Hurunui decision signals willingness to try harder

OPINION: The Greens over-reached themselves this week by claiming Environment Minister Nick Smith's support for a 14-month moratorium on the Hurunui River was "the second environmental backdown" this week.

Nice try. Tuesday's U-turn on mining was a harsh lesson in political management, but the Hurunui decision is a sign it will try harder on the equally contentious politics of water.

It may even lend weight to wishful thinking among green lobbyists that the mining backdown shows a recalibration of environmental policy from a government it increasingly mistrusts. It would be wrong to conclude that.

The John Key-led Government is defined by its unashamed pursuit of higher economic growth rates, whether mining minerals or mining milk - which is effectively how water is used in the dairy industry, creating the biggest pressure on water use in the process.

In this context, the mining U-turn represents a political rather than an environmental policy recalibration.

For every environmentalist buoyed by the government "listening" on mining, there will be one farming, business or industrial lobbyist urging the government once again to "be bolder". In the case of the Hurunui, the tangle of Water Conservation Order re-hearings and resource consent applications for the Hurunui Water Project - a water storage scheme to irrigate 42,000 hectares of farmland - threatened a procedural nightmare. And with water becoming the biggest political issue in Canterbury since Dr Smith replaced the Environment Canterbury councillors with unelected commissioners, it makes political as well as procedural sense to put the moratorium in place. What's more, it was those very commissioners who sought one.

The timing is particularly sensitive because freshwater management is about to replace mining as the flashpoint for the inevitable conflict between environmental and economic policy ambitions.

Dr Smith's year-long experiment in consensual policy-making, the Land and Water Forum, is coming to a head, with a report to the government due at the end of next month.

The forum put traditional opponents around the table and, despite a few speed wobbles, has begun to break down age-old emnities that have caused successive governments to shy away from fixing the inadequate rules that govern national water allocation.

That can no longer continue. Canterbury is already close to over- allocated, as are several other major catchments, particularly in regions where the dairy industry seeks to grow fastest.

Once the wraps come off the forum's report, the Cabinet will be under pressure to approve the two- year-old recommended National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management - itself the product of almost seven years' work - to phase out over-allocation and contamination, protect wetlands and improve the integration of water management. If handled badly, all hell could break loose.

The NPS will not only create restrictions on the growth of water use during a potentially lengthy transition to the new regime, but will seek to make big users pay for their water.

If the bleating from the farming lobby over its measly exposure to the emissions trading scheme seemed loud, the furore over reduced access to water that used to be "free" could be deafening.

Given the realities of rural politics, it's likely that farmers will be let off the hook yet again. Even Fonterra, which at least tries to show leadership in dairy farming sustainability, has melted away on the freshwater management issue, perhaps reasoning that it will only push hard for further improved practice when the buyers from global supermarket chains start demanding it.

In the meantime, there is every sign that farming will remain not only one of the largest industrial users of water, but will continue to escape the mitigation costs borne by other big water users, including municipal water suppliers, abattoirs, food processors, hydro-electricity generators and sewerage plant operators.

Unlike the ETS, fresh water is a necessity of life. It's a potential source of national competitive advantage, and it is finite.

There is a way through the political maze, and environmentalists who were starting to see the Land and Water Forum as a sop for the farming industry have taken heart from the signal implied by the Hurunui River moratorium.

However, Dr Smith is right to tread cautiously. On this issue, a government impatient for growth may have no choice but to hurry up and wait.

Pattrick Smellie is a co-founder and editor of BusinessDesk.

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