Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I sprang out of my seat like a jackrabbit out of a hole. Righty-o. Conservation is what I will be speaking to this evening. The reality is that our water and our environment are the lifeblood of our country and in fact every New Zealander has a very close connection with those two very things. Our environment which is a massive driver for our economy now with tourism—and let us be honest people do not come to New Zealand to visit Auckland or go to our large cities. They come and they visit our beautiful country to visit our natural environment—to go out to see our beautiful lakes and rivers and beaches mountains and hills and so on and so forth.With an expectation of tourism exploding by 2025 to over $40 billion of additions to our GDP as some people expect it to do we should be seriously investing heavily into our environment into our conservation and into our natural flora and fauna and yet as we built up to the 2017 Budget I was getting a little bit excited because the Hon Maggie Barry was starting to talk positively about the sort of funding and the surprise that was going to come out of the Christmas stocking on Budget day for conservation. She talked about the $21 million that was going to be made available for the Battle for Our Birds and for keeping our predators under control with this massive beech-seeding problem that seems to be scourging our country at the moment. She talked about $76 million in infrastructure support for conservation and $11 million for our kiwis and I was starting to get excited because she had not even told us what she is going to announce on Budget day.Of course Budget day came and zilch. Doughnuts are what we got—big zeros. Nothing else was announced. Everything that was going to be put forward for conservation was put forward prior to Budget day and all it turned out to be was a few extra toilets on some of our tracks. There was $21 million to drop more 1080 into our forests indiscriminately killing all sorts of animals and species native to this country. And of course we have seen a huge degradation of financial support with regard to the Department of Conservation (DOC) over the 9 years that National has been in Government to the point where the Minister—I even thought well maybe she just does not understand the difference between real and nominal.So in one of the speeches I went through and tried to articulate to her the difference between the value of a dollar yesterday which is different from the same dollar today. Of course if you do not index it to the Consumer Price Index you are going to find out very quickly that $100 back in 2008 when the National Government came into power versus $100 now—it will actually take you $115 to accumulate the same asset. What we have seen over 9 years is over $300 million being taken away from conservation. We have seen hundreds of DOC staff and rangers being removed. Let us be honest those workers—those boots on the ground—are absolutely vital to making sure that we can control our predators making sure our tracks stay open making sure our huts are available and making the experience for our tourists arriving in this country something to write home about to their friends and family to say: You know what? You really do need to get down to New Zealand. It is just 100 percent pure 100 percent beautiful 100 percent natural." And yet we have got a plan to have swimmable rivers by 2040? I mean this is just an absolute joke.I have got the Minister here and I am sure he is going to jump to his feet and take a call on that. Increasing the levels of E. coli to be acceptable overnight does not necessarily make those rivers more swimmable more safe or more environmentally friendly. It is a serious serious concern that we have.Our Battle for Our Birds—as we know we are spending over $120 million a year on napalming our forests with 1080. At the end of the day this indiscriminate killer is killing our natural birds. Jan Wright in her recent review Taonga of an island nation: Saving New Zealand's birds—we have got 168 native species in New Zealand and 55 of those species are in serious risk of complete eradication. We are talking about moving into extinction like the moa. It is documented that after every single 1080 drop populations of native species drop. Some populations of native species drop more than others and that is directly the result of the fact that we do not even have a plan to be considered for Predator Free 2050. That is an absolute joke in its statement."