Financial Review Debate — Ministry for the Environment (continued)

The financial review for the Ministry for the Environment highlights the fact that the Government’s management of New Zealand’s freshwater resources has some major deficiencies and is putting our clean, green record internationally and domestically at risk.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Stop attacking the farmers.

The Minister does not want to hear the truth, but the Minister must hear the truth—

💬 Nathan Guy: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It is my understanding that the Minister in the chair cannot interject.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): The preference is that the Minister does not interject, and I am sure he has taken that on board.

Thank you, Mr Chairman. I am sorry the Minister feels he needs to embark on an outburst at my speech. I am sorry he does not actually like the truth and does not like what he has to hear today. None the less, here I am for a further 3 minutes to tell the Minister the truth. The truth is and the facts are that water quality, particularly in lowland streams, is deteriorating under his watch. Water quality measurements in places like the Waikato, Canterbury, Otago, Southland, and other places in New Zealand show that the proportion of streams that have poor water quality is increasing, and there are a number of water quality hot spots throughout New Zealand. Places like Lake Taupō, the Rotorua lakes, and Lake Ellesmere are all examples of poor or deteriorating water quality, all under this Minister’s watch. The Government’s record in water management has got so bad that the Government’s policy response to it has been dubbed not the Sustainable Water Programme of Action but—

💬 Hon David Carter: What’s it called now?

Well, it was interesting. At the New Zealand Water and Wastewater Conference in Rotorua last year, one of the major conferences on water, the senior Ministry for the Environment policy analyst got up and put up on his projector a slide with the title: “The Sustainable Water Programme of Inaction”.

💬 Hon David Carter: Sounds like Mr Anderton must be doing it.

Well, I think that that little slip of the tongue, that little bad day at the office, said it all on this Government’s management of fresh water in this country.

So the Government’s call for sustainability just rings a little hollow—and I am sure the Minister does not want to hear this either, but he has to—when, after 8 long years in office, the Government has presided over a worsening deterioration in water quality. The water in many iconic lakes and rivers is unfit to drink or swim in, and there is a water allocation system that is failing a number of over-allocated catchments around New Zealand.

Much of mid-Canterbury water and groundwater is over-allocated, as are a number of catchments in Otago and further south. Many consents to take water on the Waitaki, for example, are still called in following the Government’s bungled and inept handling of the Waitaki water allocation framework, which came about as a result of Project Aqua by Meridian Energy. This Government has a very poor record on the environment.

I thank the member for her contribution to highlighting what is a very important issue. Jacqui Dean has taken a proper approach to the issue. Although there was a lot of rhetoric in her speech, she did highlight a very, very serious issue, which is the quality of water and the long-term problems we have had in New Zealand. It is something that has been one of my main focuses as Minister for the Environment.

I think all of us—people of our generation—know that there are places where we could swim and even drink from when we were young that we would not let a dog swim in now. That sort of change over quite a long period of time is very, very serious, and it is something we have to work on reversing.

In some places a lot of progress has been made. There has been a lot of progress on point discharges, especially in urban areas. In some of the clean-up there has been progress, as well. I invite the member to have a briefing or to visit the Waiwhetū stream and see the clean-up there of probably the dirtiest water in the country. It is a stream in the middle of an industrial area where, for about 30 years, chemicals were dumped through stormwater into a stream.

💬 Jacqui Dean: I was part of the project. I’ve cleaned streams.

The member would not get in this stream to clean it. It is so dirty and so infected that the member would not go near it. In fact, I tell the member that that stream—the Waiwhetū stream—actually has lead in the sludge coming out that is of mineable level. If that stream was slightly bigger it would be a source of income because one could mine it for lead. A lot of other heavy metals are involved in it, too.

After years and years—decades—of inaction by Governments on both sides of the House, we are finally getting on with cleaning up that stream and a number of others. For example, work is going on in the Taupō catchment. I think most people are aware that a lot of nitrates are going into the lake, and that this has to be reversed. A large amount of Government funding is going into a trust that is working to reduce nitrate levels.

But I tell members that it will not happen quickly, because nitrates that are used on the surface of farms now, around the western part of the lake—

💬 Jacqui Dean: Is this your speech from earlier today?

I have made a number of speeches today on a number of topics—not so much on the western access. Some members care about Lake Taupō and the environment, and I tell them that even if we stopped now, for another 30-40 years nitrates will be flowing into Lake Taupō from those farms. It is important to work not only towards stopping it now but also on mitigation methods.

Clearly, there will have to be some policy changes over a period of time. We cannot go on intensifying farming in the way we have in areas where water is at risk. It is obvious to everyone who is concerned in the Waikato, for example, that the discharges going into that river cannot continue even at their current rates. Therefore, the intensification that has been occurring during recent years will have to be unwound, either by technology, new methods of fertilising, new methods of fixing fertiliser, or reducing stock numbers in some areas.

That will be hard because it will involve some changes in what people previously regarded as their rights on a particular farm. But there will be a question in the end over what is for the greater good of the country, that particular region, and the farmers’ neighbours. That will be policy that I will be prepared and pleased to lead this year, next year, and for the years after that.

Report noted.

Department of Labour