Q+A’s Paul Holmes Interviews Wyatt Creech

Points of interest:

- Management of New Zealand’s water should be taken off regional councils and given to central government: 13 different regional policies is “silly” in a small country

- New Environmental Protection Agency best placed to handle water management for the good of the nation

- Politics should be removed from water and management left to technical experts

- NZ water management is “not as good as it should be” and “deteriorating” and has one of the most de-centralised systems of comparable countries

- Water availability good in this country compared to coming “nightmare” in the US and Australia, but management is poor

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can also be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

Q+A is repeated on TVNZ 7 at 9.10pm on Sunday nights and 10.10am and 2.10pm on Mondays.

WYATT CREECH interviewed by PAUL HOLMES

Paul: Welcome back to Q+A. Water. Not only is it the stuff of life its at the Heart of our economy. Agriculture, Tourism, Forestry and Fisheries. It's essential to all of our major industries. In short, we have plenty of it but we might not be managing it too well. One man who has given a lot of thought to the question of water management and not only in Canterbury but in New Zealand is the former deputy Prime Minister Wyatt Creech, who's report into water management in Canterbury sparked the ongoing political stoush in the south. But the question or the issue is much much bigger than Canterbury. It's a key national strategic asset, water. Welcome to Wyatt Creech. What do believe is the state of our water management in New Zealand?

Wyatt: It's deteriorating. It not as good as it should be. We have the most decentralised system of water management of all the countries I've looked at, and that is Australia, North America and these sort of countries we compare ourselves with, and ah, in terms of water quality, especially low land streams and rivers are showing signs of increasing stress. Overall, the figures look good because lots of areas are improving, but the lowland ricers and streams aren't looking too good on quality grounds, and in terms of water availability, we tend to have aquifers that are committed or over-committed and very little in the way of reasonably sensible strategic or management plans for dealing with it.

Paul: Certainly water is coming onto the radar isn't it, coming onto the horizon. Water was highlighted in the Prime Minister's opening speech earlier this year, and then of course we see Environment Canterbury sacked following your report on it's water management. How valuable is our water, how much more important is water going to become to us as a focus.

Wyatt: Can I just correct one thing, it was called the Creech report but there were four people and we were unanimous about it and they weren't all from my perspective so...

Paul: And I take it from the beating you've had, you're not going to do anymore government reports. Anyway...

Wyatt: (laughs) No not necessarily, if I was asked to do it. I don't think I've had a beating up at all. What we've done is come up with a proposal for addressing an area where in both quality and availability terms, the situation was deteriorating and I was pleased to see for instance last weekend the minister announce that from here on in, all major water users will have to be metered. It's unbelievable, but more than half the water taken in Canterbury for irrigation hasn't been being metered.

Paul: But leave aside Canterbury for a second, I was asking how much more of a focus, how much more important is water going to become as an issue?

Wyatt: It's going to become very important. If you look at the United States, where you know that, in California where half the vegetables are grown that they're eaten, half the nuts and fruits that are consumed in the United States are grown in a small irrigated area which is getting short of water. The Murray Darling basin, very short of water.

Paul: Hang on talk about California for a second, so ten percent of the irrigated land in the United States is in California and that irrigated land produces fifty percent of the fruits and the nuts and the vegetables?

Wyatt: That's right. And the water is under stress from increasing population and increasing industrial pressures.

Paul: They've got a major water nightmare coming.

Wyatt: They have, and in the Murray Darling basin in Australia, much more severe restrictions have had to be imposed because the water isn't there even to satisfy the licensed takes. News Zealand by comparison, we have on average per head 70 million litres of water per head per year available. So we have got quite a lot of water availability but we need to manage it wisely to get benefit from it.

Paul: Just quickly on that Murray Darling basin, you point out in some notes you've made, that region is as big as France and Spain combined.

Wyatt: It's huge, and we forget...

Paul: And got no water.

Wyatt: It has got water but it's getting stressed and desalinated and all sorts of other issues, and the City of Adelaide depends on it. I mean, we've got to stop kidding ourselves. We've got good water and we've got to use it properly. This highly decentralised system with no national control I don't think has delivered very well to New Zealand.

Paul: Right. Um. Regarding Canterbury. Key says there has got to be water storage in Canterbury. In what form is that going to have to take?

Wyatt: Well you'd have to ask him precisely what he was referring to, but ah, what the general assumption is as I understand on the basis of advise to the government is that if they want to continue to use water for industrial purposes in Canterbury the way they have been, they won't be able to suck it out of aquifers. They are over-stressed. Many of them are. Some aren't but most of them are. If they want to use water for those industrial and commercial purposes they'll have to find ways to store water. I don't think damming rivers is possible, so it has to be big ponds or something like that. Now whether that's going to happen or not is not for us to decide. Our report was looking purely at the issue of performance of ECAN.

Paul: Nevertheless, through this interview you've been talking about New Zealand being the most, what, localised managers of water in the world. Do you want to see water managed by a national agency?

Wyatt: Under the RMA they could have national policy statements that govern these things. Most national police statements to date have been just waffle. But, you know, high minded vision stuff. But the EPA that the government is talking about forming..

Paul: What is the EPA?

Wyatt: The Environmental Protection Agency, has a chance to put in a technical and intellectual and scientific level of policy that would manage this issue well. I mean I was told by Barry Harris from Fonterra who's their sustainability, one of their sustainability chiefs that if all farms in New Zealand were operating according to best practice we would see an improvement in the discharges from farms into rivers. In other words, we could improve the situation just by proper enforcement and management of policy.

Paul: But why shouldn't local regional councils run the water. They know the local needs don't they?

Wyatt: Well there's national needs to, I mean if you take Canterbury that's where an awful lot of our water fall power generation comes from. The needs.. It's a bit silly in a small country to have 86 different policies or 13 different regional policies. I think it makes much more sense for use to have a coherent national strategy that at a regional level with some input from that level and a local level they can have input into as long as the standards require that the water is managed wisely.

Paul: And are the regional councils, you don't believe they're up to it?

Wyatt: Well in the case of ECAN, if we'd left it as it was in both quality and availability the situation would have continued to deteriorate. I think we had to do something and I'm pleased the government did something to reverse the situation and start correcting what is going on down there. But nationally I haven't had a look at the whole picture although I'm sure there should be national policy statements that manage that.

Paul: Exactly. Well would you therefore like to see a Minister of Water? A Cabinet position...

Wyatt: No, I think we would be far better off to use the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, because what we're talking here about establishing technical rules and a bit of distance from the politics, the problem with the politics is that the two sides offset each other and in that situation, nothing seems to be progressing.

Paul: No you have powerful forces of equal strength opposing each other meaning industry versus environmentalism.

Wyatt: That's right. Whereas what we have to do is come up with is come up with a collaborative agreement, and some people have tried to do this. There's been a Turnbull group that have met, that is well respected people within New Zealand who have sat down and considered water policy, they know what they're talking about. They're recommending similar changes to governance of water that I'm talking about.

Paul: Yes, so you would keep politics away from water. You would have appointed people making the decisions.

Wyatt: Well, we have to make a decision. Like, we'll make ten percent of water available for industrial purposes and ninety percent not, or something like that, you'd make a decision like that, but how you deliver that is really technical rather than political and the politics I think interfere with the sensible delivery of it.

Paul: Just finally, the Government set up a Land and Water forum, I think it's due to report in July, it's been going, considering things for a year. It's due to report in July. Do you have hopes for that?

Wyatt: I do, because that's an attempt to establish a collaborative strategy for dealing with water in New Zealand. Whether it will deliver the goods or not I don't know, but it's a good idea to give it a damned good try and I wish them well.

Paul: Former Deputy Prime Minister Wyatt Creech.

ENDS

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