Delahunty Catherine: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 29 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9925. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]8.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) to the Minister for the Environment: Will he support the request made to Parliament today by over 12000 New Zealanders to legislate “swimmable” as the minimum standard for our freshwater lakes rivers and streams in New Zealand?Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): It is Government policy to improve water quality and to make more areas suitable for swimming and more often. However a legislative requirement for all water bodies to be swimmable all of the time is not realistic nor achievable. Most rivers breach swimming standards during high rainfall events because of pollutants introduced during high flows. Preventing this occurring both in urban and rural areas would come at an extraordinary cost when actually most people sensibly do not swim at those times. We also have water bodies that have significant bird populations where the only way to make them swimmable would be to cull the birdlife. Communities need to make choices on each water body where they would want those bodies to be swimmable and where they would want to have birds available for birdlife. The third constraint is that of the 425000 kilometres of rivers and streams only about 11 percent physically are able to be swum in and it would cost billions and billions of dollars to make some of those streams swimmable when nobody ever has swum there or ever would wish to swim there.Catherine Delahunty: Why is it not possible to regulate a nationwide minimum standard of swimmable rivers by simply exempting fresh water contaminated by natural phenomena such as volcanic ash and birds or during high flood events?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The first point I would make is this is the first Government in New Zealand history to set down national policy and standards for freshwater bodies across New Zealand and I do find it a bit rich that members opposite who did nothing for decades now challenge this Government’s very comprehensive programme around fresh water. In respect of freshwater bodies there are examples where it is birdlife and sometimes it is volcanic issues but there is also the very practical issue in most of our urban areas where we have small streams that nobody swims in where it literally would cost billions to get the water quality up to that level and we are not about spending billions of dollars of New Zealand ratepayers’ money in areas where people would not practically swim.Catherine Delahunty: Given the millions we are spending cleaning up Aotearoa’s polluted rivers does he concede it is cheaper in the long run to establish a minimum swimmable standard for rivers before they get polluted?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Absolutely we need to put standards in place to ensure that water quality is both maintained and improved and that is exactly what the national policy statement that was introduced by my colleague Amy Adams back in 2012 did. Furthermore what this Government is doing is actually requiring that no funding will be available from the Government unless those regional councils have put in the minimum standards to prevent ongoing pollution. I would finally note that over the last 25 years the amount of pollution from point source—factories dairy sheds council municipal systems—has actually reduced by about 90 percent. The more complex challenge we have is how we deal with diffuse pollution and that is something that tools like OVERSEER and others that the Government is developing is where we need to go forward.Joanne Hayes: How does this Government’s investment in freshwater improvements compare with those of previous Governments and what specific progress has been achieved in improving water quality?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: This Government has spent $115 million specifically on water quality improvements over the last 7 years. Over the previous 7 years $20 million was spent—i.e. we are spending more than five times as much on improving freshwater quality. Some of the results that I would make would be Lake Rotoiti in the North Island. It was so toxic last decade that you could not swim there. You literally had to wear gloves to go fishing in Lake Rotoiti. Water quality in Lake Rotoiti is now better than it has been for decades and it is swimmable. Another example—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The answers are just far too long.Catherine Delahunty: When will he set a national standard for water quality that will make it safe for our mokopuna to put their heads under the water again?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would point out an example like the Manawatū River which is actually one of our rivers that has real water quality problems where we have invested over $5 million where next month I will be opening a new wastewater treatment system that has been partly funded by the Government and where my colleagues Jono Naylor and Ian McKelvie went for a dip—in an area where for the last 30 years you could not safely swim. It shows the progress that we are making on improving freshwater quality.Hon David Parker: Does his national policy statement on freshwater quality allow rivers that are currently clean enough to swim in at normal flows to be made dirtier so that New Zealanders cannot swim in them safely so long as they are still wadeable and boatable?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No because the national policy statement requires all freshwater bodies to be at least maintained or improved. What it further requires is that every regional council engage with its community on improving freshwater quality. I challenge Mr Parker and say actually that the issue of water quality deteriorating was far worse in the 9 years in which he was a Minister and did nothing rather than the progress that this Government is positively making.