Browning Steffan: Address in Reply 
Browning Steffan: Address in Reply 
[Volume:677;Page:438] 
STEFFAN BROWNING (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora tatou katoa. I give my acknowledgment to this House to those who have gone before to the tangata whenua of this region and indeed to Aotearoa. I acknowledge my parents both no longer with us—Ivan passing just a few years ago and Alice just a week and a day before the election—and my late half-brother Trevor who was also so supportive of my vision. To the Green Party MPs before this current 14—to the late Rod Donald who led such a full but short life inspiring me and many others to remain resolute in the vision of a fair and sustainable Aotearoa and world; to Jeanette Fitzsimons now retired after 15 years of inspiring leadership and example; to Nandor; to Keith Locke; to Mike Ward; to Ian Ewen-Street; and to the two Sues Sue Kedgley and Sue Bradford who have both shown such significant output—thanks to you all for your support and friendship.  
In acknowledging my fellow Green MPs and their skills knowledge and passion I think of the great Green team and the party that has reached the New Zealand public in such a way that we are now 14—and we will grow. Many of you have put so much of your life into the Green cause—a very special thanks to you. To those Greens in my rohe of Marlborough—you and many others have directly encouraged and supported me. I am scared to start naming you all because where do I stop? But for inspiration and leadership Alison and Nozz Fletcher—I think we all say thanks. Bob and Jenny Crum—such special friends. Pam Nicholls and the great Green campaigners—so much effort from you all and what a great crew. Thanks to the Van Pallandt family for your love and support. To my son Jordan who cannot be here today your love and support as with Jamie’s is a rock for me. To all my five siblings all here in the gallery today with my son Jamie over from Melbourne and other close friends it is so great to have you with me today.  
The non-governmental organisations—to my many many friends and colleagues in the non-governmental organisations I have worked with for years you are fantastic and a big part of why I am here. Much of what you strive for so very hard should be achieved for all New Zealanders by good leadership and vision from Parliament. You deserve better. You are another great big family that makes a wonderful world striving for an even more wonderful world. Thanks to Philippa Jamieson Elvira Matt Marion Bob Crowder Margaret Jones Kyra Xavier and the great Soil and Health Association team; the Bio-Gro and Organics Aotearoa New Zealand teams Brendan Hoare and Seagar Mason and whanau; to the Friends of Nelson Haven and Tasman Bay whanau—what a strong close hard-working group for coastal ecosytems—to Pete and Tukutai Beech from Guardians of the Sounds; to Tim Newsham and the Marlborough Environment Centre; to Susie Lees Claire Bleakley Zelka Jon Carapiet and Jon Muller from GE-Free New Zealand; to Alison White from the Safe Food Campaign Meriel Watts on pesticides and Murray Horton on peace and foreign ownership; and to many other non-governmental organisations and friends. You all really do rock and we have achieved a lot. There are other very dear friends whose close love and support have helped me and my vision—you know who you are and thank you so very much.  
I would like to acknowledge my fellow members of Parliament—those who have returned those other newbies like me and those like you Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch who have been elected to further positions. I would like to acknowledge the parliamentary staff also who have been so helpful already—thank you. I include especially today in parallel to the members of Parliament our executive assistants and collective office staff. You have either returned or are another set of newbies thanks to the results of last year’s general election and your skills. Congratulations especially to my executive assistant Angela McLeod who is helping me find my feet and has so much experience to offer me—thank you.  
What a great privilege it is to join the Green Party caucus in Parliament with portfolio responsibility in most of the areas that I am particularly passionate about and also to get on to the Primary Production Committee. Primary production underpins our economy and most of the environmental issues New Zealand is grappling with. My year started with the challenge of theoretically taking holidays yet acknowledging the demands of many emails and Facebookers about what was wrong with the Food Bill. The Food Bill won overall. Time management saying no and prioritising among the many important issues are certainly the biggest challenges for me and I have already learnt a strong lesson. My portfolio areas of agriculture organics forestry fisheries biosecurity customs genetic engineering and security intelligence all have immediate issues to start on. I am looking forward to them to the others that will arise but especially to those that I will bring to the table.  
So where did this Green MP come from? My family moved to Marlborough when I was 4 in 1958—No. 4 of six children—to an undersized house on a half-acre Blenheim section running down to the Opawa river. That was developed into a huge garden with nut and fruit trees. The outdoors of what seemed to be a huge section and the wilderness of the Opawa riverbank gave us children a space from the constraints of the house and gave our mother Alice a reprieve from incessant children. There were boats and fishing from what was then a tidal-influenced river which has changed now with shoals of mullet to try for which are not there now; the then endless eels which are fewer now; cowboys and Indians—they are not there either—the huts; and all the childhood adventures. From that home we were all given a sense of curiosity and were taught to question beyond the obvious and certainly encouraged to question authority. Clearly that persists.  
As a child I loved gardening and keeping lizards. With a keen interest in ecology I can still recall in my sixth-form biology text—and those important teachers—the wonderful drawing of a giant rimu including epiphytes and piwakawaka showing the complexity of the indigenous ecosystem. That interest persists in my work’s focus in both marine and terrestrial sustainability. The interrelationships between organisms and ecosystem services that work so well in nature need to be modelled in productive and social systems for a sustainable humanity. They should underpin every decision from Parliament. The Green Party’s guiding principles interlink them well.  
I lived in the bush for over 6 years 300 metres up on the side of my maunga Aorere—Mount Stokes—the tallest mountain in the Marlborough Sounds at 1200 metres with an endemic daisy in its indigenous alpine floral summer mix. We could walk out the back door and climb to a snow-covered crispy top in the winter with views over Marlborough over Tasman Bay up to the North Island and past Cook Strait to the Kaikoura coast. My family—my then wife Diane and our two boys Jamie and Jordan—looked out over Forsyth and the Chetwood Islands to a distant Stephens Island/Takapourewa and we were totally off the grid.  
My work on marine sustainability started there when Anakoha Bay began to have mussel farms along nearly all of its 12-kilometre coastline. Marine farming—having submitted to more Resource Management Act marine farm applications than anyone else in New Zealand I will focus on this just now. Friends of Nelson Haven and Tasman Bay remains involved in Environment Court proceedings from the last aquaculture gold rushes. We have built the case law supporting good planning in the Marlborough Sounds. I am keen that the National Government’s hunger for an aquaculture boom does not create the same environmental impacts or non-governmental organisation workloads as the last two gold rushes did. Yet National is now clearly supporting New Zealand King Salmon and others through its aquaculture law reform. Reform was necessary but not so enabling as to encourage King Salmon to try breaking down the community’s hard-won protections of smart spatial planning in the Marlborough Sounds.  
King Salmon in Marlborough is a prime example of foreign ownership and what is happening throughout New Zealand primary production—a dairy conglomerate here; multithousands of hectares of forestry land there. The potential ownership of Marlborough Sounds water by the infamous Malaysian Tiong family needs to be prevented. Plan change and resource consent applications by King Salmon to the Environmental Protection Authority for eight new salmon farm sites in areas currently prohibited to aquaculture in the Marlborough Sounds were made following the aquaculture legislative reforms last year. The applications are for an initial 35 years as controlled activities which without further plan changes mean an indefinite period of re-consenting—effectively ownership.  
Foreign-controlled salmon farming in New Zealand’s marine environment is akin to mining in the conservation estate. New Zealand King Salmon’s operation is no more sustainable than the Tiong family’s other operations: clear-felling rainforests in the Solomon Islands Papua New Guinea Vanuatu Burma Africa or the ancient forests in Russia. The fish fed to raise the salmon are from ecologically collapsing fisheries off Chile and Peru. The high pollution effects of salmon farming in New Zealand need further research. Human rights abuses attributed to Tiong’s Rimbunan Hijau Group companies in Papua New Guinea make for further reason why New Zealand should not be associated with this company. The Tiong family already has extensive interests especially in forestry in New Zealand but must be prevented from further ownership including our marine environment.  
The eight new areas applied for by the Tiong-dominated King Salmon are public space that has been zoned by the Marlborough District Council as not being appropriate for aquaculture due to its amenity and wilderness characteristics and the balances of uses of the Marlborough Sounds. It should be a marine park not an industrial park. The aquaculture zoning by Marlborough District Council was the result of extensive public consultation and Environment Court processes which are now intended to be overridden by New Zealand King Salmon and the National-led Government through the aquaculture legislation changes. I am pleased to say that the Green Party is opposed to foreign ownership and supports landownership for New Zealand citizens and permanent residents only.  
This has another twist in it: $500000 was gifted by the National Government for marketing of New Zealand King Salmon products offshore because it was tough times last year. The question for the House could be “Who has shares in Direct Capital?”—the other 49 percent of New Zealand King Salmon. Well done National for giving half a million dollars to Tiong to promote unsustainable production! That is quite a subsidy for a 51 percent overseas occupier and polluter of New Zealand waters.  
Forestry—foreign companies such as Tiong own or control the vast majority of logs or timber products going offshore yet this Government seems hell-bent on making it easier for them. One is allowing the gassing of our communities and the ozone layer with spent neurotoxic and carcinogenic ozone-depleting methyl bromide from the log fumigations. Labour and National have both dodged forcing the recapture of the invisible odourless gas which cannot be tracked with confidence. Giving the industry 10 years’ latitude while we increase our exports and fumigations means people are getting sick and dying—dying for whom? The same foreign-dominated industry has this Government forcing councils back from implementing decent safeguards to stop the crude forest harvest practices loading our streams and estuaries with millions of tonnes of sediments. These are sediments that destroy fisheries habitats and nurseries. The Government just does not make the links—or it does not care.  
The current iteration of the National Environmental Standard for Plantation Forestry which limits councils in crucial areas of protection and will not measure sediment pollution is still too tough apparently and Cabinet wants it further pared back. The cost-benefit ratio was not right. The hundreds of people terrorised by flood waves of log plumes and debris—from Pohara to Tapawera Marlborough to Opotiki and beyond—and the thousands of kilometres of marine environment deserve much much better. I am looking forward to a Green Government.  
Time does not allow today but I could speak for hours on the work I have done on exposing genetic engineering field trial abuses; how the last few Governments have been complicit through their agencies in cover-ups; how they have removed GE—or this Government has—from the Food Bill as something we need to regulate for food safety; and how they have allowed more than 70 GE food lines to be approved for New Zealand consumption including the latest: GE soy and corn resistant to 24-D and other herbicides. 24-D on our kai? I think not. Why has National continued funding GE crop and forestry research yet sabotaged the organic sector while our more civilised trading partners have set targets for organic production because they know that the environmental health and social benefits have so much value for their nations?  
New Zealand farming the great unsubsidised producer is not what it seems as the gross externalities from New Zealand’s farming fisheries and forestry are actually subsidies that are nicely tucked away by our free-marketers. Organic production can make us the “100% Pure Aotearoa New Zealand” that Mr Key’s Tourism New Zealand dropped last year on behalf of Federated Farmers’ lobbying and the lack of an aspirational vision for cleaning this country up and maintaining a brand that New Zealanders can be proud of. I am looking forward to a Green Government and to working with my colleagues here as well. Thank you.