both. Nitrate levels are rising because of cowpiss and fertiliser. Freshwater health and biodiversity are shit because of cowshit. If Canterbury wants better water, the solution is simple: it needs to cut the pollution at its source, by cutting cow numbers. Until it does, they will continue to poison the environment, and poison Canterbury's people.

A howl of ugliness

Farmers are protesting today, invading cities with tractors and utes in protest against water and climate change policy. The core message of their "howl of protest" is meant to be "no farmers, no food" - which rather undermines their own case, given that 80% of the food they produce is exported. We could drive half the farmers in Aotearoa out of business, be massively environmentally better off, and still have more than enough cheese for everyone. But of course, they're also displaying their ugly side, with signs displaying racism, gun nuttery, more racism, and of course sexism, misogyny, and an obsession with dead political ideologies. And we haven't even got to the weird conspiracy theorist stuff yet!

Meanwhile, parts of Germany just received two months' rain in two days, causing massive, unexpected floods which have left 58 people dead. The US and Canada are experiencing another heatwave, and a huge chunk of the US is on fire again. And we may be about to get another freak rain and flooding event in Westland. In these circumstances, protesting against climate change policy is as irresponsible and sociopathic as being an antivaxxer. Oh, wait!

Basicly, this sort of messaging is likely to be... unpersuasive with urban Aotearoa. Where "unpersuasive" equals "as popular as a proverbial unpopular thing". Which means it is unlikely to be persuasive with the government either. Urban Aotearoa is where the votes have been for decades, and the first rule of government is "learn to count". Maybe farmers should learn that too?

Bring fertiliser into the ETS

Nitrous Oxide is a potent greenhouse gas, 265 times worse per ton than carbon dioxide. Its also long-lived, with a half-life of 121 years in the atmosphere. New Zealand emitted 8.36 million tons CO2-equivalent of it in 2019, almost 10% of our total emissions. And yet, we're doing nothing to limit that. Why not? Because its emitted by farmers, of course.

1.5 million tons CO2-equivalent of those emissions is caused by farmers' (over)use of fertiliser. Stuff's Olivia Wannan points out that we have an easy way to control this: bring it into the ETS:

In its new report, the Climate Change Commission noted fertilisers could be charged the same levy that is already put on every litre of petrol. By pricing fertiliser under the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the country could start making in-roads on the greenhouse gas now.

However, the Government took this option off the table in its deal with the agricultural industry – a 2019 partnership called He Waka Eke Noa, set up to solve the thorny problem of how to measure and price greenhouse gases from sheep and cows.

That solution won’t take effect until 2025, which will give the country just 25 years to get nitrous oxide to net zero.

Which isn't good enough. This is the lowest-hanging of low-hanging fruit, and sticking a carbon price on it would incentivise farmers to use less. And it makes perfect sense to do it at the importer/producer level (as is done for oil, coal, and everything else), not least because its far easier to audit two fertiliser companies to ensure they're not cheating than thousands of farmers. As for how much it would cost, at the current carbon price of $43.35 a ton, we're talking an extra ~$31.60 per ton of fertiliser. According to this article, urea sells for $1290 a ton, so we're talking a roughly 2.5% increase - less than the extra they'll be paying on a new, dirty ute. And of course that cost can be completely avoided just by using less.

Our refusal to bring fertiliser into the ETS is effectively a $65 million a year subsidy to farmers, ot encourage them to pollute not just the global atmosphere, but also our rivers and streams (which is where the nitrogen ends up). Its also a subsidy for dead babies, bowel cancer, and poisoned drinking water. We wouldn't accept it if the government subsidised tobacco companies to cause cancer - but that's effectively what they're doing with farmers. Pretty obviously, I think that needs to stop. Farmers need to pay the full cost of their pollution, as well as facing environmental controls to prevent them from poisoning our waterways. And if the government refuses to do that, we need to get a government who will.

A Potemkin review

Nitrates are a serious public health threat, posing a risk of death for babies and a long-term risk of bowel cancer for adults. Farmers are currently spewing them into the water table via fertiliser and dirty dairying, poisoning drinking water across Canterbury and threatening the drinking water of our second-largest city. The government was apparently worried enough about this to set up a working group to study the problem. And then they secretly buried it:

An official information act request showed a working group that was supposed to be looking at nitrates in water only met twice in 18 months and was recently disbanded, with little to show for its efforts.

After months of pressure from councils and environmental groups and amidst mounting international evidence of a link between nitrates in drinking water and bowel cancer, then Minister of Health David Clark asked for a working group to be set up.

Chaired by the Ministry of Health's chief science advisor, professor Ian Town, it met for the first time in August 2019 and undertook to review nitrate levels and provide advice to affected communities about the health risk.

Funders would also be told about the urgent need for New Zealand research to match that coming from overseas.

But following a second meeting in December of that year, the work of the working group - which was supposed to meet every three months - stopped altogether.

A question from RNZ this month uncovered the group had recently been disbanded.

The government is using the pandemic as an excuse, but with the government refusing to set a bottom-line limit on nitrate pollution, it looks like the whole thing was a scam, a Potemkin review to distract the public. Because obviously, we couldn't let the fact they were killing people threaten dairy industry profits, could we?

Why are we paying for MPI again?

Last year, the government chickened out on clean rivers, setting "water standards" that failed to properly control poisonous nitrates. So who was to blame? MPI:

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) opposed introducing a tough bottom line for nitrogen levels in rivers over concerns the economic impact would outweigh the environmental benefit, documents show.

MPI repeatedly clashed with the Ministry for the Environment (MfE), even though scientific experts said a Dissolved Organic Nitrogen (DIN) level of 1 mg/L was the best way to protect rivers.

Emails obtained under the Official Information Act show MPI staff wanted the economic cost of introducing a bottom line pushed more prominently in a cabinet paper about nitrogen level options put to ministers in May 2020.

It's the first time MPI's influence on the issue has been revealed.

Its another example of how MPI has been totally captured by the industries it is supposed to regulate, and works to undermine public interest regulation rather than for it. In this case, they were basicly just being a mouthpiece for polluter lobbyists DairyNZ, who opposed any form of nitrogen regulation "because it disagreed with the science" (which sounds a lot like their position on climate change not that many years ago). But if this is all MPI is going to do, then we might as well just fire them all, and let DairyNZ do its own lobbying, rather than spending tens of millions a year to pay public servants to do it for them.

Also worth noting: given recent information linking nitrates to bowel cancer, this decision will have a body count. This decision is more stochastic murder, and MPI and its staff need to be held accountable for it.

A failure of enforcement

Yesterday, Silver Fern Farms was fined $337,000 over a potentially lethal ammonia leak. Today RNZ reports that they've subcontracted some of their waste business to Whanganui's Tasman Tanning, which has an appalling environmental record:

Tasman Tanning's plant in Whanganui was already the country's leader in breaching trade wastewater consents before it took on the new work, which is likely to increase the waste it produces.

[...]

An RNZ investigation revealed the Tasman Tanning plant in Whanganui clocked up 570 fat, sulphide and chromium breaches over the past year.

This meant the sludge from the city's wastewater treatment plant was so contaminated with chromium, a toxic heavy metal, it had to be stored instead of being sent to landfill.

Some of the Whanganui breaches resulted in faecal bacteria from the city's wastewater treatment plant entering the ocean.

Which invites the obvious question: how does a company which breaches its resources consents more than once a day even still have them? Why hasn't the Council done something to stop them? While they've complained about an inability to issue fines without going to court, there are mechanisms available: notably, they can issue an abatement notice for violating the consent. Then, when it is breached, prosecute (because breaching an abatement notice is a criminal offence), and start imposing fines that way (councils get to keep fines for RMA breaches if they prosecute). Seek enforcement orders to force mitigation, and when they are breached, seek an order cancelling the consent under s314(1)(e).

Alternatively, if they don't want to go the full way with prosecution, they can issue an abatement notice, then simply start issuing infringement notices. Breaching an abatement notice is an infringement offence, with a $750 fine per offence. And again, the Council gets to keep it. And at over $400,000 a year, you'd hope that would provide an incentive for this polluter to comply (and if not, it establishes a track record of violations to justify cancellation).

A council which doesn't do this when faced with persistent non-compliance are a) chickenshits; and b) ought to be voted out on their arses for not doing their jobs. Because enforcing the law is their job, and if they refuse to do it, they're as bad as the environmental criminals they're corruptly protecting.

Give the Rangitata back

Back in 2018, National's unelected Canterbury dictatorship issued a resource consent to take water from the Rangitata river for irrigation, in violation of its Water Conservation Order. Now, after two years of legal battles, the company has "voluntarily" surrendered it:

An irrigation company's decision to relinquish its consent to take extra water from the Rangitata River when in high flow has been hailed as a “gift to New Zealand” by anglers.

Rangitata Diversion Race Management Ltd (RDRML) was awarded the consent to take an extra 10 cumecs in water when the river was flowing 110 cumecs or higher by an Environment Canterbury-appointed independent panel in 2018.

However, appeals by Fish and Game, Ngāi Tahu and Te Rūnanga o Arowhenua to the Environment Court had delayed the consent's implementation.

RDRML chief executive Tony McCormick confirmed on Tuesday it had decided to relinquish the consent, describing it as "positive news" and adding they would make a further statement later.

Good. The consent would have undermined the river's ecosystem by lowering "flushing flows" and allowing excess sediment to build up, harming aquatic life. Surrendering it means at least things aren't going to get any worse. But it should only be the first stage. Currently, irrigators take over 70% of the river's total median annual flow: of the 74 m/s median annual flow at Klondyke, the Rangitata Diversion Race takes 30.7 m/s, Rangitata Water takes another 20 m/s, and a large dairy farm 1.5 m/s (figures from DoC). Which doesn't leave an awful lot of river left by the time it reaches the sea (though some of it is used for electricity generation and ends up in the Rakaia instead).

Worse, this water is used for dairy farms, which fundamentally change the nature of the Canterbury plains while spewing methane into the air and shit and poisonous nitrates into the river and the water table, destroying the climate, making rivers unswimmable, and endangering public health. If we want to protect our environment and ourselves, we need to scale this back. And the easiest way to do that is give the river back: remove or massively scale back those consents, and let the rivers flow.

Earning their reputation again

Farmers complain about being seen as environmental vandals. Meanwhile, down in Southland, they're doing this:

Southland farmers will consider holding more tractor protests, not applying for resource consents, and not paying regional council rates to protest against new freshwater rules introduced by the Government last year.

A farmer’s group called Groundswell will host a meeting in Gore on Thursday to come up with an action plan to protest against the rules.

[...]

Groundswell spokesperson Bryce McKenzie said the options the group were considering to protest were ‘’bordering on civil unrest’’.

“How else do you get your message across? We’ve tried to get the message across and that hasn’t worked, so what else do you do? That’s what we now need to decide,’’ he said.

I may be missing the farmer-logic here, but promising "civil unrest" in response to environmental regulation does not a good way to sell yourself as an environmentally responsible industry, or to shake off a reputation for being environmentally destructive. Instead, it seems like a way to cement that reputation, and paint yourself as a problem industry which needs to be regulated more strongly. As for their protest tactics, if they refuse to apply for resource consent then their unconsented farming activities can be shut down (and they can be fined $10,000 a day for continuing without consent). If they refuse to pay rates, their property can be seized and sold to pay them. If farmers wish to be environmental delinquents, I think the public would welcome such outcomes.

That's the point

Farmers are whining that new freshwater rules designed to stop them shitting in rivers or polluting the water table with nitrogen will mean they make less money:

Farm profitability across the Ashburton District is expected to decline 83 percent per year due to the government's freshwater reforms, a new report states.

The desktop report, requested by the council, notes dairy farming takes place on nearly a third of the district's agricultural land and would be the hardest hit financially.

"The regulations will challenge existing farming systems with a number of established farm practices needing to change, and new technology and innovation adoption will be required."

It conservatively estimated that farm profitability would collectively decline more than $57 million, while farm expenditure would fall by about $140 million.

Essentially, they'll have to have fewer animals, and that will mean lower profits. But that's the point. Clean farmers will continue to make money. Dirty farmers will have to either change or go out of business. If they choose to do the latter rather than downsize their operation to one that lives within our environmental means, well, whose fault is that?

Farmers earn their reputation

Farmers feel New Zealand has turned its back on them, Stuff, 13 September 2019:

A young Wairarapa farmer's voice starts to crack when he talks about the pressure the sector is feeling from the Government and the wider New Zealand public.

Masterton sheep and beef farmer Sully Alsop fully supports an open letter written to Government leaders by an agricultural consultancy firm saying farmer morale was at an all time low.

"You feel like the country's turned their back on you. When you introduce yourself and say 'Hi, I'm Sully, I'm a farmer', they treat you like you're a leper like 'way to ruin the environment'," he said.

Farmers launch nationwide petition against freshwater rules, Stuff, 3 December 2020:

The group that organised more than 100 tractors to be driven through Gore’s main street in protest of new freshwater rules are now taking their protest across the country.

Groundswell NZ has launched an online petition calling for a rewrite of the essential freshwater rules, which came into force in September.

Here's a suggestion: if they don't want to be treated as dirty environmental vandals hellbent on shitting in every river in Aotearoa, maybe they should stop acting like it? Because at the moment, it seems like they are earning their poor reputation fair and square.

A headache for the government

For decades, the government has elided its Treaty obligations over water by claiming that no-one owns it (except, in practice, farmers). But last year, the Waitangi Tribunal ruled that water is a taonga, and it belongs to Māori, and invited iwi to bring a test case to prove it in court. The New Zealand Maori Council have already taken up that suggestion. And now, Ngāi Tahu is seeking to establish their rights over most of the South Island's water:

South Island iwi Ngāi Tahu is taking the Crown to court, seeking “rangatiratanga” over all freshwater in its takiwā (area).

The case would seek to establish “shared authority” with the Crown over policy and practice.

Te Rūnanga o Ngā Tahu kaiwhakehaere (chairwoman) Lisa Tumahai said the case against the Crown, lodged in the High Court in Christchurch on Monday, came after generations of being excluded from kaitiakitanga (guardianship) of waterways.

“For too long, governments have talked about addressing these issues but have made piecemeal progress,” said Tumahai. “That is not enough. Now is the time to act.”

Ngāi Tahu is quite clear that they are not interested in conventional property rights. Instead, they are seeking the regulatory power to protect their waterways. But even that is likely to be explosive. Canterbury is the most irrigated area in New Zealand, and ground zero for most of Aotearoa's water problems. And the greedy farmers who profit from sucking the rivers dry and filling them with shit (while poisoning the groundwater with toxic nitrates) are likely to go apeshit at the thought of getting a single drop less. So its going to be a real headache for the government, who are eventually going to have to sort this out with a settlement or legislation. And then there's the prospect of National and/or ACT running a racist hate campaign over it...