Estimates Debate — Environment Sector

Members, we come now to the votes in the environment sector, B.5, volume 3. The question is that Vote Conservation, Vote Environment, and Vote Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment stand part of the schedules.

I rise to present the reports from the environment sector. Those are the reports on the Department of Conservation, the Ministry for the Environment, and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, all of which were heard in the Estimates briefings by the Environment Committee. It is largely a congenial committee, and very collegial, and I think that shows in our reports.

I turn first to Vote Conservation, where there has been an exciting advance in what has happened under this coalition Government. Under this new coalition Government, we have a significant increase in Vote Conservation, of about $43.1 million. That’s a huge advance in funding, and it speaks to a difference in the way that conservation is funded. It speaks to rebuilding the Department of Conservation, to rebuilding capacity there so that it is fit and ready to meet any challenges that arise.

There are some interesting things in this vote. In particular, there is a $76 million contingency fund to fund biodiversity initiatives. The exact initiatives have yet to be determined; that is, in part, because of the resourcing needed within the Department of Conservation for those initiatives. The capacity to administer that fund has to be rebuilt, and that is under way.

Some of the concerns that have been raised in conservation are to do with funding, and we are introducing some new measures for funding conservation—in particular, a tourism levy, where we are asking international visitors to pay a levy as they come into our country. Some of that money will go to tourism, but some of it will also go to conservation, and that is an important initiative. And, in quite a good measure, I think, we are asking tourists who walk our Great Walks—particularly the more popular walks—to pay a higher fee than domestic visitors to those Great Walks. We are asking those tourists to fund the infrastructure, to fund those Great Walks so that they will continue to be there for New Zealanders in the future. So I think it’s a very promising start to our term in office when it comes to conservation.

In Vote Environment, funding has decreased, which might ordinarily be a cause for alarm, except that most of that decrease is due to a change in the emissions trading scheme. So that is where the largest decrease comes from, and that, of course, points to some of the critical concerns in Vote Environment. I think there are two large concerns in Vote Environment: the first is around fresh water, and the other one is around climate change. We know that people in New Zealand are very concerned about fresh water, and we know that we need to do some extraordinary work on nutrient load in our waterways, particularly arising from farming. As part of the work being done in that space, we are allocating extra money to OVERSEER. That’s a tool that farmers can use to assess nutrient load, but it needs to be effective, it needs to be good to use, and we’re putting our money where our mouth is and funding it properly.

When it comes to climate change, climate change has been spoken of as the moral issue of our time. We will be devoting considerable effort to climate change. The Minister for Climate Change has put in place a process to develop a zero-carbon bill; he is consulting on it at the moment. He also told us that he might continue to accept international credits in our emissions trading scheme. You will know that this has been a concern in the past, or we know this has been a concern. There are some conditions around the use of the international credits: that they are genuine, that they would maintain progression to a net zero carbon unit, that they make economic sense, and that they would assist in increasing the domestic carbon price. So that work is being done on the emissions trading scheme.

I move very briefly to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE). As a committee, we were concerned about the PCE’s independence. We were given strong reassurance that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment would continue to be an independent voice for the environment, reporting to our Parliament through several reports each year. That independent voice is critical beyond politics, beyond partisan views, simply advocating for and reporting on behalf of the environment. I commend these reports.

Look, thank you, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to take a call in this Appropriation (2018/19 Estimates) Bill, and as the lead for conservation on this side of the House, that will be the focus of my contribution here. Of course, as we are aware, this is an opportunity for the new Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage, to spell out her vision for conservation and the conservation effort in New Zealand moving forward, and how she will enable the Department of Conservation to engage the community and lead them to involve themselves in a conservation ethic that will bring about a betterment for New Zealand.

Quite frankly, I was disappointed with a Minister that while she was a member in Opposition had all of the answers. She was very quick to tell us how to run the Department of Conservation and how to run our conservation initiatives, but yet in the chair at the hearing she had no answers and, quite frankly, was wedded to an ideology that would take the Department of Conservation back to the 1980s—to the bad old days where the State would do everything—and she would not engage community. In the hearing, she was quite clear about her reluctance to involve business, to involve community, and to involve people in a conservation initiative. One of the things that she said was that she was reluctant to garner support from business, to garner support of extra funding into initiatives, because she wanted to keep these businesses at arm’s length, and she was somewhat dubious about the influence that they would have on her officials.

Well, first of all, I have faith in the officials at the Department of Conservation that they will not be swayed as to a conservation ethic and what is the right thing to do with respect to protecting and conserving an environment. But the other thing is that when you can bring business and partners on board, not only do you get a financial return but you get that engagement where they can build trust and where they can bring stakeholders from a range of varying backgrounds together to push forward conservation benefits. That is true in one example with respect to Fonterra and their Living Water initiative, and particularly in my area with respect to Waituna Lagoon, which is a Ramsar Convention site. There is an ability to bring together farmers, to bring together conservationists, to bring together a range of different people—birdwatchers, fishers, or whoever is in the area together—and build that trust, to look at a wetland and recognise its beauty and its conservation value, and to work together around a table to create a set of common goals to bring forward conservation in that area.

My question with respect to this is: how far will the new Minister take this? Will this continue—this abhorrence to involving the community in the likes of Predator Free 2050? Predator Free 2050 is based on the fact that we need our community to engage in the eradication of our pests and to involve themselves in conservation at community level, at the grassroots. So is she going to sabotage that initiative by turning away people that want to get involved in conservation? And, even further, does this anti-partnership model stem to even other departments with partnerships such as the Department of Corrections, where we take offenders and rehabilitate them through conservation efforts to build kākāpōriums, to plant and nurture plants and then replant them and restore certain landscapes? How far will she take us backwards with not involving people on the ground in conservation?

Conservation should not be a polarising issue. Conservation is owned—and everybody in New Zealand has a passion for conservation. We have an innate sense of connection to our natural environment and, at all costs, a connection with community should be cherished.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s a great pleasure to stand and to have a conversation across the floor in regard to the appropriations. Just in response to the member Sarah Dowie, in regard to Vote Conservation: I am very excited about what is happening in the conservation space—very excited.

💬 Hon Scott Simpson: Say it like you mean it. Say it with some passion.

Very, very excited! How’s that? So $181 million in the next four years—$181 million—that is the largest increase in the Department of Conservation’s (DOC’s) budget since 2002. We are backing nature. I’m just going to read some facts: $81 million to boost landscape-scale predator control; $76 million for DOC biodiversity initiatives across land, fresh water, and marine ecosystems; $16.2 million for DOC to strengthen core capacity—that means more people on the ground working with those volunteers out there in the community, working alongside those volunteers—$5.5 million to enable better visitor management, because we have more visitors coming to this country than we have people living here now; and $2.6 million to fund the better protection of the unique landscape and biodiversity of the Mackenzie Basin, which has been neglected by the past Government. But I’m not here to talk about just that; I’m here to talk about climate change.

Climate change is, in fact, the most serious issue, I believe, that we are facing, and I am pleased to hear the member Sarah Dowie talk about partnerships, because we surely need the party across the benches to be in partnership with us around climate change. Climate change is a serious issue. I come from Tauranga. My city will be devastated if we continue to allow climate change to exist. We need, across this House, to act, and I believe that we have put together a wonderful, forward-thinking, brave plan in order to fix the issue. So we are taking the environment and the protection of our environment as a priority.

We have truly shown that the safeguarding of our systems of nature is really important. Our goal is to improve the living standards and well-being of every person in this country. The environment appropriation represents 18 percent of the vote—$147 million. This is a Government which has put its money where its mouth is. We have three priorities for the environment: climate change, fresh water, and urban development. These three things are really important. Do the members here recall, as children, swimming in fresh water? Swimming in lakes? I certainly do recall that. Wadeable rivers and lakes is not a standard we aspire to on the side of the House. We are keen and will work across all of Government in order to fix this. We will not stand for any further degradation of our water, and it will be swimmable within a generation. That is what we want to do. We will fund that. We’ve put $42 million towards that. We haven’t changed the standards of what clean water means; we’ve actually committed to making a change.

In my very short amount of time—I obviously got a bit passionate about that.

💬 Hon Dr David Clark: And excited!

And excited—and excited! I would just like to say that climate change is crucial to us all across this House. We invite the members across the House to come with us around zero carbon and climate change. We invite you all—all of us here—because we don’t have a Planet B. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s good to take a call in this Estimates debate on Vote Environment. I particularly want to refer to pages 91 and 92 of the report back from the Environment Committee, because the committee had an opportunity at Estimates to hear from the Minister. He’s a busy Minister. He’s got a very large and complicated range of portfolios. So the committee was disappointed that the committee’s invitation extended to the two Associate Ministers, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta and the Hon Eugenie Sage, to attend the committee hearings was declined. That was disappointing because these are Associate Ministers that actually have quite large delegations.

The principal Minister, David Parker, has chosen to delegate very significant parts of the environment portfolio to his Associate Ministers. There’s nothing wrong with that, but what is wrong with that is that the Associate Ministers should have adopted the process that occurred in years past, when Associate Ministers did attend Estimates hearings and answer questions about their delegated financial responsibilities—the areas for which they have financial accountability in this Budget—and they were missing in action. What was particularly odd was that one of them, the Hon Eugenie Sage, appeared only a few minutes after the hearing at the conservation hearing. So she was clearly very busy prepping for her conservation role rather than putting emphasis on the environment role.

That’s really what I want to concentrate on, because this is a Government that—and we noticed it with the last speaker—seem to have lost their enthusiasm for the environment. They’ve lost their direction, they’ve lost their focus, and they’ve lost their passion. They didn’t have any. Their speakers in this debate—in fact, they don’t even talk about the environment any more because they’ve found that it’s harder than they thought. These were Ministers who in Opposition had all the answers. I well remember the Hon Eugenie Sage used to come to select committees and she would just lay down the law and say, “All you need to do is this, this, this, and this, and everything will be perfect, everything will be simple.” What do we have now? A Minister who is probably the most inefficient, in terms of producing any results, of the entire Government administration. A Minister who had all the answers in Opposition is now stuck like a possum in headlights—like a possum in headlights—who has been bereft of ideas and bereft of policy, and, suddenly, all her good ideas seem to have evaporated before her very eyes.

Frankly, it’s an embarrassment. It’s an embarrassment to her party, which nobody hears about these days, and it’s a deeper embarrassment to the coalition Government because, clearly, there are frictions afoot that abound between the coalition partners. We saw it when we asked questions at Estimates about the proposed levy on bottled water, for instance. There were very few answers. In fact, the Minister confessed to the committee that, actually, he’s no longer prioritising a tax on bottled water, and he told the committee that he was prioritising emissions pricing over water pricing. So that’s a concession of defeat, because he understands that to do what was suggested in the Speech from the Throne actually amounts to foreshore and seabed mark 2. He knows that, and the coalition Government knows that, and it’s an utter humiliation for them in terms of their policy initiatives.

But it’s in the area of waste and plastics that they have been particularly slow. China made a decision more than a year ago to cease taking the world’s rubbish for recycling, and this Government has done absolutely nothing. In an electorate like mine, plastic is stockpiling at the old Carter Holt Harvey site at Kōpū, just out of Thames. The Minister has said on a number of occasions she wants to introduce a ban on single-use plastic bags—nothing is happening. She was on the television over the weekend and no comments were made—nothing’s forthcoming. In fact, she wants to have another consultation. So the Minister had all the answers in Opposition and now, suddenly, is stuck like a possum in headlights.

This is a Government that came to office with what New Zealand voters and the public could have expected was some kind of passion, some kind of zeal, for the environment. They now seem to have been really just completely sidetracked on it. They don’t have any vision. They haven’t got any plan. They just seem to be bereft of ideas, and nothing was clearer in the Estimates hearings.

Mr Simpson spent two minutes of his time grumbling about the fact that I didn’t turn up at the Environment Committee. That, again, shows how bereft the National Party is of ideas. All they have done in this debate today is criticise, criticise, criticise. Negative National—negative National.

This Government has a plan for a sustainable, inclusive, and productive economy. This Budget is about backing nature in the conservation space, because nature is at the heart of our success as a country, both in the primary sector and in the tourism sector—our biggest export industry. So this Budget did in conservation what National utterly, utterly failed to do over the last decade. It put in the biggest increase in conservation funding since 2002—the biggest increase in the last 16 years. And the bulk of that—$81 million, as Angie Warren-Clark noted—is going toward landscape-scale predator control in order to ensure that our native species can thrive.

Now, Ms Dowie talked about conservation being something across the parties, and yet she spent all of her time in attack mode too. What I said at select committee—and it’s a pity Ms Dowie didn’t talk to the former Minister of Conservation, the National Party Minister, about his National Parks and Conservation Foundation. Denis Marshall was the founding chair of that foundation. It was set up to provide an independent agency for corporates wanting to donate to conservation to give their donations to the foundation, and to hold that at arm’s length. Under this Government, unlike under National, we want independent Crown agencies not at the behest of the corporates. Yes, there are partnerships with business, but when businesses are giving donations, you want to ensure that the policy function of the department is robust and is independent. So take a lesson, Ms Dowie, from a former National Minister, Denis Marshall, in setting up that foundation.

The conservation budget has got a raft of initiatives which involve partnerships. I’ve been delighted to announce, in Taranaki, Towards a Predator-Free Taranaki—the partnership there with iwi and with hapū, the eight Taranaki iwi. It’s working with the council, working with Wild for Taranaki, the conservation groups, and the environmental groups up there to work outward from the maunga of Taranaki and control predators around the whole of the ring plain. Similarly, in Hawke’s Bay, we’re seeing a huge partnership with the regional council there—with iwi, with hapū, with landholders—to actually trap on private land, to increase the benefits that you get from the landscape scale the department is able to do on public land because of the increased funding that this Government has made available.

Regarding waste, the previous speaker, Mr Simpson, has totally opposed any increase in the waste levy. National failed to use that levy for all of the nine years that they were in Government, and yet local councils are calling for an expansion of the levy. This Government has a plan on waste. You can’t fix nine years of neglect in nine months, Mr Simpson. We have a plan. We are close to announcements on single-use plastic bags. There is a whole raft of work being done in responding to the National Sword initiative. That is an enormous opportunity for New Zealand not to send our waste to China, but to actually deal with it onshore to reduce the waste we generate here. We are seriously acting on waste, not like the last Government. We’re working with the sector. We are working with councils to reduce the waste that goes to landfill.

So the failure of the last Government to deal with waste—

Tim van de Molen: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Look, there have been multiple instances in this member’s speech where she’s referred to the previous Government’s expenditure. I would draw your attention to Speakers’ ruling 128/3, which confines this Estimates debate to current spending plans only, and previous performance is to be debated under the annual review debate. This is clearly not that.

I was simply providing context.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Taihoa, I’m going to make a ruling. Members, they are debatable points, and members can compare to the records of previous years. So that’s quite appropriate.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

This Government, with this Budget, is going to work to turn the predator crisis around. It was the National Government that had the ambition of Predator Free 2050, but they weren’t investing in conservation to do that. We know that when the department does large-scale predator control, it does get numbers down, and it does ensure that in areas like the Landsborough, bird numbers like the kākā, the parakeets, continue to increase. So this Government is backing nature. This Government is investing in conservation, unlike the former National Government.

💬 Todd Muller: Madam Chair.

Um—

💬 Hon Members: Todd Muller.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I call Todd Muller. Thank you.

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: A new MP.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Yeah—maiden speech.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): It’s been a long week.

I rise to give my maiden speech today—oh well, one can only improve. Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to spend a few moments reflecting on the contribution on climate change that we covered in the Vote Environment Estimates a few weeks ago. Not surprisingly, Minister James Shaw spent a fair amount of time talking about the Government’s intent with respect to the zero carbon bill, the target, and the consultation process. But there were some areas that we felt, from an Opposition perspective, belied the rhetoric and actually signalled some pretty poor judgment, and I do want to reflect on some of those observations this evening.

The first is that if you are determined in a bipartisan way to establish a climate commission that is above reproach, that is non-political, and that is evidence-based and informed by good data and good judgment, the very first thing you don’t do in establishing an interim climate committee to do the pre-work for that commission is to give them tasks that are entirely informed by your own political bias and prejudice. To ask that interim committee to prioritise the areas of renewable energy, taking it from 85 percent, as we currently are, through to 100 percent, and putting agriculture into the emissions trading scheme (ETS)—two word-for-word platforms from the Green Party manifesto 16 months ago—talks, in my view, to some pretty poor judgment. If you are serious about having an informed conversation at a climate committee around the sorts of areas that perhaps should have some focus as we move as a country across the decarbonisation journey, the discussion that we had in that select committee suggests that those two are not the two that you would prioritise.

The conversations that we had with the Minister tested why renewable transport wasn’t included in the interim climate committee’s considerations over the next 12 months, why forestry wasn’t, why land use change wasn’t, and the opportunity to actually reflect on what we could do differently to capture the carbon that is sequestered in this country—why was that not part of their interim climate commission? What about the opportunities for renewable industrial processes? Why was that not covered in the interim committee’s mandate?

This was a specific issue that we raised with the Minister, and, in particular, the question that I raised to him: why wouldn’t the merits of the extractive industries—oil and gas, and its future, particularly gas as a transitional fuel—not be considered by an interim commission? If you are truly serious about building a bipartisan platform on climate change—one that is evidence-based—you would task your best people to look at the questions which are material with respect to climate transition, not the two issues that your base in the Green Party are particularly enamoured with.

A particular one of the areas that we pursued specifically with the Minister was his particular belief that access to international markets and international units should be something that we approach, as a country, as a last resort. We tested thoroughly at the committee that that is poor, poor logic—that when you are looking at the exposure of our economy over the 2020s, and the 193 million tonnes of carbon dioxide that needs to be somehow removed from our emissions, the fact that this Government, and particularly this Minister, is so reticent in pursuing the opportunities for access to international units was disappointing, and particularly the very small number of 700,000 that, supposedly, is going to facilitate the access to these international units in the market. As a Budget, it was woefully inadequate in terms of delivering against that strategy. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Tēnā koe. Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s an honour to rise and speak on behalf of New Zealand First on this Appropriation (2018/19 Estimates) Bill. It’s a significant increase in funding that we’ve seen in Vote Conservation, and that is something to be very excited about. In fact, we heard that from this side of the Chamber earlier in this debate process, that it was exciting—no, it wasn’t exciting; it was very, very, very exciting. I’d like to just reiterate how exciting it is to have $181 million over the next four years—

💬 Hon Member: Real money.

—that’s real money—into conservation, to support the Department of Conservation (DOC) for a programme to restore capacity in the department; capacity that was lost under the previous regime. So I’d just like to acknowledge the Minister of Conservation, the “Minister of Good News Stories”, for this increase in the Budget.

National’s big initiative in the previous regime on the environment was, in fact, a bit of a Trumpian-style diversion tactic. As the whole country was waking up to the realisation that we have serious water-quality problems with our rivers, what did they do—what did they do?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Order! the debate is actually about the Estimates—the Estimates—not what a previous Government did, but what this Government’s Estimates are.

They launched the Predator Free 2050 programme—yes, Madam Chair. OK.

So we all know that the Predator Free 2050 programme is being extended by this Government, because we do understand that to take care and eliminate predators, there’s no point paying lip-service to it; in fact, we must throw real money at it and seriously combat these predators. In fact, we have super-sized the efforts that were made previously because this will make a real difference. And the Taranaki Mounga project will not only target pest eradication through Vote Conservation but, in fact, restore lost species back to the maunga.

We note that protecting our natural resources will ensure a future for not only our grandchildren but our grandchildren’s grandchildren—our mokopuna’s mokopuna. Conservation is about dealing with the issues that are unfolding now to ensure that we have a future—a healthy, flourishing future—for all of the future generations to enjoy.

There is no Planet B, and New Zealanders, we understand that—we understand and we have a deep fascination with nature. It’s part of our national psyche. It’s embedded in our DNA. We enter our nature’s stores from Te Rerenga Wairua—Cape Reinga—in the North to Bluff in the South, and all the regions, ngā hau e whā. We pride ourselves on our unique physical connection—in fact, our spiritual connection—with Papatūānuku, our world-renowned conservation estate.

We are very excited that, for me in the Rodney region, we have the Parry Kauri Park—this is a very small native forest of kauri trees—and we have our Kauri and Native Bushmen’s Association. For the last 30 years, they have been protecting our patch of native kauri forest. They have done such great work that we have no kauri dieback there. They have resourced this themselves.

We understand that kauri dieback is a microscopic, fungus-like pathogen that infects the roots of the kauri and kills the tree. This Vote Conservation will see $5.486 million in annual operating budget to be added back into DOC’s baseline. That’ll help manage the kauri dieback through into the future. Thankfully, now we have a new Government, we actually might still have time to save the kauri.

So let me reassure the committee that this Government understands the extent of the problem. We are very serious about committing all the resources that are required, and, just like Mycoplasma bovis, this Government has been left to deal with a problem that should never have grown to the extent that it has. But we do get it. We do understand that strong conservation and environmental values are the keystone to the New Zealand way of life, and we are prepared to protect that. We are putting our money where our mouth is.

Now, if we tarnish our environment and our conservation image, you know what? We will never get it back. So without strong conservation values, we will have no business, no livelihood, and no future. But we have good news. We have $181 million added into Vote Conservation, and that is something to celebrate.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m very pleased to take a call in the Estimates debate for the environment sector. I’m quite pleased actually—this is my first time going through all of this, and it was actually quite an exciting process because the environment is on all of our minds. We’ve got issues around a plastic waste crisis that’s happening at the moment. The Government raised our expectations around water quality, single-use plastics, and bottled water, so you’ve got a country whose expectations are raised. We’re all thinking about it, people in my electorate are thinking about it, and we put a lot of those questions around those areas to the Minister at select committee. Being my first Estimates hearing, I had assumed—wrongly so—that the Associate Ministers would turn up to the meetings, given that they were invited, and I’ll draw your attention to page 2 of the report where we made clear that they were invited but didn’t actually turn up.

The fact that Minister Sage, the Associate Minister with a delegation for waste, didn’t show up, frankly, is appalling. It’s appalling because we are facing possibly one of the biggest waste crises, potentially ever—certainly in my lifetime—around plastic. We know that China are no longer taking it. We know that it’s stockpiling around the country in warehouses that are bursting at the seams. We had some questions to ask the Minister around the appropriation and what her plans were, and we weren’t able to do that, and, frankly, that was appalling.

We didn’t get Minister Mahuta either. We did request that she turn up, and I know that she’s doing some work around Three Waters, which is something that I’m interested in and would have liked to ask her about, but, unfortunately, I didn’t get that chance. Again, other select committees did get their Associate Ministers, and I don’t understand why in this case we didn’t. Given that this was the greenest Budget ever, as proclaimed by the Government, one would have thought that these Ministers would have wanted to turn up to crow about all the fantastic things that they are doing and all of the appropriations, because it’s such a green Budget.

Now in my Budget speech I pulled that apart. [Interruption] Well, Vote Environment actually decreased 15 percent, and they can tell you about the reasons why that might have happened, but the point is it didn’t increase. So here we are with massive crises in waste. We’ve got raised expectations in water and single-use plastics and bottled water, and we’ve got a Budget that decreased by 15 percent. So this was our chance to sit down with Minister Parker and go through things line by line and ask him questions about what his plans were, given that it wasn’t at all clear from the Budget when we looked at it at first glance. So here we are with the Minister by himself—it wasn’t three out of three. We didn’t even get two out of three; we got one out of three, which is—

💬 Todd Muller: Outrageous, actually.

It is. It’s outrageous and it’s pretty much par for the course for this failure of a Government.

But I’d like to bring the committee’s attention to some of the things that we asked the Minister. So we talked to him about the proposed levy for bottled water for export and, frankly, what he had to say was it wasn’t a priority for this Government. Given all of the rhetoric prior to the election around what they were going to do, and they had all the answers and they knew exactly what was going to happen and what all the solutions were, when the rubber hits the road, when we get him in front of us and we ask him “What are you going to do?”—nothing. Actually, all he did was give us a whole lot of excuses about why it couldn’t be done and why it wasn’t a priority. So here we are, seeing quite clearly what was promised before the election and all the hype and all the raised expectations, but here it is in black and white: they’re not going to do anything about it.

Then we went on to talk about plastic waste management—as I said earlier, possibly one of the most important areas right now that we need to be talking about. Minister Sage doesn’t turn up, so we have Minister Parker and what do we hear from him? Well, there are some discussions going on, Minister Sage is talking to councils about separating glass from plastic recycling, and they’re not considering a ban on single-use plastic bags at this stage—not putting anything in front of Cabinet. So, again, we see, prior to the election, all the answers; when we get him in front of us at select committee: nothing. They bat it down the road: “We’re thinking about it, maybe we’ll do it, maybe we won’t.” Well, they’ve been in power for 10 months, and we’ve got nothing.

💬 Todd Muller: 10 long months.

10 long months, and we’re sitting with the Minister in front of us and what is he doing about bottled water? Nothing. What is he doing about single-use plastics? Nothing. What is he doing about our waste crisis with packaging? Nothing. What a disgrace.

I have to say that that member, Erica Stanford, refers to herself in far more glowing terms than her colleagues refer to her and her contribution in Parliament.

I’m delighted to speak to this environment and conservation Estimates, and the reason that I’m pleased about it is that it is integral to our reputation as a country. We pride ourselves and have grown our reputation on our regard for the natural environment and natural capital.

That has been under threat for a long time, and I’m so pleased to see, as the member Jenny Marcroft referred to, the increase in conservation funding as just one of many examples throughout the vote that we’re considering at the moment where this coalition Government—the combination of Labour and New Zealand First and Greens—has made a real contribution to ensuring that our reputation is delivered on the ground, that it isn’t just talk about “100% Pure” but that it is actually delivered, and that we can have a country where we can swim in our rivers and not get sick. Unlike the former Minister for the Environment Nick Smith’s wadeable river standard, we are looking to improve the quality of water, and that work is reflected in this Budget.

I want to mention just a few of the key topics covered by this area. The first is climate change. I’ve been a member of GLOBE-NZ since it first started up. I want to acknowledge Stuart Smith as the current chair of GLOBE and say that I do think that in many regards that cross-party approach is a good one. It has to be entered into on the basis of a genuine commitment to work together to get agreed outcomes, not as a means of petty point-scoring. I think GLOBE has set an example of how that can be done, and I look forward to seeing others in this House as well.

I’ve mentioned the freshwater issue. I come from Canterbury, and we’re currently enduring—my colleague Matt Doocey will know as well—the torment of having chlorinated water because of contamination in our well heads. We hope that that taint in our water is gone soon and that we can return to our own pure water. It’s been a wake-up call for our region, and I think we’ve learnt the lessons, and I wish Hastings had learnt them earlier, actually. I admire our council for putting the health and well-being of our citizens first, but fancy having in New Zealand the situation where we have water that is not fit to drink, as they had in Hastings, and as we currently have in Canterbury.

I also want to acknowledge Minister Eugenie Sage in the waste management area. She’s put a lot of work and effort into thinking about how to deal with a challenge that has not been dealt with adequately anywhere in the world, and I look forward to seeing the outcome of some of that work.

I laughed at some of the National members saying, you know, “This isn’t all fixed in this first Budget.” Nine years in Government led by that party and not a single fix in the environment or Government or conservation spaces, but after less than a year, the National Party is demanding us to have fixed all the mess that they left behind. Well, we’re working on it, but it won’t be delivered in the first year—that’s for sure.

I want to acknowledge the members of the select committee who considered the Estimates before us. I think the Environment Committee works hard. I want to acknowledge all the Ministers and Associate Ministers who have worked so hard in this space, and I think we’ve got a good report to debate as a result of that.

Just in conclusion, I want to acknowledge the outgoing and the current Parliamentary Commissioners for the Environment. They’re also covered by this appropriation. They’re Officers of Parliament. They’re independent; they don’t have Ministers. But Dr Jan Wright and the Rt Hon Simon Upton—one of them previously and one of them more in the future—I think will do a great credit to that position as an Officer of Parliament. Jan Wright has issued some exceptional reports based on science, independent thinking, and robust debate. We can use those for good policy-making in this Parliament, and that’s where our policy should start from. I have confidence that the Rt Hon Simon Upton—despite his past!—will do an equal job as Dr Wright has, so I look forward to seeing further work in that space from him.

In conclusion, I think we’ve had an interesting debate. There’s a lot of common ground that we should be working on in the environment and conservation space, and I welcome National to join it.

I, like other Government members, am really proud about Budget 2018, because it sends a signal of hope that we have a Government who has a plan for the environment and to protect our conservation estate. But more than that, our goal as a Government is to improve the well-being and living standards of all New Zealanders through the productive, sustainable, and inclusive growth of our country and its natural resources, but with environmental limits in mind.

I listened very carefully to the contribution that’s been made in this section, and I want to pick up a few things from a number of members: firstly, Sarah Dowie, who criticised the Minister of Conservation around her role and the job that she’s doing. I think she’s doing a very fine job. The nature of that criticism was that the Minister wasn’t working hard enough around partnerships, around ensuring that people were being engaged, and the like. Well, that’s simply not true. I’m really pleased that the Minister took the chance to stand up in the committee and point to some of the partnerships that will mean, in areas like Taranaki, an emphasis on predator control. Building in partnerships with the local community and iwi, we’re seeing real gains delivered on the ground. Similarly, working with regional council in the Hawke’s Bay and local stakeholders to ensure that the issues of pest eradication could be delivered in a way that was sustainable for that community—the Minister stood in the committee and pointed to that issue, and I think the criticism of her not turning up to a select committee was a little bit churlish—a little bit churlish—because she’s doing the work on the ground.

More importantly, a number of issues that were raised in relation to her portfolio were in the area of waste. Now, what I know is that Minister Sage has delegated responsibilities for the issues of waste and resource efficiency, and is working with the Ministry for the Environment to achieve better implementation of the Waste Minimisation Act. We know that more can be done here, but, more importantly, the work that she’s doing to reduce waste to landfill I think will see, over time, a real effort being made across regions and within communities so that we can better utilise waste as a resource. She is also talking about a circular economy. Now, she is not short of work—that’s for sure—but she is definitely making a huge impact.

We also heard similar issues around climate change from Todd Muller. Now, many of the issues that Todd raised were actually the subject of the zero-carbon bill that’s being consulted on, and those consultations came to a conclusion on the 19th of this month. Minister Shaw has canvassed a range of issues through that consultation, and already the select committee will be receiving a huge number of submissions on all the issues in terms of how emissions across various sectors, and the subsequent cost benefits, will be impacted on by introducing the three options that are proposed in the zero-carbon bill.

I know that Minister Parker, who is working very hard on freshwater issues, would want to further highlight that when we say “swimmable”, we mean swimmable—not wadeable; not anything less than swimmable. His effort to ensure that we will be working hard around the water-quality issues, around nutrient limits, will be a significant step forward to assure all New Zealanders that no matter where they are, they can go to their local river, waterway, or stream and swim in their local taonga, and that’s a really important aspect of where the Government sees the contribution of its efforts.

Now, for my own part, I’m responsible for indigenous biodiversity and a national policy statement (NPS). We have a collaborative working group who will be presenting a draft on that NPS. It’s the first time that we’ve had a working group work in such a way, and we will consult on that draft strategy for indigenous biodiversity, because we know that the biggest challenge will be to encourage and incentivise private land owners towards doing more to protect our indigenous biodiversity. That is about collaboration, that is about partnership, and that is about working with private landowners to achieve a greater outcome. The way that this Government is working will show hope that we have a vision and a plan to ensure that our environment is protected and that we have economic growth, but not at the cost of our environmental principles.