Delahunty CatherineCATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Chair. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare ko tēnei pō. I am thrilled to take a call on this. I learnt a lot tonight. I learnt that swimmable rivers are not possible because of the weather and I was quite disappointed because the Budget failed to also deal with a big issue that Nick Smith has kept mentioning in the House whenever I have questioned him in the last 2 years. One of those big issues that I thought the Budget might deal with was the volcano problem—volcanic ash was mentioned as a cause of dirty rivers—and then I thought it might deal with the birds. I thought Nick Smith might announce the massive bird cull because basically the argument has been we cannot have swimmable rivers because of birds and volcanic ash and the weather and if that is the case how come Budget 2017 did not address any of those?Those birds are still out there people threatening your water. Those random volcanoes are approaching your rivers as we speak about to pollute them. It is really really something else.Unfortunately Budget 2017 was a big disappointment to many people. We actually knew what was coming because when there is a crisis you just keep announcing the stuff that you have announced before and that is what happened this time as my previous colleague mentioned.My colleague who is on the Local Government and Environment Committee Eugenie Sage has been rigorous in questioning the Government about water funding. This 2014 fund—it never lets anyone subscribe to it. Then in 2017 it is announcing it again and we are still waiting. It is very disappointing.Te Mana o Te Wai Fund was closed and people around the country were saying to me: The problem with Te Mana o Te Wai is that we have to raise half the money." If it is a hapū or a small community or whānau trying to clean up your waterway—and I have met many in my year-long tour of this country—they actually need a fund that they can access where they do not have to find half the money.Then the fund was closed down and of course there has been another announcement now of another hundred million dollars. Oh fantastic—$1 million more in Te Mana o Te Wai Fund $100 million more into the Freshwater Improvement Fund. But where is the evidence of change? Where is the relationship between what is being put in there and what is actually happening to water? If you have anything to do with the water space—and I have to say some of the National Government's initial speakers just did not seem to know very much—the Waikato River alone is estimated to cost up to $8 billion to clean up. So $100 million is not going to touch one of our major rivers.We have a disproportionate response from the Government about the crisis in fresh water. What is more quite apart from the money we have this incoherent policy that no one understands. It is quite an achievement to be able to announce a fresh water clean-up package that the officials then are revealed by email to have not understood how to talk about it. That is quite an achievement.Meanwhile dirty water is running into the sea every day and we continue to maintain models of agriculture that are polluting waterways. People in the public understand that 2040 is not an aspirational goal. Swimmable by 2040—so many people are looking at that and going: "Wow this is the dream—when we have killed all the birds and stopped all the volcanoes we will be able to swim in the river by 2040." But the public is not stupid. The public of this country want clean water and they want it done by changing the land-use processes—not by killing farming or giving up having proper sewerage systems or anything else that impacts on water but by making a real investment in what has happened.The consequences of the last 20 years are really really serious for fresh water and by talking about fencing this year's Estimates have completely failed to address the scale of the problem. Fencing is good but it is a red herring for nitrates. If you know anything about this area it is about nitrates and it is about those models that create excessive nitrates and nutrients in our waterways.Sorry Government—big fat fail. It is not birds and it is not weather; it is actually how we live. It can be changed but you are not the people to do it because you have not got—to quote John Key—the guts."