Dean Jacqui: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Dean Jacqui: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15069] 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Otago) 
: 
 The financial review for the Ministry for the Environment highlights the fact that the Government’s management of New Zealand’s freshwater resources has some major deficiencies and is putting our clean green record internationally and domestically at risk. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Stop attacking the farmers. 
JACQUI DEAN 
: The Minister does not want to hear the truth but the Minister must hear the truth— 
Nathan Guy 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. It is my understanding that the Minister in the chair cannot interject. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: The preference is that the Minister does not interject and I am sure he has taken that on board. 
JACQUI DEAN 
: Thank you Mr Chairman. I am sorry the Minister feels he needs to embark on an outburst at my speech. I am sorry he does not actually like the truth and does not like what he has to hear today. None the less here I am for a further 3 minutes to tell the Minister the truth. The truth is and the facts are that water quality particularly in lowland streams is deteriorating under his watch. Water quality measurements in places like the Waikato Canterbury Otago Southland and other places in New Zealand show that the proportion of streams that have poor water quality is increasing and there are a number of water quality hot spots throughout New Zealand. Places like Lake Taupo the Rotorua lakes and Lake Ellesmere are all examples of poor or deteriorating water quality all under this Minister’s watch. The Government’s record in water management has got so bad that the Government’s policy response to it has been dubbed not the Sustainable Water Programme of Action but— 
Hon David Carter 
: What’s it called now? 
JACQUI DEAN 
: Well it was interesting. At the New Zealand Water and Wastewater Conference in Rotorua last year one of the major conferences on water the senior Ministry for the Environment policy analyst got up and put up on his projector a slide with the title: “The Sustainable Water Programme of Inaction”. 
Hon David Carter 
: Sounds like Mr Anderton must be doing it. 
JACQUI DEAN 
: Well I think that that little slip of the tongue that little bad day at the office said it all on this Government’s management of fresh water in this country. 
So the Government’s call for sustainability just rings a little hollow—and I am sure the Minister does not want to hear this either but he has to—when after 8 long years in office the Government has presided over a worsening deterioration in water quality. The water in many iconic lakes and rivers is unfit to drink or swim in and there is a water allocation system that is failing a number of over-allocated catchments around New Zealand. 
Much of mid-Canterbury water and groundwater is over-allocated as are a number of catchments in Otago and further south. Many consents to take water on the Waitaki for example are still called in following the Government’s bungled and inept handling of the Waitaki water allocation framework which came about as a result of Project Aqua by Meridian Energy. This Government has a very poor record on the environment.