Sage Eugenie: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 29 January 2013. Volume:687;Page:7572. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Madam Speaker Dean and congratulations on your elevation to sitting in the Chair. What a tired negative and hostile speech we had from the Prime Minister this afternoon. Obviously Hawaii did not work any holiday magic. We had no fresh ideas no vision no energy—unlike the previous speaker Maggie Barry who had a lot of energy but no ideas—and a complete failure to engage with the major challenges facing Aotearoa New Zealand. At least the environment got a mention this year which it did not last year but when the Prime Minister and his Ministers and other MPs in National talk about the environment they talk about natural resources not about nature and that epitomises National’s attitude to the environment. Nature is primarily something to be exploited for economic gain. That is why the Prime Minister talks about opening up our oceans to foreign corporates for environmentally risky deep-sea drilling not about the need to protect the Maui’s dolphin by effective controls on fishing. 
To National nature and our environment are not about our landscapes. They are not about our indigenous plants and wildlife that contribute to our identity as New Zealanders. They are not about safeguarding the places that we treasure like our national parks places that we go camping beside rivers and beaches and places that many Kiwis like to spend their summer. They are not about that. Once upon a time under former Prime Minister Jim Bolger with Bill Birch those Ministers went tramping. They understood something about our national parks and what it is to crest the high country and to stand on a ridge and listen to the kea what it is to wander through beech forests and what it is to experience some of the magic of those places. Yet under this Government we have an enthusiastic interventionist in Nick Smith as Minister of Local Government. He intervened to axe the regional council in order to promote irrigation development in Canterbury. He intervened to weaken water conservation orders. He intervened to draft legislation that has increased ministerial powers to direct and interfere with local councils. But as the new recycled Minister of Conservation will we see him intervening to protect our South West New Zealand World Heritage Area to protect Fiordland National Park and Mount Aspiring National Park against the ill-conceived Routeburn tunnel proposal? Will he intervene to protect that great walk? No. He will probably just leave it to a second-tier official in the Department of Conservation because under this Government National intervenes to tip the playing field in favour of development and in favour of its business mates. 
We have seen that at Skycity. We have seen that with the irrigation fund helping irrigators with a subsidy. We have seen that with National taking an axe to the Resource Management Act. We have seen it with the Government making it easier in the Crown Minerals (Permitting and Crown Land) Bill for mining to take place on conservation land with the Minister of Energy and Resources as well as the Minister of Conservation deciding applications. National does not intervene in favour of nature and the environment; it intervenes always in favour of the exploitation of nature. 
John Key is afraid to talk about the environment because he knows that his Government’s policy choices are toxic to the environment. The Prime Minister said this afternoon that the Government was planning to introduce a package of reforms around water quality and the way we manage fresh water. When the Prime Minister talks about building on the work of the Land and Water Forum what he really means is watering down the forum’s recommendations and cherry-picking. When we have got a Government that is trying to hide the extent and the seriousness of our water quality problems by ditching the consolidated nationwide state of the environment reporting that we used to have until late last year and when we have a Government that is proud to be the only country in the OECD that does not have independent environmental reporting I do not expect the water reform package to improve the outlook for our rivers our lakes and our aquifers. I expect to see more of what irrigators want like tradable water rights which will further complicate water management in New Zealand but increase the opportunity for consent holders to profit from any water they are not using. 
This summer we have had numerous stories in the media about water pollution—toxic algae in Hawke’s Bay killing a dog and last weekend in Marlborough we had the Taylor River raft race run along the riverbank because of elevated levels of bacteria in the river and low flows. The reason for that? The Marlborough District Council said that those high bacterial levels were partly because of runoff from Linkwater an area of intensive dairying. We are seeing mussel farmers at Collingwood in Golden Bay unable to harvest their mussels because of contaminants in the Aorere River. We have seen the Matiri Mangles and Matakitaki rivers again not fit for swimming with elevated bacteria levels and kayakers reporting infected cuts. As one kayaker recently emailed to me Murchison has a population of around 700 people and a sewerage plant but an estimated cow population of over 10000. That is the equivalent of more than 140000 people but with no sewerage plant. Yet what is National planning to do? Spend $80 million subsidising irrigation. It wants to push people off welfare payments to make it easier for agribusiness to create more dairy farms. 
I came back from Arthur’s Pass on Sunday. When you leave the national park shortly after that you see Lake Grassmere. It is one of the scenic gems of the Canterbury high country yet what has happened there? We have had Mr Morrison from the family of one of the principals of the Central Plains Water irrigation development clearing all the matagouri adjacent to the road using his digger and his bulldozer and putting the land ready for more intensive farming and irrigation development all with impunity—no obvious intervention from Environment Canterbury or the Selwyn District Council. The fact that he is bulldozing those matagouri shrublands proposing to do intensive farming in the catchment of Lake Grassmere will be an absolute tragedy for the lake because it will end up totally polluting that lake which at the moment has got very high water-quality. Yet National will not put limits on dairying development through a strong national policy statement. We have only a weak national policy statement. 
The Minister for the Environment talked about National spending money on clean-up initiatives. Those programmes were implemented and started by the previous Government. What the Minister fails to recognise is that if you are spending money on clean-up at the same time as you are subsidising irrigation you are just compounding the problem so taxpayers are paying twice. Amy Adams called water our most valuable natural resource and said that New Zealand must make the most of this “vital resource”. But I did not hear anything in the Minister’s speech about protecting our rivers and lakes and protecting their fishing values their swimming values or their stronger water conservation orders. It was all about development. 
The Government’s plans to reform the Resource Management Act will be more bad news for the environment and for organisations like the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society and Fish and Game that are involved in advocacy to defend the places that they love and we love like the Denniston Plateau the Mokihinui River and the Waitaki River. The Minister talked about the Resource Management Act as a “barrier to growth”. On “Planet Key” good environmental outcomes are where developers are left with the minimum of constraint and paradise is paved over and turned into a parking lot or an irrigation intake within 6 months of course. 
Amy Adams talked about inconsistent and inaccurate plans. The Green Party would fix this by having more national policy statements and more national environmental standards to guide councils. National has got a weak national policy statement on fresh water and it has failed to finalise the national environmental standard on ecological flows which was notified more than 4 years ago. National’s fix in terms of the Resource Management Reform Bill is once again to shaft democratic processes to give more power to Ministers in Wellington and to take it away from councils. We have seen that with National proposing to appoint the commissioners for decisions on the Auckland Unitary Plan not leaving Auckland councillors to appoint those commissioners. If we are having another raft of changes to the Resource Management Act I suspect that they will be about undermining the powers of councils and putting more and more power in the hands of the Government. 
A richer New Zealand is not about more motorways and more irrigation and more mining and more environmental destruction. It is not about something you measure just on a balance sheet; it is measured in the hearts of people across this beautiful country of ours. It is about investing more in the protection of our indigenous species which we hold in trust for all humankind not just New Zealanders and it is about recognising that our economy with its strong emphasis on primary production and tourism depends on a healthy environment. The Green Party would invest in that.