Estimates Debate — Vote Environment

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. I am very happy to take a call on Vote Environment and also the climate change aspects of the environment vote. I think it is fair to say that the environment is going to be one of the major issues of this election campaign. We have a Government that has a stated target of doubling agricultural exports by 2025, but at the same time tells us that it wants to see no further degradation of waterways. Well, I am sorry, I say to the Minister for the Environment, but those two things do not go together. They cannot both happen. What we have is a Government that is happy to oversee further degradation of already very polluted waterways in pursuit of an economic target that will inflict massive environmental damage. It is a short-term sugar fix for people and farmers right now that will potentially mean that future generations will not be able to farm land in the same way that they do right now and that future generations will not be able to benefit from the enormous environmental wealth on which our economy is based. That is what this debate is about. It is about sustainability.

It is not about whether or not we farm; it is about how we farm and where we farm, because what we know is that we are having land types with extremely vulnerable soils being converted to dairying—lands that leech nutrients very quickly into waterways that are already overallocated and already polluted. This Minister says that is fine. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment did a report earlier this year where she talked about land use changes. For the first time, she brought together two modelling tools that are well-known and that are very credible so that we could see what land use changes would look like in 2020 and, therefore, extrapolate from that the impact on waterways. What that showed was that with the settings the Minister has suggested for the National Objectives Framework within the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, the 2020 worst-case scenario that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment laid out in her report would not be stopped at all. There is nothing in that National Objectives Framework that would stop the worst-case scenario from happening.

That is of deep concern to a country that is not only hugely reliant on a healthy environment—because I think Government members do not realise that without a healthy environment, we do not have a healthy economy. It is not a trade-off between the two. We must protect our environment because without it, we have no economy. It is as simple as that. It can be done. As I said, this is not about whether we farm; it is about how we farm and it is about where we farm. That is a discussion that we should be having, instead of, unfortunately, a proposed National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and a National Objectives Framework that will not stop further extreme degradation of our waterways.

Labour has said that we will strengthen the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. We will bring back the national policy statement that we suggested when we were in Government. We do not want to see any further degradation of our waterways, and we want to see remediation of those waterways that are already polluted. But that is not what this Government wants to do.

So to compound it, what the Government has decided is that we need sweeping Resource Management Act reforms. Apparently, it is the Resource Management Act that is holding everything back. This is despite the fact that since 1991 our economy has grown 75 percent—since the Resource Management Act was implemented. It has hardly been held back by a piece of legislation that simply requires that the environmental impacts of economic activity are taken into consideration and managed. That is what the Resource Management Act does. That is what it is designed to do. It is not, and was never meant to be, an economic development Act, yet that is what this Government wants to turn it into. The Minister says it is failing. That is despite the fact that our economy has grown by 75 percent since the Resource Management Act was introduced. Our population has grown by 25 percent since the Resource Management Act was introduced.

I note the most recent survey of local authorities in terms of their performance on the Resource Management Act, and bear in mind the Minister says this is a broken system that needs to be fixed. Do you know how many of the 34,000 consents that were processed in the last financial year that was reviewed—and these reviews are done every 2 years—were processed on time? Ninety-seven percent were processed on time. Do you know how many were approved through this system that the Minister is trying to convince New Zealanders is holding our economy back? Ninety-five percent were approved. How many were appealed? It was 0.7 percent. How many were declined? It was 0.27 percent. I think you would struggle to find another piece of Government legislation that is working as well as the Resource Management Act.

Labour agrees that process improvements can always be made to the Resource Management Act and we have no issue with that, but we need to leave the basic, fundamental values—the heart and soul of the Resource Management Act—alone. We have 20 years of case law that has been developed. If the Minister thinks that destroying 20 years of case law is going to provide certainty, then she is absolutely off her rocker. It will do nothing more than provide huge uncertainty and environmental degradation. She has not actually shown or proved in any way that there is a problem that needs to be fixed.

The Supreme Court has come to the rescue. In relation to the recent New Zealand King Salmon case, the Minister had been saying: “Well, the problem is, you see, the values and the hierarchy of principles in the Resource Management Act are being given a higher purpose in law than the national policy statements and planning documents like regional plans and district plans. That’s the problem, so we need to amend Part 2 of the Resource Management Act.” Well, Minister, you do not need to, because the Supreme Court has just completely turned that on its head and said that, no, that is not the case. In fact, those planning documents, where they use directive language, do have precedence over Part 2 of the Resource Management Act. So rather than the Minister saying that these are technical changes that will bring the Resource Management Act into line with case law, case law and the Minister are now heading very quickly in completely opposite directions—completely opposite directions.

The Minister’s other argument is that the Resource Management Act is a sacred cow, apparently—a sacred cow—that Opposition members are saying should never be touched. How ridiculous! I asked the Parliamentary Library to do a search. There is no other piece of legislation since 1991 that has been amended as many times as the Resource Management Act. Barely 18 months have gone by without a Resource Management Act amendment bill, and that is appropriate. What we need, however, alongside it are the national policy statement and planning documents, which can guide the Resource Management Act, streamline processes, and provide far more central government guidance. The Supreme Court has now given those planning documents a supremacy that is extremely helpful.

I want to quickly come to the issue of climate change before my time runs out and just say I am so disappointed with this Government’s performance on climate change. This is actually about futureproofing our economy. We have to do this. This is not a “nice to have”; this is something that we have to do. We have to transition away from our heavy reliance on fossil fuels. The longer we leave it, the more difficult it becomes, the more expensive it becomes, and we miss the amazing opportunities that are out there right now. There are countries around the world that are crying out for low-carbon solutions and crying out for low-carbon goods and services. This is our natural area. This is our natural strength, and what are we doing? Nothing. In 2007 John Key said that we need to be ahead of the game on this, that we need to realise that we will become trading pariahs if we do not bring agriculture into the scheme, and that we need to capitalise on the enormous potential and opportunities for New Zealand, as a country that has—or used to have—an enormously high reputation in this area. We are being overtaken by countries like Denmark, which is seeing these opportunities and rapidly advancing towards it for the betterment of its economy.

The National Government says that it wants an emissions trading scheme but it does not want a price on carbon. That is utterly ridiculous. Why would you have an emissions trading scheme, the sole purpose of which is to price carbon, if you did not want a price on carbon? Then the Government makes up some ridiculous figure that it will cost $500 extra a year to have a proper price on carbon. That is utter garbage that is being made up. Do you know what? If the Government had transparency around carbon pricing and stopped the price-gouging that it knows is going on by electricity and fuel companies, which would drop the price of carbon, actually the overall cost would not be that much to businesses and households at all. Of course, what we are doing is incentivising low-carbon products by giving them a price advantage. That is the point of a price on carbon. The Government has allowed cheap units to flood into our emissions trading scheme, collapsing the price of carbon and damaging our forestry sector. That is the one sector that did all the heavy lifting over the last 6 years. The only reason that we came out positive in the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and did not face a massive bill was forestry. Our gross emissions kept going up. We were just planting enough forests to more than mitigate that.

Well, in 2020 those forests come down, and because of the Government’s climate change policies, we are not replanting the forests. We will face a massive, massive bill. If there is a post-2020 agreement, there is a real risk that it may be unaffordable for New Zealand to enter that agreement—that is, if we do not do something about planting more forestry and reducing our gross greenhouse gas emissions right now. Can you imagine how devastating it would be for our reputation if the mess that this Government leaves is so bad that we have to equivocate on whether or not we are able to enter into a post-2020 agreement? The Government’s climate change plan is 0.4 percent difference from doing nothing at all.

I rise to speak on Vote Environment in the Committee stage of the Appropriation (2014/15 Estimates) Bill and I speak with great enthusiasm about our environmental and conservation measures. The last speaker, Moana Mackey, outlined very clearly the great philosophical void and enormous divide that exists between our two parties. I am passionate about the environment. I work for a Government that is also passionate about the environment and does excellent and remarkable things to safeguard it. That is why I joined National. That is why I approve, ultimately, of all of the activities that our Minister for the Environment, Amy Adams, and our Minister of Conservation, Dr Nick Smith, have put in place.

Let us take a few of the proposals and achievements that we are putting through over the next little while, and there are a lot more to come. Expect some big announcement about fresh water and ensuring good water quality in the lead-up to this election, because that is something of an absolute priority. I agree with what the Opposition members say—it is a priority. Where we absolutely disagree is the way we want to achieve it. We are not about rhetoric. We are not about mad words that promise lots and deliver nothing. We are not about peddling things that are absolutely impossible to deliver. You cannot manage what you cannot measure. We measure it, we look it, and we make policies that really do ensure that our freshwater resources, which are precious, are replenishable. They are not unlimited though; we need to look after them.

There are no quick-fix solutions to the problems with our waterways. There is no magic Labour wand or Green wish-it-were-so policy that will change the inevitable. What we have done as a Government is to address the substance and to put together packages and clean-ups that will lead to a more productive and sustainable use of our freshwater resources, not only for our farmers, whom I am sick of hearing being demonised. Dirty dairying—really and truly, you start to lose the will to live when you hear the way that people try, with captions and slogans, to demonise and vilify one group in society. People are trying extremely hard to come up with practical solutions. That is something that happens when you have a Minister for the Environment who is also a farmer, because she understands and knows the practical, day-to-day realities of actually running a farm and dealing with it.

Let us look at some of the reforms that we have established to date. The Land and Water Forum—what an extraordinary thing. Imagine getting all the enemies of the environment, climate change, and conservation all in one room, and that they talk together. In the 9 long years of the Labour Government it was considered to be an incredibly unlikely scenario and one not even worth trying. By 2009 we had formed the Land and Water Forum, and, as Dr Nick Smith has done and has put some extraordinarily good work into, we have managed to maintain a level of collaboration where you do get together people who want the same thing, which is the betterment of our environment. They come to the table and they give a little and they gain a little, and they get the job done. That is what the Land and Water Forum has done.

Let us look at the stakeholders and the way they have done the groundbreaking research. There probably is not actually time for me to go into the Land and Water Forum’s achievements in any great detail, but look at the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management. That came in in 2011, and it gave councils a clear pathway and a national direction, for the first time, on how to set limits to achieve water management objectives. You need to be able to look at this sensibly and to take the emotion out of the argument, and that is what has been done. The development of that National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management provided a robust, scientifically backed set of attributes to help communities plan to meet their particular objectives. Hold the front page—it is not that difficult an idea, but it is a concept that the Opposition parties seem unable to grasp. Maybe it is just politics, but we put that to one side because the environment matters to us.

We have put about $101 million recently on to water clean-ups, and have committed a further $350 million, which is a fivefold increase in funding, and that is just for lake and river clean-ups. This is where it counts and this is where it matters. Put the empty rhetoric aside. In the latest Budget a further $12 million in extra funding will be spent over the next 4 years, again, to help councils and communities come together to plan and make decisions about their own problems—looking local and using local solutions, and working together with that breadth of knowledge. I have seen it recently with the Kaikōura (Te Tai-o-Marokura) Marine Management Bill. We had a collaborative approach there, which has been done over—oh, I do not know—15 years in total, but very seriously for the past 7 years. That is a workable solution that was ultimately embraced by the Greens and by Labour, and the Supplementary Order Papers and the debate, I guess, when the bill comes back to the House, will settle any points of difference. We believe as a Government—this National, John Key-led Government—in collaboration, and it works with the environment.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Vote Environment for 2014-15 totals over $313 million and 61 percent of that relates to the Ministry for the Environment’s climate change responsibilities, and my colleague Kennedy Graham will comment on that. But 39 percent of the vote is for other aspects of environmental management, and a significant chunk of that covers fresh water. The Ministry for the Environment gets $14 million to provide advice and implement tools for water management.

We live in a country that is shaped by more than 180,000 kilometres of rivers. Some of them are deep and swift, and others, like the Waimakariri, have wide beds that spread into many strands on the plains. Some, like the Tarawera, start in lakes, and others have their headwaters in the snowfields of the Southern Alps. We New Zealanders love our rivers. They inspire us with their beauty and power, as places to go fishing and kayaking, as a source of kai, or for their own sake. Nine high-profile New Zealanders, including musicians Tiki Taane, Maisey Rika, artist Grahame Sydney, photographer Craig Potton, and comedienne Michele A’Court, and 2,000 other New Zealanders have signed an open letter to the environment Minister calling on her to get tough on water pollution. New Zealanders want the Minister and her ministry to introduce strong standards to protect water quality and reduce the pollution load that intensive land use puts on our rivers.

I understand that tomorrow the Minister will release the Government’s final decisions on the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management. That national policy statement is the major policy document under the Resource Management Act, and it influences how our rivers, streams, lakes, and aquifers are managed and how councils control land use that affects water quality. But National has no plan for clean rivers. Under this Minister and this National Government, the Ministry for the Environment has proposed weak national bottom lines for water quality that will allow more water pollution. We have got high limits on pollutants such as nitrogen and faecal coliform. Why? So that irrigation and dairy intensification can continue to expand.

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: Why do you talk such nonsense?

Mr Finlayson is interjecting. Mr Finlayson, last November when National released the proposed changes to the national policy statement, they were widely criticised. The Fish and Game Council said the national bottom lines for water quality would allow New Zealand rivers to become some of the most polluted in the OECD. It described them as an abject failure that, in its words, legitimised the worst farm nitrate pollution we have in New Zealand now and allowed water pollution to increase by five to 15 times over current levels.

💬 Shane Ardern: Who said that?

It was not just the Fish and Game Council; it was also the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. She said that the National Objectives Framework did not go far enough to address the most widespread, pervasive, and immediate pressure, which is the rapidly increasing nutrient loads from land use change.

In the last 5 years the amount of irrigated land in New Zealand has increased by an area the size of Lake Taupō and Lake Te Ānau combined. An extra 60,000 hectares in Canterbury have been irrigated, covering an area the size of Lake Taupō. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Parliament’s environmental watchdog, wants the Government to increase the measures in the national policy statement so that regional councils regulate land use change to prevent more nutrient leaching, more faecal contamination, and more water pollution. But National prioritises irrigation development and intensive land use over rivers that are clean enough to swim in. There is no limit to the novel food products and the jobs we can create if we use our intelligence, if we focus on research and development, and if we add value to the milk we currently produce, but there is a limit on the number of dairy cows we can put on the land. The Green Party recognises this; National does not. In areas like Lake Taupō we have reached that limit.

More than 90 percent of the 7,000 submitters on the Government’s proposed changes to the national policy statement called for a health standard that ensured that rivers were clean enough to swim in. The Green Party would introduce standards that provided that. When the Minister announces her changes tomorrow, I would love to see a change in that standard to ensure that our rivers are clean enough to swim in, but given that National prioritises irrigation, I doubt that we will see that.

It is a great privilege to take a call on Vote Environment in the estimates debate for this year. I think that the National Government can stand here incredibly proud of what we have done in the environment space in the last year. I am happy to go toe to toe with anyone in this Parliament on our actual record. Leaving aside all the hand-wringing rhetoric and the tired old clichés and the thinly veiled hatred of farmers that those members hide under their rhetoric, in actual action on the ground this is a Government that has delivered in every single component that makes up the environment portfolio.

We have heard a lot about fresh water, but what I can tell you is this. This is the Government that put in place a National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management. This is the Government that is going to introduce for the first time nationally required bottom lines. This is the Government that required regional councils to make sure that water quality is always maintained or improved. This is the Government that spent five times what the previous Government spent on water clean-ups. This is the Government that required for the first time metering of large irrigation consents. This is the Government that is putting this country on a path to cleaner, better, more sustainable fresh water.

But here is the difference. This is also a Government that recognises that New Zealanders want jobs, they want a high standard of living, and they want all the things that the taxes from our productive sector pay for. So we are not going to do it in a way that kills the golden goose. We are not going to slam the door on business. We are not going to demonise anyone who commits the unforgiveable sin of actually running a business, being profitable, and creating a job. We are going to say: “Let’s do it in a way that achieves both.”

Unlike the Labour speaker Moana Mackey, who said that you absolutely could not have clean water and increase agriculture, we do not accept that. We believe that you can. In fact, we know you can. We have seen it happening. New Zealand farmers, New Zealand business people, and New Zealanders as a whole are the most innovative, the most clever, and the most creative people in the world, and they are already adapting and they are already showing that you can absolutely farm in a way that is more profitable, that is more successful, and that significantly reduces their environmental impact. That is what we back and that is absolutely what we are going to see happen. [Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Sorry to interrupt the Minister. It is happening again. Members who do not have the floor and who interject on each other because they have a disagreement—that is not permitted in the people’s House. If you want to interject, then you can interject on the speaker on my right, but not on each other.

That same approach of talking one game and then not following through is seen throughout Labour’s approach. So let us look at the Resource Management Act. Again we heard Moana Mackey railing against this, but here is what I would say. If the Labour Party wants to go to the electorate on a platform that there is nothing wrong with the Resource Management Act, bring it on. Bring it on, because I can tell you that every single public satisfaction survey that is done on how the public find our services across national and local government consistently rates the Resource Management Act not only as a fail but as having the lowest rating of every single service. So if Labour wants to campaign against us on the basis that the Resource Management Act is working really well and we are happy with it, I welcome it.

Again, here is the difference. We understand that our planning laws absolutely have to protect our environment. They absolutely have to care about the water, the soil, and the air that we all enjoy and need in order to live. But also we recognise that people care about jobs, houses, and infrastructure. Labour suggests that our planning laws are not even allowed to make reference to the importance of land for housing, or the importance of creating new economic growth opportunities, and it then has the audacity to come to this Committee and say: “Where are the jobs and what are you doing about housing?”, when it has blocked every single opportunity in this House to back us on sensible reform that would put things like housing, infrastructure and natural hazard management—that is all we want to put in it—right at the heart of the Resource Management Act. But, according to the Opposition, you are allowed to ask only whether there will be any negative impact. That is all you are allowed to ask. Never mind that people actually need houses to live in. They need houses to live in, and this Government recognises it.

Let us have a look at the exclusive economic zone. Here is another great example, right? The exclusive economic zone. What happened under Labour and the Greens? They drilled as many holes as they wanted out there, and do you know what the process was? Their energy Minister signed it off. That is it. That was the entire economic and environmental assessment—one energy Minister signed it in his office. Under the National-led Government we have, for the first time, a strong environmental impact assessment before anything can happen in our exclusive economic zone. And for all the people on the Opposition benches who screamed that this was some sham, rubber-stamp process, how is that looking now? We have a strong, independent, very detailed oversight of anyone who wants to operate in our exclusive economic zone. Yes, we do want to see development, but only if they can meet that very high threshold. It is a high bar—

Tēnā koe, Mr Chairman. This is a Government whose 2014 estimates contain a time bomb of fiscal deficit over the next two decades through a failure in carbon budgeting. This is a Government whose climate change policy is a mess. It has paltry targets with no plan to attain them. It has weak policy settings, so emitters have no incentive to change, and that, I say to the Minister for the Environment, will kill the golden goose. But even worse is the failure to convey to the taxpayer the fiscal costs that its climate policy will impose on future generations. The emissions trading scheme under current settings aspires to manage fiscal risk primarily through forestry, and the harvesting of trees is therefore fully priced. But the impact of the emissions trading scheme on other sectors is softened by compensation, the gifting of units, and the exclusion of an entire sector that makes up half of our emissions.

In 1992 New Zealand undertook to reduce emissions. Since then its emissions have soared and are projected to continue to do so out to 2050. What is the fiscal effect of that? New Zealand has committed to three emission targets: 2008-12, 2020, and 2050. By drawing straight lines between these targets, the Government sets a primitive kind of national carbon budget. It calculates the annual emissions within those lines and then compares the limits with the projected emissions to find the excess. For the period 2013-50, Treasury projects that under current policy settings, excess emissions will total around about 1 billion tonnes of emissions. Net emissions will more than double the Government’s target in 2050.

One way or another, this excess has to be paid for. This Government refused to enter a binding commitment under Kyoto II, so we face no financial penalty if we fail and exceed our 2020 target, but after 2020 there will certainly be an international carbon price of some kind, and it will rise fast. It cannot be otherwise. The British climate commission assumes that international prices will rise from about US$50 to US$150 a tonne during that decade. There will be a binding obligation on emission limits by then, and a financial penalty of some kind for exceeding them. At US$25 a tonne, the external carbon budget deficit for New Zealand will amount to maybe US$30 billion. Imagine the fiscal hurdles for the next generation, when we might be paying up to six times that price.

In 2 months voters choose which party will govern for the next 3 years. They have two considerations: security for themselves and a future for their kids. This is a Government that flaunts a reduction of current account deficit next year and ignores the future. But the fiscal debt from current climate change policy will be simply horrendous—a major financial haemorrhage in the 2020s. Because our accounting methods are inadequate, this is hidden from the taxpayer and the voter. The principle of carbon responsibility is lost on this Government. The Public Finance Act requires the Government to manage fiscal risk with prudence. How is the public going to judge the Government on that basis?

This is a Government that misrepresents the facts to the public. Over the past month it has derided the Green Party’s proposal for a carbon tax, claiming that our tax would be five times the global price. What pure rubbish! There is no single global price; there is a range of international prices. So how does the Green price level compare? The Green proposal is for US$22 a tonne for carbon dioxide and US$11 for biological emissions. So how does this compare with international prices? Well, there is China, Quebec, California, and France at US$10, then there is the UK at US$16, Australia at US$22, Finland at US$48, Switzerland at US$68, Tokyo at US$95, and Sweden at US$168. So our proposal sits very comfortably within the carbon price range overseas. This is a Government whose estimates, along with its spin, are misleading, tendentious, and dangerous.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Primary Industries