Sensible Choices About Water

That's not a bad description of how this job should work. I've spent a lot of this year on the road, in woolsheds, community halls and farm kitchens. At every stop, someone adds something to what I carry back to Wellington.

And at nearly every stop, water comes up.

I know that from home. A river runs through our farm near Kimbolton, coming down off the Ruahines. I'm no river expert, but I live with it every day, in the wet months and the dry ones. It's also where out family spends a lot of our spare time.

New Zealand is a wet country with a dry-summer problem. We get plenty of rain, but not always when or where we need it. Without storage, too much of it runs out to sea, and when a dry spell hits, farms, towns and rivers all feel it at once.

That uncertainty doesn't stay on the farm. It ends up at the checkout.

Vegetable growers can't plan a season around water they might not have. When supply is uncertain, they plant less, crops struggle, and what makes it to the shops costs more. Anyone who's watched the price of a cauliflower or a lettuce jump knows how quickly that hits the family budget.

Reliable water is one of the best tools we have for keeping food prices steady. When growers know the water will be there, they can plant with confidence, supply stays consistent, and prices don't swing as much with the weather.

That's what unlocking New Zealand's potential looks like in practice. It's not a grand plan from Wellington. It's sensible choices about water that give people certainty.

Good storage holds water from the wet months and releases it when rivers are low. Done well, it protects river health first, keeps towns supplied, and gives growers what they need to keep food on our tables.

The people on the land already know this. They're the first to see a problem, because they live with it. More often than not, they've already got the answer, whether it's shifting a wetland to catch runoff or a storage scheme a community had been working on for years. See the problem. Seek the solution. Solve it safely and swiftly.

Getting it right matters.

Right means safe. Well-built storage is carefully engineered and closely monitored. Nobody wants shortcuts, least of all the communities living downstream.

Right means efficient. Being able to scale up that storage to sizes that make it cost effective, not arbitrary sizes that might be able to sneak under the radar and not upset the perpetually aggrieved, who don't like any sort of progress.

Right means a consenting system that provides certainty that if you do things right, then you won't be caught up in endless litigation, and the people involved don't get burned out on a never ending merry-go-round of hearings, and that financial backers will have the confidence to invest.

Replacing the RMA is our chance to set clear rules, so good projects can move and poor ones are turned down early. That is our challenge for the next term of government, and a challenge the ACT Party is up for.

Andrew Garfield is an ACT MP and Manawatu dairy farmer.