Conor English: Speech to Water Infrastructure

Conor English, CEO, Federated Farmers of New Zealand speech to the Water Infrastructure Forum, Christchurch

Delivered 20 December 2008

About 600 years ago Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) said, "water is the driving force of all nature."

As farmers we harness nature, we harvest it for our families and society, and we nurture it for future generations. We are the custodians of our land and water resource. Today, we are here to talk about water storage. But lets not do that in isolation of nature, or the driving force of water and the importance of the environment.

Whatever progress we make here today, we must take our urban cousins and our environmentalists with us. We can't wait for them to agree on everything but we must help them to see, we must bring them along with what we are trying to do.

What we do know is that in the city you don't wait for the rain to fall before you have a cup of tea. In the city, we have water at the right place at the right time. We store water, we bank it, we save it on a rainy day so we can use it when it isn't raining. So why not do more of the same in the country?

The story of NZ has some complexities, but overall it's not that complex. We have fertile land, it rains, we grow grass, and we turn that into protein. We then sell this to a hungry and prosperous world. We then pay the bills for our hospitals, our social services, our schools. We pay for our young, for our old and for our families. It's a measure of a civilised nation how it looks after its vulnerable, but we need the export dollars to do this.

We have done this for over a hundred years. Sometimes we have forgotten that this is what we do best and we have had some conferences. What we need is not another "Knowledge Wave conference", but a water wave reality through more water storage.

The difference between us and other pacific islands, such as say Tonga, is our luck in having this water and our ability to utilise the water, which falls from the sky. This is what makes us a first world nation, rather than a third world nation.

And we often say Australia is the lucky country. Yes it has some luck - 100 kiwis a day are leaving our shores and going to Australia on the promise that they themselves will be lucky. We have an image that Australia has minerals, gold and "treasures" under the expanse of their desert sands.

In Australia they look underground for their treasure In New Zealand we should look to the expanse of our sky. Water is our iron ore. It's what makes us a lucky country. When you look at the planet we have the one thing that many countries don't, an abundance of fresh water. But what we are all here for today is to figure out if we have the technical solutions, the foresight, the common sense to harness our "treasure" from the sky for the benefit of the environment and the whole nation, over the decades and centuries to come.

Civilisations over the last few centuries have learnt that water is the key to prosperity, to the environment, to happiness. The Romans, the Greeks, Egyptians knew this. Sometimes we can be slow learners, but we have had a few thousand years now so maybe we are taking it to extremes. At our scale, our engineering challenge in New Zealand is relatively small compared to what those civilisations faced.

Like those civilisations we need more fish and less drought.

We know from Opuha and other schemes that the environment is enhanced, that recreational values are enhanced, the community spirit is enhanced by using smart water storage strategies. And I've yet to see a fish that doesn't like water 365 days a year.

If we want to set our nation up for success for the next half century, if we want our children to aspire to a future within our shores, if we want, Honourable Ministers, to choose a brighter future, we must choose to harness our enormous water resource in smart ways.

It's not that Canterbury is running out of water, it's that the water is running out of Canterbury.

As farmers we need to look at smart strategies to utilise that water to make the best use of it and to ensure we have a balance with our environmental, recreation and wider community values.

So what do we want of government? There are many things of course that will be discussed today, but for Federated Farmers, there are eight things at quite a high level.

1. Recognition that water storage is on the list of infrastructure projects that the government supports to help the nation through its current financial crisis. Our Prime Minister has talked much about infrastructure and growth in speeches leading up to the election and growth was a key theme in the Speech from the Throne after the election. To successfully execute that strategy we need water storage, not just more roads or school classrooms.
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3. Reform of legislative hurdles that make the gestation for such projects long, risky and expensive. So to RMA reform. Federated Farmers has fought for years for this and it needs to have an eye for water storage.
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5. To carefully review legal instruments, where appropriate, that prevent common sense solutions for water storage, for example perhaps some conservation orders on some rivers.
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7. Money - there is currently a fund for undertaking feasibilities which is great. We know there are many potential projects both here and in other parts of New Zealand that could make sense. We do need to be realistic however as not every possible project will stack up. What we need from government is financial support, "bridging finance" if you like, using appropriate models, which help fund projects through long capital intensive gestation and to get through the negative cashflow period until such projects generate positive cashflow. With water storage, as with roading infrastructure, the benefits accrue to the whole community so we believe government financial involvement is appropriate. However, unlike roading infrastructure, water storage provides direct positive long term cash flows and enormous export dollar growth benefits over the long term. We have the Cullen fund with its new mandate to invest 40 percent of funds in New Zealand. It could be a source of funds but there may be other options that need to be explored, one of which I will mention next..
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9. As an organisation, a lot of what we do is stopping silly ideas or regulation getting over the line. For example, the diesel tank regulations that we stopped saved at least $3000 for every farmer in this room - saving you about the equivalent of about 10 years in subscriptions, after tax. Many of you may not notice as it hasn't happened to you because we stopped it! However, we want government to review with a view to cancelling the Sate Highway 20 Waterview connection tunnel. This 3.1 km tunnel is costed at about $1.9 billion or about $600 million per kilometre. While it is in the back yard of the former Prime Minister, the thing that bothers me about this project is where is the hill? We have a tunnel planned with no hill to tunnel through. We don't disagree that a road should be built overland and why not save the extra billion dollars it takes to build a tunnel where there is no hill. The section of State Highway 20 leading to the Waterview connection doesn't have a big hill either and it isn't tunneled. As everyone who lives in Wellington knows that tunnels should be a last resort - they are not future proof. The Terrace tunnel is a classic - it's a choke on traffic. You can't widen a tunnel for extra lanes or cycle lanes, if you need to in the future. With roads you can. While it makes sense to complete Sate Highway 20 as a road, we do not believe this country needs this tunnel. So build the road for sure, but not the tunnel. If the government agrees that it is sensible to cancel this tunnel, as we do, then we believe that some of that saving could be far better utilised for the benefit of all New Zealanders by being invested in water storage projects that will provide more fish, less drought and earn vital export dollars to provide jobs and pay bills. A tunnel where there is no hill will have a bit of trouble doing that. So maybe, a couple of hundred million cut off from this billion dollar saving would get the ball rolling for water storage projects. We may well call on Fish and Game to support a campaign to "stop the tunnel, save the fish"
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11. Global warming is an issue that we are all grappling with and looking for policy responses to. Federated Farmers fought hard to slow down the last administration's proposed solution. We congratulate the new Government for listening to us and for taking the time to review where we are going. We will continue to work with the Government on it. But while New Zealand and other governments are working through accounting solutions for this issue, it is clear to us that as a practical nation, New Zealand also needs to work on some practical solutions. As the lucky country when it comes to water, using smart water storage strategies makes sense to combat potential global warming challenges. So we believe that Government should be considering water storage, not only on its list of solutions for infrastructure, but for growth, for jobs, and for more fish, but also for climate change mitigation. It needs to be part of the Government's formal policy response as well.
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13. We ask that the government take account of water storage when formulating policy on water allocation and other water frameworks and issues, such as potential Treaty issues. Water storage can dramatically change the dynamic so it needs to be taken into serious consideration before decisions are made.
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15. Finally, we need an action plan on the practical steps to move water storage strategies forward.
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In conclusion, Federated Farmers has been lobbying on water storage for a while and we congratulate Minister Carter for initiating this conference. It's a great first step.

Lao Tzu said, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Well, give a kiwi a rain shower he fishes and farms for a day. Give him water storage he will fish and farm for a life time.

Federated Farmers will continue our water storage campaign. We will do whatever we can to assist. We welcome the opportunity to work with the Government and everybody here today to progress smart balanced water storage strategies for the benefit of the environment and the whole community.

Yes we are a lucky country, we just may not realise it. Water is our iron ore. The two questions today are - do our ministers and our new Government realise this? And secondly, if they do, will they show the leadership to take action to set this nation up for more fish, less drought for the century ahead?

Thank you.

ends