Barry Maggie: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBarry Maggie: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 02 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19177. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MAGGIE BARRY (Chairperson of the Local Government and Environment Committee):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.