Delahunty Catherine: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 17 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1609. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tātou katoa. Having listened to those on the Government benches speaking about the state of the nation I would just like to quote what has inspired me by Lewis Carroll:‘Twas brillig and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe:All mimsy were the borogrovesAnd the mome raths outgrabe.That sums up the Government’s relationship with the rest of us very nicely. It is pretty brillig around here and they are interestingly slithy toves.I would like to refer to something pretty slithy: the state of our water. It is actually no good talking about the economy without facing up to water. In the Prime Minister’s statement he talked briefly about the issue of fresh water which has sadly become a misnomer. Less and less fresh water exists in a number of places across Aotearoa New Zealand. This is not assisted by the Government’s National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management which is as leaky as a sieve and a very dirty sieve at that. This summer we have seen toxic algae blooms excessive nitrogen causing all kinds of biological effects pathogens that can make people and animals quite sick and sediments choking the macroinvertebrates plus the horrifying statistic from last year which has not improved that two-thirds of our monitored swimming spots are now too polluted to swim in.I followed this up this summer. I went on to the Land Air Water Aotearoa website on a regular basis and I checked catchment after catchment trying to find places where the information showed it was safe to swim and it was not there. So it is a very sad state of affairs when people want to take their kids down to the river. I am fortunate. I live beside a river. I go down to my local river and I see the kids swimming. Our local river unlike so many has clear translucent water; basking tuna torrentfish and kōkopu; the scent of clean water and the pure reflected light in the water column; beauty and energy. It is not washing out to sea as “wasted” water as our Prime Minister once so charmingly expressed it. Showing his usual strong grasp of ecology as a basis for any economy he said that all this water was just flowing away and it was being wasted. My river and hopefully other people’s rivers are not all dammed they are not all sucked up for irrigation and they are not all full of pollution from the 6 million or more cows that we have in terms of density in this country.So we are looking at the most precious resource we have got the most sacred relationships we have with the awa—the water—and a weak political framework. It is weak and random. Low standards are being entrenched. The many good recommendations—I think it was about 158—of the Land and Water Forum are being ignored. It is about Te Tiriti o Waitangi as well. We are here to protect taonga and the relationship of mana whenua hapū to their awa should be upheld by all of us both in terms of rangatiratanga and kaitiakitanga. But instead we have a Government that is promoting the threatening of the viability of our rivers. So the Crown irrigators were at the select committee this week talking about the Crown and irrigation. It was difficult to explain to them that actually there are a lot of other stakeholders involved in this—it is not just about using rivers for a very narrow definition of what effective farming is.We are threatening the viability of rivers. We are facing climate change. We need to accept that the drought is here now and it could get worse for many a year. We need a strong National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management based on the scientific evidence produced by the actual scientists. Rivers need far greater protection. The Green Party wants to see robust water standards rivers protected negotiation with hapū national environmental standards to look after water and flows and there is a lot of work to be done. There are still ugly sources like Tarawera the point sources of pollution and sewage that rely on discharges of semi-treated or treated water to rivers. Man can get to the moon but we cannot manage our waste without contaminating the water.We have to stop the intensification of agriculture. It does not matter whether you fence every creek—and I am all for that—or plant a tree on every waterway it will not stop those 6 million cows leeching their urine into waterways via the earth. It is not a simple matter of fencing. The other day I spent a day in Northland with Millan Ruka and I went on the Environmental River Patrol. Unlike the Government and indeed many regional councils he is standing up and threatening people to say that they need to clean up water. He encourages them and then he threatens them and sometimes they do it. But the Government is not doing it. We are about to lose some of our most precious resources.